Engaging with the European Parliament after the 2024 elections will be more challenging than ever. Not only are fragmentation and polarisation set to increase (as shown by our latest electoral projections), but there will also be many new faces in town.

According to our latest calculations, only 42% of the current MEPs are likely to be re-elected next year, while the rest of the Parliament (almost 58%) would be composed of newcomers. As it was the case in 2019, this high level of replacement is both a challenge and opportunity for stakeholders, as significant work will be needed to identify key policy influencers and potential allies among the new MEPs. The number of newcomers may get even higher, as the emergence of new parties or independent candidates could further reduce incumbents’ re-election chances. 

Almost 25% of MEPs will be new due changes in the strength of their political parties (parties losing or gaining seats), while another 33% of MEPs will be new because the national party leaderships will make changes to the lists (this projection is based on our observations from the previous rounds of elections). For example, in 2019, about 45% of incumbents were replaced by newcomers in key eligible positions on the electoral lists. 

This takes place for several reasons, such as the push by some of the parties to find a better socio-demographic balance on their lists (age, gender, region, background, etc.), as well as the changes in parties’ leadership / internal balance of power since 2019 (e.g. rising factions close to the current leadership will claim more seats for their members).

The chance to be re-elected is obviously not the same for every incumbent, as it depends on the current performance of their national parties.

MEPs belonging to parties that are growing fast are very likely to keep their seats after 2024. In fact, the size of parties such as Brothers of Italy (ECR), Vox (ECR), or Azione-Italia Viva (Renew) is projected to increase by more than twice, which means that their current MEPs have strong chances of being re-elected in 2024. When a party grows, there is enough room for both incumbents and new faces, so the intra-party competition is light. 

However, the opposite happens when a party shrinks. Some of the parties are set to lose more than half of their seats. According to our projections this is likely to be the case for parties such as Spanish Ciudadanos, Italian Lega or Timmermans’ PvdA. Their current MEPs are facing tough competition both among themselves and with potential newcomers for the few eligible spots. This means that even MEPs who got a high profile in Brussels for working on key files might not be able to return after 2024 (for instance  most MEPs from PvdA have been rapporteurs on important legislation such as Jongerius, Tang, Chahim, Wolters, etc.  To a lesser extent, high profile MEPs from parties such as Spanish PSOE, German Grunen and Macron's Ensemble are also facing an uphill struggle to remain in Brussels.

As the elections get closer, we will update this forecast to take the parties’ (likely) electoral lists into account, so that you can get an increasingly accurate picture of the next cohort of MEPs as we go towards the elections. As more information becomes available, we will be able to predict not only the share of new MEPs, but also their names, their potential policy interests and their support for / opposition to specific policy initiatives. 

Here is the broad range of services that we are providing around the EP 2024 elections:

·Full picture of all the positions / votes that all MEPs took on all subjects during the current EP term. This allows you to see what the MEPs actually did, based on objective data (as opposed to speeches and promises)

· Forecasts on the performance of each party in the elections

· Forecasts on which MEPs are going to be (re)elected

· Profile of the (likely) MEPs and forecast of their legislative behavior

· Forecasts on which Commissioners are going to stay and which new Commissioners we might get

· Profile of the new Commissioners

· Analysis of the party manifestos

· Other related services upon request

Contact us at [email protected] for more information on our electoral monitoring and forecasting services.