Brexeunt
stage left: the Europeans hoping that Britain votes Brexit
While
EU state leaders are firmly in the remain camp, some Eurosceptic
parties would be only too happy to see Britain go
Jon Henley,
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris, Kate Connolly in Berlin, Alex Duval
Smith in Warsaw, Daniel Nolan in Budapest, Jennifer Rankin in
Brussels, Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome and David Crouch in
Gothenberg
Wednesday 18 May
2016 11.09 BST
France
The Front National
leader, Marine Le Pen, who polls suggest could defeat a mainstream
candidate to reach the second-round run-off of France’s 2017
presidential elections, has seized on the UK’s EU referendum to
boost her own critical stance on Brussels.
Her anti-immigration
and anti-euro party has said it would seek to renegotiate the terms
of France’s EU membership if it took power, and would also hold a
referendum on the EU.
Le Pen has hailed
the UK’s referendum and suggested she may cross the Channel to
campaign for Brexit (Vote Leave said it would “not be welcoming
her” if she did). A vote to leave would “prove it’s possible to
live outside the EU. You’re either free or you aren’t,” Le
Figaro quoted her as saying.
Describing the UK
referendum as “a key moment in European history”, Le Pen has also
said every European country should also be able to decide whether or
not to stay in the EU: “I want each people to be able to have their
say on the subject … I hope the French will also have a similar
exercise.
“There has to be
another model of cooperation between peoples; their history,
sovereignty and freedom has to be respected.” She has also said
David Cameron’s renegotiation deal with Brussels earlier this year
marked “the beginning of the end of the EU”. Angelique Chrisafis
Germany and Austria
Like many populist
parties in Europe, Alternative für Deutschland, currently polling at
14% and the third biggest political force in Germany, is highly
critical of Brussels – but accepts the EU is necessary, not least
because of Germany’s Nazi past.
So while the AfD
would not campaign for Gerxit (a German exit) or welcome Brexit, it
will certainly push for widespread reform of the institutions – and
views Britain and the Brexit debate as a motor for that.
In the words of the
party leader, Frauke Petry: “A British exit from the EU would be
fatal because the British are often the voice of reason ... and bring
with them a healthy corrective to the madness of the expansion
project. If Britain left, we’d also lose a net contributor to the
budget [and Germany] would have to shoulder the financial loss to the
EU.”
Across the border,
Austria’s Freedom party, which recently swept the first round of
the presidential election with 36.4% of the vote, has been
campaigning against further European integration since 2005.
The party’s EU
delegation leader, Harald Vlimsky, reacted positively to David
Cameron’s renegotiation with Brussels, and to an Austrian petition
calling for the country’s exit in 2015, suggesting Austria should
follow suit.
At the very least,
Vlimsky said, the country should start a renegotiation over the
country’s relationship with the EU. If this led nowhere, Vlimsky
said the idea of an ‘Öxit’ – an Austrian exit – would be on
the cards. Kate Connolly
Visegrád countries
Nationalist
governments in central and eastern Europe have seized on Britain’s
referendum as a precedent-setting opportunity to change their own
relationship with Brussels.
But much of the
EU-related tough-talk of the Visegrád group – 64 million people in
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic – is posturing for
domestic consumption.
Appearing to stand
up to Brussels spices up nationalist rhetoric in countries with
living memories of superpower domination. In reality, the young EU
members of the east are too wedded to the EU’s benefits –
development funds and the free movement of labour – to dream of
their own exit.
The Visegrád
governments look to the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, for
their rhetoric on Brussels. But for him, as for Poland, an EU without
Britain would mark the loss of their most influential ally in
Brussels and Strasbourg in Cameron.
“Orbán has been
testing the limits of the EU’s freedoms for years,” said Edit
Zgut, a foreign policy analyst at the Budapest-based thinktank
Political Capital. “But all of Hungary’s exports are EU-internal,
and 97% of developments completed in Hungary have been achieved with
EU co-financing.”
Bulgaria and Romania
badly want EU investment and would prefer Britain to remain in the
EU. Were it to leave, Sofia and Bucharest would vote for Britain to
be required to make a full financial contribution to the EU budget.
Alex Duval Smith and Dan Nolan
Belgium and the
Netherlands
As a small country
that is home to the EU institutions, Belgium is one of the staunchest
supporters of European integration. But one party is hoping for
Brexit – the far-right Flemish separatist party, Vlaams Belang.
“Brexit would show
other countries that life outside of the EU is perfectly possible,”
Tom Van Grieken, Vlaams Belang’s president, told the Guardian. “It
would encourage other countries to take the same step.”
Van Grieken, whose
party has almost doubled its vote to 12% since he took over in 2014,
says he admires Ukip’s Nigel Farage but feels he is “isolating
himself” by not joining forces with Vlaams Belang, the Dutch
Freedom party and France’s Front National.
The Freedom party
leader, Geert Wilders, also an admirer of Farage, hopes Britain will
vote to leave the EU. “A Brexit would make it easier for other
countries to make the same decision,” he said in January.
Wilders’ party
achieved its best-ever results in January in a poll giving it 42
seats out of a possible 150 in parliament, more than the main Labour
and centre-right Liberal parties combined.
Other, smaller Dutch
parties, including the Socialists and Voor Nederland, were prominent
in the victorious no campaign in the Dutch referendum on Ukraine.
They are likely to “make statements praising the benefits of Brexit
for the Dutch debate”, says Rem Korteweg at the Centre for European
Reform. Jennifer Rankin
Scandinavia
The clearest voices
in support of Britain leaving the EU are small parties on the left.
They reject nationalist and xenophobic arguments but accuse Brussels
of putting the interests of banks and corporations first on issues
such as health, welfare, human rights and the environment.
In Denmark, the Red
Green Alliance, which has 14 seats in parliament, has opposed Danish
membership of the EU for 25 years. The party says it “favours
international cooperation, but is against the current EU form of
cooperation, which is solely controlled by the goal of economic
growth”.
In Sweden, Jonas
Sjöstedt, leader of the Left party, which has 21 seats, welcomes a
Brexit because it “would start a debate on continued EU membership
in Sweden and other EU countries”. The euro has contributed to “a
profound social and economic crisis” in Greece, Spain, Portugal and
Ireland, the party says.
On the right wing of
Scandinavian politics, Eurosceptic voices are more powerful – but
also more ambiguous.
Kristian Thulesen
Dahl, leader of the Danish People’s party, which props up a
minority Liberal government, has said Britain staying in Europe would
strengthen Denmark’s case to renegotiate its own EU relationship.
But he also caused uproar by saying an “out” vote would give
Britain a better deal.
The Sweden
Democrats, whose 49 seats give it the balance of power in Stockholm,
are formally in favour of remaining in the EU. But the EU today “is
not the one that Swedes voted for in 1994”, the party says. Its
policy is to “limit the EU’s influence” and keep Sweden outside
the euro.
The party’s
leader, Jimmie Åkesson, recently said he could see “nothing
positive” in the EU and “nothing negative” in leaving it. “I
really hope we get the opportunity to hold a referendum on EU
membership in Sweden eventually,” he added.
Italy
Italy’s love for
the EU is not as strong as it once was, with a recent poll by Ipsos
Mori showing almost half of Italians would vote to leave the EU if
they were given the chance.
Two political
parties have given voice to that frustration: the Five Star Movement
(M5S), a populist anti-establishment party whose founder, Beppe
Grillo, has said he admires Farage, and the rightwing Northern
League.
A closer look at the
leftwing case for Brexit
Letters: A truly
leftwing agenda would be one based on cross-national cooperation and
solidarity
Read more
Politicians from
both parties have suggested British voters would probably vote to
leave the union, but that idea seems only to inflame their
frustrations: even Eurosceptics tread carefully here in calling for
an in/out referendum, perhaps realising the idea is too radical for
most Italian voters.
M5S, supported by
about 28% of Italians (barely 5% behind the ruling Democrats), has,
however, called for a referendum to leave the eurozone. On his
popular blog, Grillo has said the UK referendum will have vast
consequences for the EU, even if the UK votes to remain.
If the UK votes for
Brexit, it would confirm Grillo’s view that the European experiment
has failed, and his belief that Italy and other EU countries that
adopted the euro – including Greece - have essentially been taken
hostage and will end up being “strangled in the euro’s grip”.
Stephanie Kirschgaessner
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