Analysis
The EU is braced for a rise in the hard right.
What matters is how the centre responds
Jon Henley
Europe
correspondent
27-member bloc will have to adjust to new reality as
rightwing groups expected to have real influence for first time
Thu 6 Jun
2024 06.00 CEST
When the
results of the European parliamentary elections start to emerge on Sunday
night, polls suggest they will show that the world’s only directly elected
transnational assembly will have tilted, unambiguously, to the right.
Yet, for
all the talk of a significant surge in support for the forces of Europe’s hard
right, their gains should prove broadly in line with a steady progression over
the past couple of decades or more. The difference will be in the response.
“The real
storyline is not the continuing advance of the hard-right parties,” said
Alberto Alemanno, a professor of EU law at HEC Paris and the College of Europe.
“It’s the extent to which the centre right is prepared to normalise some of
them.”
Across
Europe, national-conservative and far-right parties are now in government in
half a dozen of the EU’s 27 member states: Croatia, the Czech Republic,
Finland, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia.
In Sweden,
a hard-right party is propping up another rightwing coalition in exchange for
policy concessions on immigration and law and order. In the Netherlands, Geert
Wilders’ far-right Freedom party has sealed a deal to form the next government.
Austria’s
autumn elections seem certain to yield a coalition led by the far-right FPÖ. In
France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) is streets ahead in the polls,
while Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is second in Germany, above all three
ruling parties.
Setbacks
for far-right and national-conservative parties in elections in Spain and
Poland last year show that the progression is not necessarily all one way. But
the prevailing trend seems clear.
The fraying cordon sanitaire
At the EU
level, a “grand mainstream coalition” of centre-right, centre-left and liberal
parties has always held an absolute majority of seats in the parliament,
maintaining – more or less – a cordon sanitaire around the hard right.
Polls
suggest that this time around the centre will hang on to its majority, albeit
in reduced form. Together, hard-right parties should return a fifth or more of
the assembly’s 720 MEPs – far from enough, in theory, to impose their will.
But
analysts and observers agree that for the first time Europe’s
national-conservative and far-right parties will be able to exert real
influence on the EU’s policy agenda: that cordon sanitaire is fraying fast.
“The
dynamics are going to be very different,” said one senior EU diplomat. “Parts
of the hard right are clearly aiming to maximise their influence by
collaborating, rather than fighting. And clearly, parts of the mainstream are
very open to that.”
That could
have a significant impact on the EU’s policy agenda, particularly in areas
where hard-right positions have most traction: immigration, climate action,
enlargement, institutional reform, cultural identity and possibly rule of law.
The
situation would be more alarming if the hard right were not splintered into
multiple clans, agreeing on some issues but starkly divided on others, some
anchored in rival parliamentary groups but others politically homeless.
Most of
Europe’s hard-right parties want to reduce EU authority, slash immigration and
delay the green deal. Beyond that, though, they are at loggerheads: some are
EU-critical but mostly constructive; others are fundamentally anti-EU and very
obstructive.
Some,
mainly in the national-conservative European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR)
group, which is led by Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, are staunchly
pro-Kyiv; others, in Le Pen’s Identity and Democracy (ID) group, are
Moscow-friendly.
Yet more,
including AfD – ejected from ID for being too extreme – and Viktor Orbán’s
Fidesz, do not belong to either. Some kind of reconfiguration, perhaps
involving Fidesz joining ECR and a new group being formed around AfD to the
right of ID, looks inevitable.
A far-right
“supergroup” uniting all or even many of the factions, as suggested to Meloni
by Le Pen and hailed by Orbán, seems a non-starter. “They are inherently
incompatible, and too nationalist to cooperate across borders,” said Alemanno.
Moreover,
said Dr Nicolai von Ondarza, the head of EU research at the German Institute
for International Affairs (SWP), “for Meloni, a merged supergroup would just
retoxify her brand. It’s much more interesting for her to work with the centre
right.”
However,
formal cooperation between the various hard-right factions may not be necessary
for some of their core positions to be reflected in the EU’s top jobs and, down
the line, the bloc’s political choices on a range of crucial dossiers.
The
favourite for commission president, for example, is Ursula von der Leyen, who
needs a simple parliamentary majority for a second term but may well not get it
because up to 15% of “grand coalition” MEPs are thought to be unlikely to vote
for her.
Scrabbling
for votes, von der Leyen has been courting Meloni – who contrary to all
expectations has proved, superficially at least, a committed European.
Von der
Leyen’s logic seems clear. Her centre-right European People’s party (EPP),
expected to again finish first in the parliamentary elections, has said it is
willing to work with any party as long as it is “pro-EU, pro-Ukraine, and
pro-rule of law”.
That rules
out most of ID. But luring Meloni, and possibly some other ECR members, into
the fold would serve many purposes: splinter the hard right yet further, bring
her the extra votes she may need – and, critically, align with multiple EPP
policy objectives.
‘A turning point?’
From
Helsinki to The Hague, centre-right parties – mostly EPP members – have been
more than willing to cooperate with populist hard-right parties at the national
level, trading support for tougher policies on migration and justice and looser
ones on climate action.
That
process, analysts suggest, is now well under way in Brussels. Not formally: the
centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the liberals of Renew and the
Greens have all said they will torpedo von der Leyen if she cuts a deal with
the hard right.
But Dr
Stephanie Luke, a researcher at the University of Sheffield, said that given
the hard right’s projected gains and “the growing areas of policy overlap
between the EPP and ECR/ID, it seems likely … that rightwing ‘issue-based
alliances’ will be more common”.
To the surprise of many in and outside of the EU
Giorgia Meloni, the rightwing prime minister of Italy, has been a committed
European
In effect,
a rightwing majority – combining parts of the EPP, ECR and ID – has already
seen the light of day, with all three groups working together against, for
example, the EU’s planned nature restoration law, now on the verge of collapse.
The EPP
would have to be careful, von Ondarza said. “If it sides with the hard right
too often, it could lose all support from the centre,” he said. “But at the
same time it will be under heavy pressure to push through what it may see as
‘true right’ policies.”
Frustrated
by years of compromise with the centre left, liberals and Greens, many EPP
members could jump at the increased chance to benefit from hard-right votes to
delay, for example, the EU’s planned 2035 ban on new fossil fuel cars.
This new
rightwing balance of power would only apply in parliament, not the commission,
Alemanno noted. “So the hard right will only be able to delay or slow
initiatives, not make new policy proposals, which is the commission’s job,” he
said.
But, he
added, that “could very well prompt the commission to say: look, given this
parliament, there’s no point even proposing”. The impact on EU policy would be
incremental but real.
Ignoring
the hard right, said the EU diplomat, would become a whole lot harder after
these elections: “It does feel like, maybe, a kind of turning point.”
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