Europe is voting. And it is striking how committed industry, trade, business, credit institutions, central banks and local authorities are to campaigning for participation in the European elections – be it in joint appeals by associations, giant posters in the centre of Frankfurt's banking district, or large-scale newspaper advertisements. The message is – go and vote, because a lot is at stake. And yes, there really is a lot at stake.

Firstly, the EU Parliament has become a central lever for legislation. Members of the parliament in Berlin complain that the Bundestag no longer makes its own decisions on many political issues, but only implements what has long been decided at EU level. At the same time, the EU Parliament has also emancipated itself from the Council of Ministers. Diplomats confirm that MEPs regularly extract more concessions from the ministers in the final negotiations, the trilogue, than in the past.

Secondly, it is foreseeable that the balance in the EU Parliament will shift to the right. According to the polls, right-wing conservative and far-right parties can expect noticeable gains in votes, while the Greens and Liberals are likely to win fewer seats than five years ago. This triggers – above all – concerns about tolerance, openness and democracy. And it is also fuelling concerns for Germany as a business location, and for Frankfurt as a financial centre, that a weakened Europe might impair competitiveness. Moreover, renationalisation and isolation, in the worst case coupled with exclusion and xenophobia, will deter investors.

Thirdly and finally, Europe will be facing a survey of the political centre in the coming weeks. Where exactly to the right of the centre is the boundary with those political forces, beyond which the traditional parties rule out any cooperation?

The answer to this question depends, partly, on the election results. The results of the ballot will decide how easy or how complicated it will be for conservatives, social democrats, liberals and greens to reach an agreement in future, without being dependent on the approval of Poland's PiS, Hungary's Fidesz or Italy's Fratelli d'Italia. Not to mention the AfD, the French Rassemblement National or the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid.

From today's perspective, there is no reason to fear that a united far-right group will take the helm of the EU Parliament. This is because, on the one hand, all the right-wing parties are far from a majority, even if you add up all their predicted votes. Secondly, it seems unrealistic that the very different parties to the right of the centre, and on the far right, will unite to form a political family. However, the right-of-centre parties are becoming increasingly effective at preventing decisions, especially as political group discipline is not nearly as pronounced in the EU Parliament as it is in national parliaments. In future, four-party coalitions will therefore be increasingly necessary among the traditional parties, in order to obtain a majority after deducting all dissenters.

The leading conservative candidate Ursula von der Leyen has been criticised because she can envisage being elected head of the EU Commission with the active involvement of Italy's Brothers of Italy, the party of Georgia Meloni. Von der Leyen risks losing the potential support of left-of-centre parties because of this. Certainly, even social democrats admit behind closed doors that Meloni has presented himself as more EU-friendly than expected on the European stage so far, particularly on the issues of migration and support for Ukraine. However, the risk of the conservative parties working with Meloni, someone who continues to break taboos of the political centre in other areas, is too great for von der Leyen to take. This is because shifting the political demarcation line to the right ultimately harbours the danger that all the boundaries invoked, for example against the AfD, will lose credibility.