Europe’s far right cracks up. So what?
On the eve of the EU election, France’s National Rally
party sees it as too risky to team up with Alternative for Germany.
MAY 23,
2024 4:02 AM CET
BY EDDY WAX
BRUSSELS —
Just as Europe’s far right is poised to make big gains in next month’s EU
election, a spat between two of its most powerful parties risks spoiling the
victory parade before the champagne is even opened.
This week a
long-simmering feud between Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Marine Le Pen’s
National Rally in France exploded. Le Pen’s party is polling first in France,
ahead of President Emmanuel Macron, while the AfD is polling second in Germany.
Together they could return about 50 MEPs to the next Parliament, and team up as
a nationalist, anti-immigration political force.
But, for
now at least, Le Pen wants to keep the Germans at arm’s length. Her lead
candidate Jordan Bardella’s campaign director said comments about the Nazis by
AfD lead candidate Maximilian Krah went too far by asserting that SS members
were not necessarily war criminals.
The
National Rally is now insisting it can no longer sit with the AfD in their
Identity & Democracy faction in the European Parliament. If the Nazi
comments weren’t enough, last month German authorities charged one of Krah’s
parliamentary assistants with spying for Beijing, and an AfD candidate has been
embroiled in a cash-for-influence scandal involving a pro-Russian propaganda
outlet. While National Rally is surging in polls, AfD is losing steam.
The French
have also been irked by a far-right conference involving AfD officials talking
about “remigrating” millions of people from Germany, and taunts by AfD MPs over
the legal status of the French overseas department of Mayotte in the Indian
Ocean.
The
inability of National Rally and AfD to work in a group could be significant. EU
lawmakers are elected at national level but then form international alliances
to wield more influence in the European Parliament, which shapes EU laws and
spending. Other parts of the ID group, such as Matteo Salvini’s League, and the
Danish People’s Party’s Anders Vistisen also stuck the boot in, calling for the
AfD’s exclusion.
Even if the
AfD is not formally kicked out of ID, it could simply be omitted when the group
is reconstituted after the election, one ID staffer suggested.
The
following are the big questions as the EU enters the red-hot campaign period
ahead of the June 6-9 poll.
What does this mean for Europe’s far right?
In some
ways the tensions are nothing new: Europe’s far right is already divided on the
EU stage, split between three separate camps in the European Parliament: a
hard-right camp of Euroskeptics and nationalists that includes Giorgia Meloni’s
Brothers of Italy and Poland’s Law & Justice, the far-right ID group, and
then Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s battalion of MEPs, who are
unattached and left out in the cold.
Since 2019,
the French and Germans in the ID group have been led by the League party of
Matteo Salvini. ID is expecting its ranks to swell in the next Parliament
thanks to an influx of MEPs from Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in the
Netherlands, Vlaams Belang in Flanders and the surging Chega in Portugal — but
the French and Germans (if they’re readmitted) will still be by far the largest
blocs inside it.
The German
far right and the French far right are not historical bedfellows in the
European Parliament, anyway. The AfD has only sat with the French National
Rally since 2019, and only joined its pan-European umbrella party last year.
More
broadly, the far right is also divided on policy, which blunts its
effectiveness: Russia’s war in Ukraine is a divisive topic, as is how to treat
China.
Marine Le Pen’s been on a crusade to repackage her
party as respectable, non-threatening and ready to rule France. |
The
center-right — including, it seems the current Commission President Ursula von
der Leyen — believes that some parts of the ECR group — chiefly Meloni’s MEPs —
can be tempted away from the more extreme elements of their grouping to work
together with the pro-European forces.
Why is Le Pen doing this?
There’s an
election on.
Plus, the
AfD and the National Rally have been on different trajectories for years now.
While the AfD has been radicalizing with pro-Russian rhetoric, and even
alienating some of its current crop of MEPs who are deeply unhappy about the
party’s direction, Le Pen’s been on a crusade to repackage her party as
respectable, non-threatening and ready to rule France. It’s little wonder: she
will likely challenge, again, for the French presidency in 2027.
Though it
would surely weaken the ID group numerically in the European Parliament,
cutting ties with the far-right Germans in Brussels plays well at home, and
removes a stick Macron — or his lead candidate Valérie Hayer — can use to
batter her with.
What could this mean for the next Parliament?
The next
Parliament, if polls are to be believed, is expected to shift rightward.
The lines
between ECR and ID are already blurred, though, making it confusing even for
the most seasoned Parliament watchers to understand why some parties belong to
the different camps. For example, only recently the far-right Reconquest party
of far-right firebrand Éric Zemmour (led by Marine Le Pen’s niece Marion
Marechal) announced that one of its MEPs was joining the ECR.
Viktor
Orbán is stalking the ECR group too, having expressed enthusiasm to join.
So while Le
Pen can win domestic political points by saying she will not align with AfD,
she can still be confident that the rough groupings of the right can help vote
in favor of her political interests in Brussels.
What could it mean for AfD if they end up groupless?
Being
without a political group (there are currently seven) means you don’t get
access to millions of euros of funding that comes from the EU budget, nor do
you get the same allocation of speaking time in the Parliament’s plenary, nor
the prestige of belonging to one of the institution’s political families.
The
prospect of one of the parties in ID being ousted into the so-called
non-attached part of the Parliament won’t change much though, since an informal
cordon sanitaire already blocks the AfD and any ID parties from holding the pen
on legislative work, or chairing committee. Their amendments to legislation are
automatically ignored by the rest of the MEPs in Parliament, too.
Could this lead to a much bigger far-right tie-up?
The ECR and
ID groups already tried to merge a few years ago — but failed.
Even though
a German exit might look on paper like it’s merely generating more
fragmentation and chaos on the Parliament’s far-right flank, some believe it
could pave the way for a deepening of cooperation, and even a merger between
the ID and ECR groups.
“A more
fundamental change has now also become possible, with Le Pen using this to
argue for a merger with Meloni, Orbán, Wilders & Co. towards a united
far-right sans the most radical part,” wrote Nicolai von Ondarza, a political
scientist at SWP Europe, on X (formerly Twitter).
However,
the prospect of a single group on the far right — which genuinely could have
consequences for Europe’s policy agenda — and be the Parliament’s second
largest force, crops up frequently before EU elections, and has been ruled out
by Giorgia Meloni’s MEPs.
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