Europe swings right — and reshapes the EU
Italy, Finland, Greece have recently moved right.
Spain could be next. The shift will affect everything from climate policy to
migration.
BY SUZANNE
LYNCH
JUNE 30,
2023 4:01 AM CET
https://www.politico.eu/article/far-right-giorgia-meloni-europe-swings-right-and-reshapes-the-eu/
First, it
was Italy.
Then came
Finland and Greece. Spain could be next.
Across
Europe, governments are shifting right. In some places, far-right leaders are
taking power. In others, more traditional center-right parties are allying with
the right-wing fringes once considered untouchable.
Elsewhere,
hard-right parties are securing more parliament seats and regional offices. The
Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, already under surveillance for suspected
far-right extremism, now outpolls Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and
just scored a watershed district election win — an alarming moment for a
country conscious of its Nazi past.
The trend,
of course, didn’t exactly begin with Italy and far-right Prime Minister Giorgia
Meloni. But the last year has featured a series of eye-catching results for
conservatives. And more could be on the way, as places like Spain and Slovakia
seem poised to turn right in upcoming elections.
It’s a
development that will inevitably reshape Europe, affecting everything from how
climate change is handled, to parental rights, to who is welcomed into the
Continent.
And with
the EU set to elect a new European Parliament next year, the rightward drift
could also produce a more conservative Brussels for years to come — a period
that will feature critical decisions on things like expanding the EU eastward,
trading with China and policing the rule of law in EU countries.
“There has
been a convergence of the center right and the far right over the past decade
or so,” said Hans Kundnani, a European political analyst at the Chatham House,
who traced the broader arc back to the surge of refugees fleeing the Syrian
civil war for Europe.
The shift,
he added, “may have profound consequences for the EU.”
At the same table
Europe’s
shifting political landscape was on display in Brussels this week as EU leaders
gathered for their regular summit.
At the
table was a fresh face — Petteri Orpo, Finland’s new prime minister, who leads
the conservative National Coalition Party.
His
country’s political journey over the last year illustrates the rightward turn
that has taken hold in parts of Europe. After four years of a left-leaning,
five-party coalition government, voters abandoned Social Democrat Sanna Marin,
leading to the establishment of the most right-wing government in Finnish
history.
Greek Prime
Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also arrived riding high on an election win. The
55-year-old center-right leader romped home in national elections on Sunday,
notching a far bigger majority than his first time around.
The
question of who occupies seats at the EU table matters — the European Council,
which gathers the bloc’s 27 leaders, must ultimately decide the EU’s political
priorities and policy initiatives.
“I think we
are already seeing the Meloni effect,” said one senior EU diplomat who spoke
privately to talk freely about the European Council’s inner workings. “On
migration, on climate, there has been a move towards the right, undoubtedly.”
The first
signs that Meloni was being embraced, not isolated, emerged last fall at her
first EU summit.
As leaders
tackled the thorny issue of migration, the Italian leader found she was pushing
an open door, finding tacit support in the room for her desire to have EU
policy focus more on deterring migrants from even coming to Europe, according
to three diplomats briefed on the discussion that day.
A few
months later, centrist Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and center-right
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s top executive, were
accompanying Meloni on a trip to Tunisia to try to curb migratory flows from
the North African country — a show of cross-party unity.
The trip
came only hours after EU countries clinched an Italy-friendly agreement on how
to process and relocate migrants, which would give Meloni’s government greater
leeway to send back rejected asylum seekers.
And in Parliament
The
rightward drift could soon jump to the European Parliament, with ramifications
for how Brussels is run.
In less
than a year, voters will go to the polls to elect a new Parliament, and
conservatives are predicting robust gains. To start, that would embolden the
center-right European People’s Party (EPP) — already the Parliament’s largest
political family.
“The
biggest gains may be for the more traditional, center-right parties,” said
Karel Lannoo, head of the Centre for European Policy Studies, noting the
dominant role played by center-right stalwarts like Germany’s Christian
Democrats, which represent the largest national representation in the EU
Parliament and are likely to retain that position.
But a
strong conservative showing may also turn the farther-right European
Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group — featuring Meloni and Poland’s
nationalist Law and Justice party — into kingmakers, with centrist and
center-right lawmakers courting its votes to push their agenda.
That would
mirror a growing feature of national politics — the willingness of traditional
conservative parties to cozy up to the far right. From Sweden, where a
conservative leader gets support from the far-right Sweden Democrats, to
Finland, where the right-wing populist Finns Party is in power, more extreme
parties are getting a chance to help govern, even if in diluted form.
There are
signs a similar political calculation is under way in the European Parliament,
with the EPP already eyeing beneficial team-ups with the far-right. European
Parliament President Roberta Metsola was the latest EPP leader to pay homage to
Meloni, visiting her at Palazzo Chigi in Rome last week, following similar
outreach by Manfred Weber, who helms the EPP.
And the
groups recently came together to fight a nature restoration law — a key plank
of the EU’s plan to become climate neutral by 2050. For now, the EPP — with ECR
backing — has successfully torpedoed the bill, citing the concerns of farmers
and chastising the European Commission for going too far, too fast on the green
agenda.
The
rebellion is a telling sign of the political havoc Parliament could wreak on a
more left-leaning Commission after the 2024 elections.
More to come
With one
year left until EU citizens hit the polls, the next few months will be
punctuated by key moments that will offer insight into which way the political
wind is blowing.
First up is
Spain, with voters going to the polls next month.
The
country’s main center-right party, the People’s Party (PP), is confident it
will win back power after trouncing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s socialist
party in local elections last month.
As the
campaign heats up, Sanchez is warning of a possible tie-up between the PP and
the far-right Vox party, hoping the PP’s association with Vox may put off
left-leaning, middle-class voters. But a return to power by the PP — as seems
likely — would solidify Europe’s right-wing tilt.
Elsewhere,
Poland’s Law and Justice — a hub of right-wing power in the EU — is leading in
the polls ahead of a fall election, while Slovakia is braced for the comeback
of populist leader Robert Fico in snap elections scheduled for September.
Not all
countries are following the trend — centrist governments in Ireland and
Lithuania, for example, are facing electoral challenges from the left. And
Germany, the EU’s most populous country, is still led by a social democrat. But
even there, Olaf Scholz’s grip on power is wobbly, and the rival Christian
Democrats and far-right AfD are surging in the polls.
That said,
any leftward breeze can’t compare — for the moment — to the jet stream headed
the other way.
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