European Elections: Threat From the Populist Right

Banners for the 2024 European elections campaign on the Agora Simone Veil of the European Parliament in Brussels. Photo by European Parliament/ Flickr.

As the election campaigns for the European Parliament take off this week, the EU is at a turning point, increasingly torn between the nationalist populist right and the pro-European centre and left; EU climate action and migration policies are at special risk 

by Claude Forthomme – Senior Editor

April 30, 2024

(updated today with Sanchez’s announcement). Two months before the European elections scheduled for 6-9 June, the political scene in Europe is heating up. Increasing polarization between left and right threatens major economic policies that hold together the continent and lay out its future. Here’s a tour d’horizon of what is happening.

Let’s start with Spain since it’s in the news today. Currently rocked by scandals (alleged and real), the latest one could alter the political balance.

As I write, Spain’s controversial Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, the socialist who held onto power thanks to a much-decried pact with separatist activists, announced today that he intends to stay on after a five-day pause of reflection that he took following the “harassment and bullying operation” against his wife by his opponents. As he put it in a 4-page message on X last Monday—written without consulting advisers, thus following in the footsteps of Trump, who notoriously posted his policy decisions on Twitter without taking advice from anyone:

The “operation” in question is a preliminary investigation into Begoña Gómez, Sánchez’s wife, opened by a Madrid court. She is accused of “influence peddling and corruption.” The investigation followed a complaint from the pressure group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), known for its far-right links; unsurprisingly, Sánchez accused the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox party of colluding with Manos Limpias in this affair. 

The announcement was greeted with relief by his leftist allies and, as Reuters reported, “exasperation among the public and ridicule from his opponents.” And that is perhaps what is most striking about the political scene in Spain: the explosive level of emotionally laden insults. For former PP leader Pablo Casado, Sanchez is a “traitor,” a “felon,” a “compulsive liar,” a “squatter,” and a “catastrophe”; a judge has called him a “psychopath without ethical limits”; Vox’s leader, Santiago Abascal, wants to see him “strung up by his feet”;  the populist PP president of the Madrid region Isabel Díaz Ayuso, accused him of enacting a “totalitarian” project and ushering in “a dictatorship through the back door.” And for her, this 5-day drama about whether he’d stay on as PM or not was simply “a joke.”

The left-right animosity is no surprise. A two-century-long tradition in politics across the European continent since the French Revolution, it’s become almost a meme (and a tired one). However, the level of screaming accusations displayed in Spain is new and not just unseemly. It invites comparison with the vicious polarization in American politics as Trump-led Republicans hurl accusations on Biden and the Democrats (and vice versa) in the upcoming presidential elections in November.

It’s as if the conservative right on both sides of the pond had given itself carte blanche to fire insults at everyone who disagrees with them. And since that tactic is working, it’s no wonder conservatives everywhere are doubling down on it, sounding ever more strident and enraged, screaming out the most venomous accusations their feverish imagination can conjure. 

So, is Europe about to sink into the kind of polarized politics that has paralyzed the United States since Trump came on the scene in 2016?

Perhaps not quite yet, but we are at a turning point, and not just in Spain. This polarized backdrop is not promising as electoral campaigns ramp off everywhere across the continent in view of the European elections. Many basic tenets of democracy are threatened, and in particular, climate action, economic governance, and migration policies are at risk.

There are two hard-right groupings in the European parliament: Identity and Democracy and European Conservatives and Reformists. Together, they could secure as much as 25% of the June vote, warns Gordon Brown in the Guardian today.

Here are the main events shaping the political debates across Europe.

What is at stake in the European elections: The role of the European Parliament as a major player affecting EU governance

The kick-off was the last marathon plenary session of the European Parliament, held 22-25 April, that marked the end of the 9th legislature. Close to 100 texts – 89 legislative bills and half-a-dozen resolutions – were submitted to the Members of Parliament (MEPs) attention,covering widely diverse topics such as revisions of fiscal discipline rules, new air quality standards, sustainable packaging, and the right to repair electronic devices under the Green Deal. During the record session, MEPs voted on specific measures calling for better information on certain in vitro diagnostic medical devices and semplification of long-standing EU rules governing the Common Agricultural Policy rules, in an attempt to make life simpler for farmers and users of EU funds.

Bills adopted broadly affected economic governance across the EU and were the outcome of the work of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) the Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE), and the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON). 

For example, IMCO was responsible for pushing through a new public health crisis preparedness system to avoid a “repeat of the pandemic chaos”; LIBE’s work led, inter alia, to the Parliament condemning Hungary’s “Sovereignty Act” as a threat to the rule of law in that country and raises concerns that Hungarian Government “will not be able to credibly fulfil” its role at the helm of the European Council. 

Most importantly, ECON pushed through key measures to strengthen the banking system and improve competitiveness, including new EU rules to combat money laundering,  improving SMEs’ access to market-based finance, and new rules that will add considerabletransparency and structure to how environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratingsare undertaken and communicated.   

To summarize: Key areas addressed in this session included:

In short, such a fruitful session confirms that the European Parliament has reached maturity and is functioning as it should, i.e., as a major forum addressing key measures that are (or should be) of concern to all EU citizens as they shape their common EU political and legislative future. 

Whether the European Parliament can continue to work this way and how all this is likely to play out will (inevitably) depend on the political forces facing each other in the European Parliament.

And what kind of forces will, in turn, depend on how European citizens will vote in June – for the Euro-sceptic nationalist right or the pro-Europeans left.

European Parliament politics: the risk of paralysis

In Europe, the rise of the nationalist, conservative right is no longer a speculation but a confirmed fact. Of course, the Euro-sceptic opposition has always included the likes of France’s Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and now, more recently, Slovakia’s Robert Fico, not to mention the many nationalists in a growing number of European countries. 

At the same time, the pro-European front is variegated, as some politicians occasionally flirt with sovereign tendencies, possibly as a (misguided) way to counteract the populist right’s solidly anti-European leanings. For example, pro-European conservative parties have increasingly cooperated with far-right groups at local and national levels. For instance, Spain’s conservative People’s Party worked with the anti-immigration Vox party, and the Dutch VVD party abandoned its refusal to work with Geert Wilders’ anti-immigrant PVV party.

This blurring of lines is concerning: The European Parliament’s approval of net-zero climate and energy legislation is at stake, and the right-wing parties are already attempting to influence it.

This is why it will be particularly important to understand the true objectives and programs of all the parties.

In 2019, pro-EU parties were still dominant in the EU Parliament despite the nationalist surge. But the political map is changing if a recent survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is to be believed. It shows that supporters of nationalist parties hold “widely differing views on EU membership, migration and support for Ukraine.”

The ECFR report on the polling results published on 21 March suggests that in the June elections, the far-right, populist, nationalist parties are on track to finish first in nine EU states—including Austria, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland—and second or third in nine more. The following table is an eye-opener:

The report also pointed to a problem with pro-EU parties, saying they risk mobilizing the Eurosceptic vote if they continue with their strategy of “aping right-wing policies on migration and promoting a narrative of the EU’s success by focusing on its response to the climate crisis, the covid-19 pandemic, and Russia’s war on Ukraine.”

The report’s authors, Ivan Krastev, Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, and Mark Leonard, co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations argue that this is the wrong strategy and it will lead to disaster. 

 “Simply copying far-right policies can make mainstream parties look inauthentic,” says Mark Leonard. “The better alternative is to focus on the weaknesses of Eurosceptic parties and make a geopolitical case for Europe in the time of Trump.”

In the report summary, the advice to pro-Euro parties is clear: Forget “Focusing on the commission’s positive agenda” as it could also “counterproductively benefit anti-European parties because European publics have a negative perception of the EU’s track record of responding to crises”. People distrust the EU Commission – Ursula von der Leyen is not going to be a winning card.

As to migration, it has two aspects: immigration (and it tends to worry the wealthier, northern countries in Europe, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden…), while emigration is on the mind of voters in at least six countries (Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Romania, and Spain) where a majority is worried chiefly about emigration or about both equally.

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Instead, the authors of the report argue what needs to be done are two things:

  1. “embrace an alternative agenda which prioritises national contexts and develop more targeted campaigns designed to mobilise voters without fanning an anti-European backlash”; 
  2. They should also make “a new geopolitical case for Europe” in light of the US presidential election in November.

Wise advice, but will the pro-European politicians listen?

A new geopolitical case for Europe? Macron is trying 

French President Macron seems to have heard their call (though he is likely to deny it, as he likes to be the sole author of his ideas). Speaking as much to his compatriots as to Europeans, he made the case for a strong Europe in the speech he delivered last Thursday at the Sorbonne University in Paris. That was the same venue as his famous 2017 speech in which he proposed a “logical way” to reform Europe. 

This time, in light of the threat of a new Trump administration and withdrawal of US support, he did not mince his words: “There is a risk our Europe could die. We are not equipped to face the risks,” he said, warning that military, economic, trade and other pressures could weaken and fragment the EU. Europe is currently divided, too slow, and lacks ambition.

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So what does he propose? In a nutshell: 

  • Making Europe a global leader by 2030  in five strategic sectors: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, space industry, biotechnology, and clean energy (including hydrogen and nuclear fusion);
  • Doubling Europe’s financial capacity through “public investment shock,” inter alia leveraging the EU’s own revenue sources, such as levies from the carbon adjustment mechanism, and setting up the capital markets union (CMU) within one year (it was proposed a decade ago): based on Europe’s combined economic strength, it would create a globally attractive capital market;
  • adopting a “Europe First” strategy, favoring local European companies over foreign rivals in strategic sectors like defense and space; this would follow the examples set by the United States and China; 
  • reforming the banking system (make it less regulated) and revising the European Central Bank’s mandate to integrate growth and even climate goals into its objectives rather than limiting itself (as it does now) to maintaining price stability, a limited policy goal not shared by any other major central bank. 
  • warning that Europe should not rely on America for its security, Macron called for a new “European defense initiative,” and Europeans should promote their own weapons standards (to be noted: NATO officials have said the EU should focus on NATO standards alone.

In short, Europe can and should become a superpower capable of defending its borders and speaking with one voice. 

Finally, one last intriguing point: Macron is reportedly supporting a possible candidature of Mario Draghi, former President of the European Central Bank, to EU Commission President, against Ursula von der Leyen, the current incumbent whose climate action apparently has not convinced European voters. One may wonder whether Macron has taken to heart the ECFR report advice mentioned above, i.e., making a “geopolitical case for Europe” and withdrawing support from the current EU Commission head.

Who will listen to Macron?

How far can Macron’s pro-Europe message go? Macron has his own problems in France: Marine Le Pen’s party is predicted to win the upcoming European elections, and at the same time, he is widely distrusted by the left (and many in the center) and depicted as another Margaret Thatcher: As sociologist Anne Claire Defossez, a progressive activist, wrote in an article in 2019, Macron embodies ”a modern version of Thatcherism and is clearly on the right of the political spectrum.” 

But Macron is not giving up. Reuters just reported that yesterday (Sunday,  Macron told a group of regional newspapers that France’s nuclear weapons should be part of the European defense debate. While France’s doctrine has so far been to use them only when the country’s vital interests are threatened, he said he was open to giving a more “European dimension” to these interests.

That statement unsurprisingly drew the ire of France’s nationalist far right. “These comments are exceptionally serious […] we are touching the nerve of French sovereignty,” said European lawmaker Francois-Xavier Bellamy, who will lead right-wing party LR into the EU vote. “#We can’t wait for June 9th to give him a clear signal that his policies are over!” added Mariani, a member of France’s Rassemblement National (RN) headed by Marine Le Pen.

It will be interesting to see whether the European elections confirm the right’s assertion that Europe is really “over.” Or whether Macron’s call for a European Renaissance will resonate with European voters beyond France’s borders.

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This article was originally published on IMPAKTER. Read the original article.

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