Violence
rocks political foundations of fractured, fearful Europe
Far-right
parties scent opportunity to put populist messages across in election
year
Jon Henley European
affairs correspondent
@jonhenley
Saturday 23 July
2016 20.00 BST
Whatever the motives
of the 18-year-old German-Iranian who shot 10 people dead –
including himself – in Munich on Friday night, Europe’s third
violent attack on civilians in eight days risks further shaking an
already fractured and fearful continent at a time when it least needs
it.
German authorities
said on Saturday it was premature to call the shooting in the
Bavarian state capital a terrorist attack, and have uncovered no
evidence that the teenage gunman, who had been receiving psychiatric
and medical treatment, had links to any Islamist group.
Nor, police said,
was there any apparent connection to last Monday’s train attack
near Würzburg, in which a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker injured
five people with an axe and a knife in an incident that the German
interior ministry said was inspired by Islamic State.
But barely a week
after Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, drove a truck through the
Bastille Day crowds in Nice, killing 84 people in an attack claimed
by the jihadist group, the French president François Hollande was
quick to speak of a “terror attack” that “aims to foment fear
in Germany after other European countries”.
And no matter what
actually drove each assailant, Europe’s fast-growing populist,
anti-immigrant and law-and-order parties – already riding high on
anxieties fuelled by prolonged economic stagnation, a massive influx
of refugees and migrants, and atrocities in Paris and Brussels that
claimed 180 lives – plainly see electoral potential.
Marine Le Pen, the
leader of France’s far-right Front National, reacted to the
slaughter in Nice by accusing Hollande’s Socialist government of
doing “nothing, nothing at all” to protect the country’s
citizens, demanding it “declare war” on extremists and ensure the
“total eradication” of fundamentalism.
Hours after the
shooting in Munich, Christian Lüth, a spokesman for Germany’s
populist, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland party, said in
a tweet which he subsequently deleted: “Vote AfD! Shots fired at
the Olympia shopping centre: people dead in Munich. Police say there
is an acute terrorism situation.”
A poll last week
suggested Britain’s Brexit vote has boosted support for the
European Union in leading member states, at least in the short term.
But the uncertainty the referendum result has unleashed over the
bloc’s future shape and direction has compounded a sense of
long-held certainties fast evaporating.
Europe is turning
increasingly inward. A survey last month by the Pew research centre
in Washington DC found an average 56% of respondents – and a
majority in seven of the 10 member states polled, which included
Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK –
felt countries should “deal with their own problems” before
helping others.
Another poll this
month found half or more of respondents in eight of the 10 countries
felt refugees “increased the risk of terrorism”; in five, a clear
majority believed refugees would “take away jobs and social
benefits”. At least 25% in every country polled said they had a
negative opinion of Muslims.
With key referendums
and elections due in the next 12 months in Austria, the Netherlands,
Germany and France, the distrust, disillusion and even full-scale
rejection of the political establishment already evident across much
of Europe – and that risks being further deepened by each act of
violence – could rock the continent’s political foundations.
Almost everywhere,
Europe’s traditional mainstream parties are in retreat, with
centre-left social democrats and centre-right Christian democrats who
have dominated national politics for 60-odd years struggling to
command a fraction of the support they would have considered
automatic even five years ago as voters increasingly doubt their
capacity to address their problems.
In early October,
Austria holds fresh presidential elections after the country’s
highest court earlier this month overturned the veteran Green
Alexander Van der Bellen’s knife-edge May victory – by just
31,000 votes – over Norbert Hofer of the far-right,
anti-immigration Freedom party. In the first round, candidates from
the main centre-right and centre-left parties barely reached 10%
each.
The same month,
Italy’s centrist prime minister Matteo Renzi risks his political
future in a referendum on governance and constitutional reforms that,
given recent mayoral triumphs by the Eurosceptic Five Star Movement
and Renzi’s own plummeting popularity – down from 74% in June
2014 to about 40% – he is by no means sure to win.
October also sees a
referendum in Hungary on a call by the hardline prime minister,
Viktor Orban, to reject the mandatory refugee quotas demanded by
Brussels as part of the EU’s desperate attempts to handle the
migration crisis, while in March Geert Wilders’s anti-EU,
anti-Islam, anti-immigrant Party for Freedom (PVV) looks on course to
emerge as the largest political party in the Netherlands.
In France Le Pen,
who – like Wilders – is also holding out the prospect of an EU
membership referendum, is forecast to defeat a mainstream candidate
and advance to the second round of presidential elections in May.
Even in Germany,
Alternative für Deutschland – whose rhetoric has found a ready
audience since the country opened its borders to 1.1m refugees last
year, and which argues Islam is not compatible with the constitution
– could, at its current 14-15% in the polls, end the two-party
political stability that has lasted since the end of the second world
war. Federal elections are due before October.
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