The Far Right Wants to Take Over Europe, and She’s Leading the Way

 

OPINION

GUEST ESSAY

The Far Right Wants to Take Over Europe, and She’s Leading the Way

April 22, 2024, 1:00 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/opinion/meloni-europe-elections.html

By David Broder

 

Mr. Broder is the author of “Mussolini’s Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy.” He wrote from Rome.

 

“There’s just one question on voting day. Do you want an Islamized Europe or a European Europe?”

 

This stark choice was posed by Marion Maréchal, a rising star of the French far right, at the launch of her party’s campaign for the European elections in June. In an incendiary speech, she spoke of a Europe under siege from “many foreign powers and Islamist organizations profiting from anarchic immigration in their efforts at destabilization, subverting our youth, organizing something like a Fifth Column in our countries and recruiting deadly jihadist soldiers.” She was joined by a stream of speakers bewailing a European project hijacked by L.G.B.T.Q. activists, environmental fanatics and anti-Western ideologues.

 

Yet for all the apocalyptic anger, this wasn’t a call to quit the European Union. While Ms. Maréchal’s Reconquest party sulfurously accuses elites of orchestrating a Great Replacement of Christians by Muslims, it seeks its own place in the corridors of power. Across the continent, the aim of far-right parties like hers is not to exit the bloc but, increasingly, to take it over. In this project, they have a model: Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy.

 

Ms. Meloni is already an inspiration to the European far right. As the head of the right-wing coalition in Italy, she has overseen attacks on L.G.B.T.Q. groups and migrant-rescue organizations, a takeover of the public broadcaster and a continuing attempt to change the Constitution to expand executive power. But it’s on the continent where she has really distinguished herself. Combining staunch Atlanticism — commitment to NATO and Ukrainian defense alike — with relentless opposition to immigration and climate policy, she has become a major force in Europe. For the European far right, poised for an advance, Ms. Meloni is leading the way.

 

Since coming to power in October 2022, Ms. Meloni has impressed many with her pragmatic approach and abandonment of her previous criticism of the European Union. In Brussels, she has developed a reputation for skillful diplomacy. She was christened an “Orban whisperer,” for example, after helping talk the prime minister of Hungary out of vetoing further E.U. aid to Ukraine this year. Viktor Orban’s change of mind didn’t come without a cost — the European Commission also released 10.2 billion euros, or $10.8 billion, of previously withheld funds for his government — but Ms. Meloni was still crucial to winning him around.

 

Such diplomatic success has led some to suggest that Ms. Meloni is not falling in line but actually setting the agenda. In a report widely seen in Italy, Fareed Zakaria on CNN hailed “Meloni’s moment” in Europe, comparing her position with the leading role previously played by Angela Merkel, Germany’s former chancellor. On economic policy, the claim is overblown; Italy’s economy, though growing, isn’t staking out new territory. But the comparison is not without merit. In several areas, Rome is giving Brussels direction.

 

For one, Ms. Meloni has been at the forefront of plans to further outsource the bloc’s border policing to autocratic North African countries. In July last year, she was in Tunisia to announce a deal to curb migration across the Mediterranean; last month, she did the same in Egypt. Both times she was flanked by Europe’s top official and president of the commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who in January gave her blessing to Ms. Meloni’s broader vision for E.U.-Africa relations. Even as the bloc agrees on new rules for processing migrants once they reach the continent, Italy is working to ensure they never arrive in the first place.

 

Ms. Meloni has also been a thorn in the side of the bloc’s green transition. Deriding the European Green Deal, a suite of environmental legislation, as “climate fundamentalism,” she has consistently attempted to slow or stop green policies. Often, Italy has been alone or little supported in these efforts. But in February, Ms. Meloni was central to a vote opposing the bloc’s centerpiece nature restoration law, which seeks to repair damaged ecosystems across the continent.

 

Tellingly, Ms. Meloni was joined in that vote by the center-right European People’s Party, the largest group of parties in Brussels that includes the German Christian Democrats. The group, which had already sought to scale back the bloc’s climate commitments, called the proposal an attack on farmers, who have recently held protests across Europe. Helped by some dissident center-right parliamentarians voting in favor, the legislation passed. But center-right leaders’ hopes to derail a ban on new combustion-engine cars point to further collaboration to come.

 

Polls ahead of June’s elections suggest that center-to-far-right forces are on course to win around 50 percent of seats in Parliament. For many on the hard right, this offers a chance to end the grand coalition of Socialists and Christian Democrats that has historically dominated European politics — and instead create a right-wing alliance that would hold the top jobs. In practice, such cooperation is difficult: Center-right leaders say that they will ally only with pro-E.U., pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine and pro-rule-of-law parties. That rules out a decent portion of Europe’s far-right parties, at least for now. It does, however, allow for a full embrace of Ms. Meloni.

 

More radical forces, following Ms. Meloni’s example, are recalibrating. In Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, top figures are walking back their previous NATO-critical stances and distancing themselves from the more intransigent Alternative for Germany. Mr. Orban, long a black sheep in European affairs, is also looking to break out of isolation before Hungary takes over the bloc’s presidency in July. He claims he will join the European Conservatives and Reformists, the group led by Ms. Meloni, after June’s election — a reportedly welcome prospect for the group, even if Mr. Orban’s softness on Russia could be a stumbling block.

 

Ms. Meloni’s group, dominated by her Brothers of Italy party and Poland’s Law and Justice, isn’t the only European home for far-right forces. There’s also the Identity and Democracy group, which houses France’s National Rally and Italy’s League party. Relations between the two groups aren’t always harmonious. In March, Ms. Le Pen sharply accused Ms. Meloni of planning to re-elect Ms. von der Leyen as head of the commission. Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, insists that right-wingers should refuse to work with centrists.

 

Even so, polls suggest that the two groups will together win around a quarter of seats, leaving the far right with much more sway no matter who takes the top job. Far from seeking to break up the European Union, these far-right groups are now bidding to put their own stamp on it — to create what Ms. Maréchal calls a “civilizational Europe” rather than the technocratic “commission’s version of Europe.” Ms. Meloni, for her part, seems convinced the two can go together.

 

David Broder (@broderly) is the author of “Mussolini’s Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy” and “First They Took Rome: How the Populist Right Conquered Italy.