Far-right
sees its chance as Europe stumbles
Brexit
will be followed by ‘Frexit’ and ‘Nexit,’ says European
Parliament’s new far-right group.
By ALBERTO MUCCI
1/29/16, 6:24 PM CET
MILAN — Europe’s
far-right sees the collapse of the passport-free Schengen area and
the Brexit debate as a golden opportunity for Euroskeptic,
anti-immigrant parties to turn their growing popularity into real
political power.
Holding its first
conference on Thursday and Friday in Milan, a new political group in
the European Parliament known as Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF)
sent a message to “Brussels’ politically correct élite” that
the far-right is here to stay.
“Finally Schengen
is dead and the European Union is breaking apart,” said Marine Le
Pen, whose National Front has support levels of about 29 percent in
France, despite losing the second round of elections last December.
“Frexit,” she said, was now a distinct possibility.
The ENF, founded in
July 2015, is a coalition of 38 MEPs from eight countries, including
some where support for the far-right has surged. As well as the
National Front, it includes Geert Wilders’ Dutch Freedom Party,
Italy’s Northern League, the Freedom Party of Austria and Belgium’s
Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest). There are also British, Romanian
and Polish members.
Recent election
results and opinion polls tend to bear out the ENF’s claims.
The Northern League,
led by Matteo Salvini who organized the two-day meeting in Milan, is
on an upward trajectory with 16-17 percent support in polls. In
Austria, Heinz-Christian Strache’s FPÖ won 31 percent of the vote
in a city election last October in Vienna, putting it in second place
in a historic stronghold of the Social Democrats.
The ENF, according
to Wilders, wants to “save Europe from itself.”
Predicting that he
could be the next prime minister of the Netherlands — and lead it
out of the EU in a “Nexit” — Wilders said the people of Europe
were “tired of governments that don’t listen to them and of
Brussels imposing decisions that are not put under scrutiny.”
Speakers repeatedly
referred to the New Year’s Eve wave of sexual assaults on women in
Cologne as evidence of the failure of EU migration policies —
especially the open-door stance of Chancellor Angela Merkel, which
was blamed for the “Islamization” of Europe. Equally, the media
was guilty of downplaying events because of its obsession with
political correctness, said Le Pen.
ENF leaders denied
there was any racism or discrimination in their anti-immigrant
stance. “Women and children escaping from bombs and war are
welcome, the others are not,” said Salvini. “There’s simply not
enough space or resources.”
He pointed to a
decision by Sweden’s center-left government to send home 80,000
asylum seekers on charter flights as proof that politicians across
the political spectrum agreed that the wave of migration had to be
halted.
The ENF leaders
rejected any suggestion that their positions were too hardline for a
majority of the European electorate and that this would ultimately
keep them out of government.
“The
call us the extreme-right. But I say we’re doing the job the unions
and the Left should be doing” — Matteo Salvini
“Absolutely not,”
said Le Pen. “We’ve been gaining ground election after election
over the last year. We started from 4 percent and today we are the
first party in France.”
The far-right
leaders were critical of what they portrayed as the cosy relationship
between EU leaders and the speculative end of the financial industry,
and they accused Brussels of failing to protect families and small
business. Multinationals were shipping in immigrants as cheap labor,
said Salvini.
Echoing Le Pen’s
attempts to capture disenchanted left-wing voters in France, he
portrayed the new coalition as champions of the working class: “The
call us the extreme-right. But I say we’re doing the job the unions
and the Left should be doing.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário