Under the disco lights of a Brussels hotel, close to the heart of the EU institutions, the most extreme right-wing conclave on Thursday celebrated its achievements in the June 9 European elections. The French Marine Le Pen, the Dutch Geert Wilders, the Italian Matteo Salvini and other ultra leaders analyzed their rise – which has shaken Europe – and prepared a strategy to increase their power. Wilders, with smiling photographs with his political siblings posted on social media, sent wry hearts to Brussels before returning home to form the most right-wing government in the Netherlands’ modern history. It is the dream of Le Pen, who has started a major political fight that can elevate the xenophobic, europhobic extreme right and receptive to the Kremlin’s messages in one of the essential engines of the EU, France, if it wins in the early elections by President Emmanuel Macron after his electoral setback. In Brussels the concern is huge.
The extreme right is no longer an anecdote in Europe. The results of the European Parliament elections a week ago have confirmed this. And despite the messages that are sent tirelessly in the community institutions that the center is resisting and that the extreme right is a diverse and disunited constellation that will have difficulty forming a single bloc in the European Parliament, the truth is that a trend is seen, they acknowledge. with concern numerous European sources. “In the end, on issues that mark the future of the EU, such as the green agenda, everyone will vote together,” says a senior community official, who requests anonymity to comment freely. “The EU has turned to the right, it has been doing so for some time, but what happened in the European elections shows that the common project, instead of expanding, as it has done until now, can shrink,” he adds.
The far right forms (or supports) Governments in eight Member States: Hungary, Czech Republic, Croatia, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Netherlands and Slovakia. And they aspire to unprecedented levels of power in the Community Executive in a key legislature for the future of the European project and for support for Ukraine in the war against Russia. They will have portfolios in the European Commission – which will be much more kaleidoscopic – and they are pushing to be substantial, on key issues from which to influence and set the Union’s agenda for the next five years.
It is not only that support has increased for ultra, eurosceptic (even europhobic) and populist parties, such as that of Marine Le Pen or that of the Italian Giorgia Meloni, in a European Parliament that could have provided a counterweight to a community Executive and a Council of the EU more right-wing. The European elections have caused an earthquake in France, with the great victory of Le Pen’s National Rally; and in Germany, where the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has become the second political force—despite the scandals—in elections that have given Olaf Scholz’s social democrats their worst result in history. The heart of the EU, the Franco-German tandem that drives the community club, has been touched. And that can weigh down the entire block.
“There are many results in which incumbent governments are weakened by European elections, which are normally used to punish the Executive,” says political scientist Nathalie Tocci, director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali. “But there is no precedent for this weakening to occur in the two largest members of the community club at the same time; and in both cases due to a rise of the extreme right,” highlights the expert.
The 9-J elections were held in the majority of the 27 member states of the Union on a national basis. There is hardly any voting in a European key in a club in which it has not been possible to create a let’s give European and in which participation was not high: 51%, slightly higher than that of 2019. However, what happened at the polls, and more so in a legislature that has been very successful – with important measures such as the recovery, the joint purchase of vaccines against covid-19 or a long string of social measures—also shows that all levels of European politics are increasingly interconnected.
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Questions are already emerging about the future of Germany’s coalition government, for example. But what happened in France—and what may happen in the legislative elections that Macron has launched as an order: “Either me or chaos”—can have reverberations throughout the Union, says Celia Berlin, of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). .
These reverberations are already being noticed. At the moment, a distribution of the great positions of power in the community institutions is accelerating, in which the leaders seem to have (for now) little appetite for political fighting: they want to resolve things as soon as possible and place the EU as a beacon. of stability in turbulent times. “They are weakening Macron, one of Europe’s most ambitious and experienced leaders, at a time when the EU needs to demonstrate that it has a future in the face of Russian aggression, American hesitations and Chinese competition,” says Berlin. “The passage of France from the liberal centrist camp of Weimar to the nationalist camp led by the Italian Meloni would fundamentally transform the balance of power in Europe towards a decentralizing, disunited and disintegrating future,” says the expert in an analysis.
The prospect of a far-right and Europhobic government in France and fears of instability in the Union’s second largest economy were already noted on Friday in the French markets. In Brussels, where what happens in Paris focuses almost all the conversations, some diplomats remember the move of the British David Cameron when he promised to call a referendum on the United Kingdom’s departure from the EU, in 2003, which was completed in 2016 and led to four years later in the traumatic Brexit divorce. There is no fear that France will abandon the community club, says a European diplomat, or that it will suddenly scrap it, but rather that it will crack the common EU project at a key point.
If the far-right of Marine Le Pen and her dolphin Jordan Bardella advance – but do not win – a Parliament without a majority could weaken France’s position in the EU. If they win and cohabitation occurs, a Government of National Regrouping – with the French ultra ministers in the councils in Brussels, where they would coincide with those of the Wilders coalition and those of Orbán – can block many EU initiatives, weigh down support to Ukraine, prevent new trade agreements, dissolve environmental policies and undermine the prospects for enlargement. It could also end community defense projects (towards which the community club is moving) and dynamit the prospect of a capital market. In addition to pushing to remove power from community institutions and promote an ultranationalist agenda.
But even if the hard right does not form the next French government this summer, the results will make it very difficult for there to be united and decisive EU action on issues such as the green transition. All this occurs in the face of a more challenging and contested global environment, warns Fabian Zuleeg, from the European Policy Center think tank. “Any deterioration in the EU’s effectiveness can have catastrophic effects,” he says.
Sunday’s earthquake in Germany and France may also be just the appetizer before other elections that are almost more important for Europe than those that have constituted the EU’s house of democracy: the United States presidential elections in November. A victory for the populist Republican Donald Trump, with ties to the European far-right, who has already called into question NATO’s security umbrella, which would further deepen the trade war with China and shake the global geopolitical chessboard, could further weaken and divide more to the EU. Also, lead to a political landscape in which the West pushes Ukraine to negotiate to freeze the conflict – most of the ultras launch the need for talks with which, in reality, they demand Kiev’s surrender – in a way that might not not only be bad for the invaded country but for the entire Union, with a neighbor with a great imperialist appetite.
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