Director-General for Communication of the European Parliament Jaume Duch Guillot spoke on Nov. 1 about the challenges the European Union (EU) faces in the upcoming 2024 European Parliament election and the current geopolitical situation with other European countries such as Ukraine, Russia and Moldova.

The BMW Center for German European Studies, and the Walsh School of Foreign Service’s (SFS) center for the study of European affairs, hosted the event. Juan Luis Manfredi, the Prince of Asturias and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the SFS, helped moderate this one-hour discussion in the Intercultural Center although the talk was mainly focused on attendee questions.

Guillot began the conversation by discussing how the last five years which have included the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of A.I. will all shape the discourse around the EU’s 2024 election and will strongly impact democracy in the EU.

“First of all, 2019 started with Brexit, with the Brexit negotiations. This happened a couple of months after the European elections in January 2020. Just two months later, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, reminding us of how little control we have of our future. And for more than a year and a half now: the invasion of Ukraine by Russia,” Guillot said. 

Guillot said that one of the most important factors in this election is strategic autonomy for the EU.

“This means to seriously take into account the lessons of the last crisis to become less dependent in terms of security, defense and energy access,” Guillot said at the event. 

Guillot said investing in new renewable energy sources like the Green Deal — the EU’s policy initiative to mitigate the effects of climate change — is key to protecting a nation’s autonomy. 

“The Green Deal has become necessary not only because of climate reasons, but also because you need to create this energy autonomy or this autonomy in terms of accessing energy,” Guillot said. 

Guillot said that in the future, the EU will see a growth in membership.

“There is no discussion about whether there will or will not be an enlargement. The discussion is about how and when, but not about the necessity of this enlargement, for obvious geopolitical reasons,” Guillot said.

Considering the current matters at stake within the European Parliament, Guillot added that voter participation is increasingly important to protect democracy. 

“Democracy some years ago was not at stake, was not a matter to be discussed in the European Union. It was about more and less integration. But nobody mentioned democracy. Now democracy is a subject of discussion and a subject of protection,” Guillot said.

Ultimately, citizens must recognize the impact their vote will make in the upcoming election, according to Guillot. 

“What they will vote will have an impact in their own lives. This is essential and this means explaining to them what we have been doing these last years and what is at stake for the next legislature,” Guillot said. 

Individuals working in the European Parliament are optimistic that the EU can better prepare itself for domestic and global crises in the future by learning from the mistakes of the past. 

Still, the future of the EU is not predictable because of the recent shift in Parliament toward ideological polarization, according to Guillot.

“In my opinion, we are already far from a Parliament where 80% of the members voted more or less the same,” Guillot said. “For example, this last month we have also seen how the Parliament split almost fifty-fifty.”

Guillot said that the influx of new voters globally is also adding to the unpredictability of election results—as seen in the Polish elections Oct. 15, for example.

“They mobilized because they understood that these elections were crucial for the country and for them,” Guillot said.