This time, the far-right threat is real
The next European Parliament looks more pro-Russian
and less green than the current one. Could a far-right EU really happen?
FEBRUARY 6,
2024 4:00 AM CET
BY EDDY WAX
https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-braces-for-far-right-wave-as-eu-election-looms/
BRUSSELS —
Every five years, like clockwork, mainstream politicians freak out about the
rise of radicals and populists ahead of the European election.
But then,
the danger suddenly seems to dissipate as the traditional center-left and
center-right forces that built the European Union forge coalitions that hold
more radical parties at bay.
Don’t bank on it this time.
In 2024,
the right-wing surge in the polls seems bigger and bolder, with one predicting
the nationalist right and far right could pick up nearly a quarter of seats in
the European Parliament in June.
Even if the
center right — currently tipped to come first in the election — refuses to form
a governing coalition with ever more powerful firebrand fringe parties, there’s
still a significant chance the far right will, for the first time, be able to
influence Europe’s policy agenda. That will enable it to threaten the EU’s
sacred values on rule of law and human rights, and block or even overturn major
green and climate laws.
“We’re
going to see a really significant shift to the right,” said Simon Hix, a
professor of comparative politics at the European University Institute,
referring to the June elections when 400 million people across the European
Union are eligible to vote to send 720 representatives to Brussels.
Hix
forecast the far-right Identity & Democracy (ID) grouping in the European
Parliament, the sixth largest of seven, will gain 40 seats in June, meaning the
group could have 98 lawmakers, vaulting into the third place currently occupied
by the Liberals. It’s already home to the German extreme-right Alternative for
Germany (AfD) and the French far-right National Rally (RN) party.
Then, if
the current fifth largest grouping, the 67-member right-wing European
Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group — the home of Poland’s Law and Justice
(PiS) and Italy’s ruling Brothers of Italy — also grows by some 18 seats, as
Hix predicts, it could become the fourth largest group in Parliament,
surpassing both the Greens and the liberals.
Between
those projections and the 12 members of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s
Fidesz party, who are politically homeless, the ECR and ID could muster 25
percent of seats in the next European Parliament, according to a poll
commissioned by the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Hungary’s
Fidesz MEPs will join Meloni’s right-wing ECR group after the election Orbán
said on Thursday, according to Italian media. The move would swell the ranks of
the ECR and it’s something the Polish nationalists, who have dominated the
group since the British conservatives left, are also open to. “If there is an
application after the elections, we’ll be happy to negotiate and see,” said ECR
group spokesperson Michael Strauss.
Speaking of
ECR and ID, Hungary’s Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyás
said this week: “I see a realistic chance for these two factions to become the
strongest faction in the European Parliament together.”
This could
affect the policy coming out of the EU’s decision-making institutions for the
next five years.
A senior
official of the largest group in Parliament, the center-right European People’s
Party, said: “Even if you have the current majority at the next Parliament I
think the dynamics are dramatically altered with respect to all the
parliamentary work that needs to be done, but also with the top jobs.” The
official, like some of those quoted in this piece, was granted anonymity to
speak candidly.
For
example, a rise in right wing representation could make the Parliamentary
approval process for people like center-right leaning European Commission
President Ursula von der Leyen, who runs the bloc’s executive arm and is
rumored to be seeking another term, a difficult one.
In
December, POLITICO reported that in nearly a dozen European countries,
including France and Germany, hardline anti-immigration parties, some of them
more extreme than the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, are currently topping the
polls, or in a close second place.
Over
decades, voters have abandoned mainstream parties across Europe as they
grappled to contain multiple cost of living crises, a major financial crash,
millions of refugees crossing its eastern and southern borders, terror attacks
in major capitals and drastic energy spikes amid a stagnating war. And still,
they were able to ward off the threat each election.
Hans
Kundnani, author of a book called Eurowhiteness, who has written about the
possibility of a far-right EU, said: “The far right can win without winning if
what happens is the center-right takes on all of their rhetoric and their
policies, especially on these questions about their policies, about identity,
and immigration and Islam.”
Even if
under current projections, such as the one conducted by Hix, the three centrist
groups would still hold a majority — albeit 30 seats smaller — that doesn’t
mean the far-right influence won’t increase. And there are still four months
until the election.
All eyes on the center-right
Far-right
figures in Brussels are licking their lips at the prospect of wielding more
power on topics such as immigration to climate laws, when it comes to forming
the changeable coalitions that coalesce vote-by-vote in the EU’s legislature.
The
European Parliament always has blocked members of the far-right from holding
any influential positions in the Parliament, such as chairing committees,
involvement in negotiations or sitting in the bureau of top MEPs which deals
with the institution’s internal affairs and its €2 billion annual budget.
Key players
are explicitly plotting to divide the main groups by dragging the center-right
away from the Socialists and Liberals.
ID group
leader Marco Zanni, an Italian politician from League, said it’s a tactic that
has already worked in recent months.
“What has
been done on immigration, what has been done on some files on the Green Deal is
the result of this pressure that we put on the center-right to shift the
position and to make this contract with the left less concrete and less
institutional,” he said.
EPP chief
Manfred Weber told POLITICO the group has drawn a red line against what he
calls the anti-European radical right. “My three principles that I have defined
as party leader are: All partners of ours must be pro-Europe, be pro-Ukraine be
pro-rule of law,” he said.
But the EPP
has faced attacks for months from Socialists, Liberals and Greens for flirting
with parties to their right. Frustrated by years of having left-wing groups
make deals without them, some in the EPP could be tempted to work with right
wing parties even without striking official coalition deals.
He rejected
any possibility of working with far right parties, naming in particular
Poland’s Euroskeptic Law and Justice Party (PiS) in the ECR, ID’s Alternative
for Germany (AfD) and the France’s National Rally (RN).
Far-right
lawmakers seem to have a plan to work around the long-standing firewall
blocking them from power and influence.
Maximilian
Krah, a far-right German MEP, is leading the list for AfD, which promises to
swell in size in the next European Parliament.
“I want to
break out of the cordon sanitaire, and I want to use the opportunities of this
Parliament in a constructive way,” he said, referring to the firewall principle
under which democratic parties agree not to cooperate with anti-democratic
forces. “I’m not here to destroy.”
The senior
EPP official said the idea would be to maintain the same cordon sanitaire.
Far-right fallout
A silver
lining for progressives and pro-Europeans is that the far-right can’t seem to
get its act together.
For
example, Germany’s Alternative for Germany Members of European Parliament have
largely fallen out among themselves. Those on the more old-school part of the
spectrum don’t see eye-to-eye with the new right-wing of the party.
The
Identity and Democracy group — by its very nature, made up of nationalists — is
almost intentionally not a very well-oiled machine, and each national party
gets to decide how it votes.
“The ID
group is the most decentralized group of all,” said Tobias Teuscher, the
groups’ deputy secretary general.
Last week
the far-right National Rally chief Marine Le Pen lashed out at her German
counterparts for being too extreme over plans to deport millions of people that
were discussed at a conference and revealed by journalists. She questioned
whether they could remain in the same group on the EU-level.
A grand
project to merge the ID group with ECR and Orbán’s MEPs — who were pushed out
of the EPP in 2021 — failed during this parliamentary term, which ID group
leader Zanni described as a potential game changer.
Orbán, Meloni … Wilders?
It’s not
only about seats in the European Parliament. The European Council, consisting
of the bloc’s heads of government, steers the political direction of the bloc
and directs the powerful European Commission which proposes new laws. Around
the European Council table there’s already Italy’s far-right Prime Minister
Giorgia Meloni, Hungary’s strongman Orbán and his populist Slovak ally Robert
Fico; Geert Wilders is negotiating a coalition in the Netherlands after his
electoral victory there last year.
“In the
future we want to have ID party representatives in the Council,” said Zanni.
One EU
diplomat said this trend is “something that is going to stay and that can have
far reaching consequences, maybe not so much now, it takes time […] more [in]
the long run.”
“This time
it won’t be easy to dismiss the gains of the far right, the impression is that
a new moment is about to start,” the EU diplomat added.
Jakob Hanke
Vela and Jacopo Barigazzi contributed reporting.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário