OPINION
Pro-Europeans also culpable for new far-right
alliance
The queasy prospect of Marine Le Pen addressing the
chamber of the European Parliament from the front row risks becoming a reality
(Photo: European Parliament)
By SOPHIE
IN 'T VELD MEP
STRASBOURG,
TODAY, 07:03
Two years
on from the European Parliament elections, in which the populist rightwing
failed to deliver the earthquake some predicted, the parliament will likely
soon become the home of a new Frankenstein far-right alliance of illiberal
populists.
A
"super group" as first envisaged by Steve Bannon, and a dream now
pursued by Viktor Orbán, seems unlikely.
Even for
some on the far-right, Orban and Marine Le Pen are too toxic, especially for
those hoping to form national governing coalitions. But the consequences of a
new pan-European alliance of 'illiberals', including a parliamentary wing, will
still be profound.
The likely
new group will have access to significant financial resources.
It will be
increasingly difficult for pro-European parliamentarians to construct a
so-called 'cordon sanitaire' around them. The queasy prospect of Le Pen
addressing the chamber of the European Parliament from the front row risks
becoming a reality.
How can
this have happened?
The bitter
truth is that we, pro-Europeans, have no one to blame but ourselves. As we
approach the mid-term of the mandate of the European Parliament and the Ursula
von der Leyen era, the populist declaration is a violent wake-up call.
The
predicted populist wave was stemmed in 2019, but - with the exception of the
pandemic recovery fund - the European project has stumbled and guess what: the
citizens have noticed.
In the wake
of the elections, the 'Spitzenkandidat' [lead candidate] process was neutered.
There has been little or no progress towards fixing it, neither on the
transnational lists needed to democratise the Union.
The
Conference on the Future of Europe faced a complicated birth and struggles to
capture the imagination of the public. The Council and the Commission treat it
as a threat.
Uninspiring
candidates
The
European Parliament, stripped of its soul by the pandemic, has gone into
reverse gear, becoming a humble servant of the von der Leyen Commission,
instead of a fiery and independent parliamentary watchdog. The candidates in
the mix for the mid-term change of the presidency of the parliament inspire
little confidence of a much-needed reboot.
The EU's
response to the pandemic was well-intentioned, but poorly-executed. There is
little self-reflection. Despite the clear need for a new and genuinely European
approach to migration and asylum, the cynically renamed 'Team Europe',
struggles to even debate the issue.
Stop-gap
European policies based on the lowest common denominator, like outsourcing our
migration policy to third countries of dubious character, fail to address
underlying issues and end up pleasing no one.
The
subsequent risk is that even pro-Europeans find it difficult to defend the
status quo.
The
commission's failure to act to defend the rule of law means pro-Europeans can
no longer say with conviction that the EU is a space of freedom. The fact that
the commission will not even apply conditionality laws to tackle corruption is
astounding.
As we have
seen in Poland and Hungary, democracies take a long time to build, but can be
broken in the blink of an eye.
These
failures have given space and fuel to the far-right. The populist's declaration
is contradictory and camouflages the real intention of its signatories, who aim
for a world of unfreedom, inequality, oppression and violence, far from the
'Christian' values they espouse.
But
pro-Europeans cannot sit on the side-lines and allow only the far-right to make
Europe political. We have to beat them in the political arena. The only answer
to their values agenda can be our own values agenda.
This
declaration must spawn an alliance of pro-Europeans with a coherent
counter-vision to the dystopia of Viktor Orban and friends, based on a
powerful, passionate political defence of our common European values:
democracy, the rule of law, fundamental rights. Equality, diversity, freedom.
The polarised political landscape we now have creates a duty to rebuild a
strong political centre.
No more
sitting on hands - those who care for the EU also need to start tackling the
root causes of our project's hibernation. The colourful wave of rainbow flags
that engulfed the entire European Union, including the football stadiums, was a
strong manifestation of European public opinion and it is far from the values
of Le Pen or Orban.
Complacency
and inaction by pro-Europeans helped to breath life into this Frankenstein
alliance, but the antidote to it is also in our hands. The best response to
this far-right alliance?
To fight
for a new era of fundamental rights and European integration.
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