Europe's year of elections

Four of western Europe’s seven largest economies go to the polls this year, including the two central pillars of the EU, France and Germany.

In all four countries, the critical question is whether the populist anti-establishment sentiment that led the United Kingdom to vote for Brexit and the United States for Donald Trump in 2016 will continue to roil political elites or has it run its course.

Populist and eurosceptic parties have gained support in all four countries. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front, and Beppe Grillo, leader of Italy’s Five Star Movement, in particular, harbour credible ambitions of winning office. Germany’s Angela Merkel looks more secure in the face of the challenge from the right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD), but, like other mainstream parties across Europe, her Christian Democrats will trim their sails to navigate the new political winds blowing across the continent.

Join us on Thursday, January 19 at 3pm UK time to put your questions to three of Oxford Analytica’s expert advisors, such as:

• What Europe’s year of elections will bring?
• How it will change the continent’s politics and economics?
• Who will likely be Europe’s key leaders by year’s end?
• What it may mean for the challenges facing the continent, from the Brexit negotiations to the future of the European ‘project’ and dealing with a fragmenting world exacerbated by the uncertainties of the incoming Trump administration in the United States? and
• Whatever else concerns you about Europe.