Nuestra NEBRIJA 30 - julio 2019

mocracy (even considering the meager 35% par- ticipation in Portugal), Italy was the jarring note after the win by the League led by the right-wing Salvini. It is not good times for Greece's left, since the nine points that the center-right New Demo- cracy party has obtained over Alexis Tsipras' party have led to early elections in that country. Finally, even assessing the more than symbolic success of rightist extremism in Belgium, everything suggests that the hea- daches caused by nationalism will come from the countries of the East, as De Wilders and the Party of True Finns have been relegated to fourth place in the Netherlands and Finland, respecti- vely. In fact, in both countries the Europeanist parties have won the elections: the Labor Party, in the first case, and the con- servative National Coalition, in the second. With more than 50% participation, eight points more than in the 2014 election, Europeans have retur- ned a certain breath of demo- cratic representativeness to the European institutions. Although it continues to be a very low per- centage, in the current situation it seems enough to return the pulse to a Parliament that will hold in its bosom a Trojan horse with which it will have to fight, but inside which will be housed a sig- nificantly lower number of enemies than initially foreseen. Thus, the next European legislature, whose hori- zon extends to 2024, should be much more than a mere survival exercise. It is imperative, in order to achieve socioeconomic stability that reveals itself enough so as not to aggravate the already obvious existential crisis, to reach tangible agre- ements in areas such as the creation of a Depo- sit Guarantee Fund that completes the banking union, decisive advances in the union that allow improving the efficiency of monetary policy and greater involvement in international conflicts, in addition to broadening a common defense policy. All these issues will require arduous negotiations between the parliamentary groups, given that the Grand Coalition loses the absolute majority and could only recover it by incorporating into its particular equation the Liberal Group or by ma- king use of a variable geometry of a fragmen- ted hemicycle, as the one that exists from now on in Strasbourg. Ideological differences aside, the pro-European parties must agree on a road map that acts as a compass in order to avoid drastic course alterations. Seneca declared that "there is no favorable wind for those who do not know whe- re they are going," and the EU should have this maxim very present in times of disorientation be- cause, otherwise, we will not know if in five years, when we Europeans are again summoned to the polls and it is time to look at ourselves in the mi- rror again, we will bow our head and, dejected, we will feel ashamed of ourselves or, on the con- trary, even in spite of the advanced maturity fea- tures conferred by the rush of time, we will hold our own serene gaze with pride and dignity . Published in Cinco Días on May 28th, 2019. 47 E uropeans have returned a certain breath of democratic representation to the institutions