June 13,
2024 : EU election: Not enough will change — and that’s the real
problem
The
Parliament election is one more shrill alarm bell that needs to be heeded
seriously by Europe’s mainstream establishment, and one that should prompt
considerable soul-searching.
June 13,
2024 4:00 am CET
By Jamie
Dettmer
Jamie
Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
For all the
Sturm und Drang over the European Parliament election and the widely predicted
surge of support for right-wing populists — notably in France and Germany — the
question remains whether established centrist parties will do anything more
than circle the wagons and continue as though nothing much has changed.
Sure, the
European Commission and its Eurocrats are all in a tizzy, bemoaning how the
barbarians are now scaling the gates, lamenting how the Parliament will be full
of surly, combative copycats of Brexiteer Nigel Farage, disrupting and breaking
club rules. And there are stern warnings against any sort of relaxation of the
cordon sanitaire against cooperating with even the more moderate new right
radicals — not continuing to ostracize them would betray fundamental
principles.
“The people
have spoken, the bastards,” as Dick Tuck, a key Robert F. Kennedy adviser,
might have put it. But in this case, simply ignoring them seems to be the
sentiment. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen summed it up on Sunday
night as the results unfolded, stating the “center is holding.” “Today is a
good day for the European People’s Party,” she added.
And in the
short term, she’s right — it can still be business as usual. Voters largely
backed centrists in the election, and von der Leyen is likely to secure her
coveted second term without having to do any deal with Italian Prime Minister
Giorgia Meloni and the European Conservatives and Reformists group that her
Brothers of Italy party belongs to.
As POLITICO
reported Wednesday, even the feared battle over who gets the top EU jobs may
already be over, with former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa likely
taking over as European Council president, Malta’s Roberta Metsola continuing
as Parliament boss and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas slipping in as
foreign policy chief.
But
complacency over the the serious inroads that right-wing populist and national
conservative parties made would be a mistake. The center may have held at the
European level for now, but that’s no guarantee it will do so next time. And
with upcoming national elections — especially in France — the whole ‘business
as usual’ mentality won’t hold up.
The EU
election is a further shrill alarm bell that needs to be heeded seriously by
Europe’s mainstream establishment, and one that should prompt considerable
soul-searching. It shouldn’t be yet another exercise of papering over the
cracks.
In France,
President Emmanuel Macron has had little option but to acknowledge this would
be an error. Although his tactic of dissolving the country’s National Assembly
and calling for new legislative elections is a characteriscally hubristic
gamble that has every chance of blowing up in his face — as it did for former
President Jacques Chirac in 1997. “The rise of nationalists and demagogues is a
danger for our nation and for Europe,” Macron warned.
But he and
other centrists must also share the blame for this rise of the new right.
They’ve been condescendingly disconnected from desperate voters exhausted by
seemingly permanent crises, and they’ve all too often failed to adjust in the
face of public backlash — or they’ve done so belatedly and half-heartedly. This
was certainly the case with changes to the bloc’s migration policies, as well
as the rushed scrapping of plans to halve the use of pesticides and
backtracking on emissions recommendations for agriculture — plans that should
have been thought through with a greater appreciation of what they would mean
for farmers.
Those who
have been left behind and are falling behind quickly — or worry they soon will
be — aren’t going away. They’ve been buffeted by the economic woes of high
energy prices and inflation, which quickly followed the societal trauma of
Covid-19 restrictions and lockdowns, again generally dictated by an
incontestable technocratic consensus that, in hindsight, got some things badly
wrong. The intensity of popular anger shouldn’t be underestimated.
And if it’s
going to be business as usual in Brussels — with a technocratic and corporatist
consensus, partly driven by unrepresentative NGOs, dismissing complaints over
the pace and cost of the green transition, concerns about enlargement and
national sovereignty, the burden of regulation, the lack of affordable housing
for the young and high youth unemployment — this anger will only deepen. These
are all key factors in voters turning to the right, as well as a level of
migration that still frightens people and prompts alarm about identity and
culture.
Centrists
have been all too quick to accuse populists of weaponizing these issues. They
blame disinformation and demagogic manipulation, talking almost as though the
here-and-now challenges and fears faced by ordinary families are either made up
or overblown. They overlook the widening gap between everyday concerns on the
one hand, and centrist politics and cross-party consensus on the other.
But
electoral breakthroughs for conservative nationalists and populists on the
Continent have been piling up. Last year in Italy, an emphatic win by the
Meloni-led right-wing coalition unbuckled the country’s “red belt,” its
formerly most reliably left-leaning regions. And despite setbacks for the new
right in Hungary and Poland, in the EU election, France, Germany, Austria and
Italy have now all seen strong populist and national conservative performances.
After all
centrist setbacks, there’s typically an absence of unfeigned and serious
dispassionate self-criticism. But this time, there needs to be considerable
rethinking, including the balance of power between Brussels and national
governments. Pragmatism needs to trump idealism or Europe won’t become stronger
— it will grow weaker and more divided.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário