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Editor’s take: The changing face of Europe’s new right. After the 2008-9 financial crisis and the austerity-heavy policy response across the EU, socialist parties implemented spending cuts just as harsh as conservative and Christian democrat-led governments. That, combined with moribund leadership, saw voters disappear in droves.
While the left fell victim to a largely self-inflicted identity crisis, the mainstream right parties managed to adapt. Or at least, so it seemed. A string of elections over the past year suggests that Europe’s right is changing as establishment parties struggle to fend off populist and former far-right rivals.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and Emmanuel Macron have squeezed the Republican party vote from the right and the centre. Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia has supplanted Matteo Salvini’s Lega and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia as the leading party in Italy.
In Europe’s five largest countries, only the UK, Germany and Spain have seen the moderate right continue to poll over 25%. The German CDU, in particular, remains in surprisingly robust shape for a party that had been in power for 16 years uninterrupted. However, there is a strong argument that Brexit and Boris Johnson have pushed the Conservative party towards populism, while Vox is putting pressure on the Partido Popular from the right in Spain.
So how should the political mainstream respond?
It is too easy to simply label these parties as ‘fascist’, extremist or far-right. Nor does it work. The charge of extremism, racism or nationalism did not stop Brexit or the election of Donald Trump in 2016. European Parliament’s decision to label Viktor Orban’s Fidesz government as an ‘electoral autocracy’ was a gift to the Fidesz spin-machine, another line of attack against ‘elites in Brussels’.
Though the likes of Fratelli d’Italia and Le Pen’s Rassemblement National take their roots from post-fascism and the far-right, the charge that they are extremist is not always accurate. They, too, are capable of the pragmatism needed to evolve and broaden their appeal.
Less than three years ago, it was common to hear Fratelli d’Italia leaders support Italy’s exit from the eurozone or even the EU itself. No longer.
Italian political scientist Marco Tarchi believes that when Meloni realised she was poised to become a prime minister, her position towards the bloc began to soften. “It would not make sense for her to have a hyper-critical stance in EU meetings; the cooperation will increase,” he told EURACTIV.
The party will take “an evolutionary position” where it is nationalist at home but constructive in Brussels, Tarchi argues.
Italian political history suggests that a Fratelli d’Italia-led government will probably crash and burn under the weight of Meloni’s political inexperience. However, Fidesz and Poland’s Law and Justice are among the European parties on the new, or illiberal, right that have combined populism with repeated election success.
For the traditional parties to survive, it looks likely they will have to adapt quickly. That is likely to mean more populist, and interventionist approaches to economic and social policy,
In London, Liz Truss has made a dismal start as prime minister, but she does at least realise that to have a chance of winning a full term for herself and extend her party’s now 12-year rule, her government needs to offer hope. That is behind her government’s quest for economic growth – paid for by debt-fuelled tax cuts that prompted a market run on the pound and UK bonds – as an alternative to the ‘managed decline’ purportedly on offer from Johnson and the Labour party.
Worries about the cost of living and energy crises, the war in Ukraine, and immigration, combined with hostility to “elites”, and a focus on national identity, are the main drivers of the populist right.
“The cement of (the far right) is indeed the question of identity,” says France’s Eric Zemmour, whose one man party polled better than the Republican party in the presidential elections this year.
“Everywhere in Europe, people aspire to take their destiny back into their own hands!” adds Marine Le Pen.
It’s a potent message and one which moderate parties will need to offer a response to if they want to avoid the same pattern of decline that has left European social democracy in a coma.
Charts of the week
The two following charts describe the popularity of right wing parties in Italy, Sweden, France, Latvia and Bulgaria with two different perspectives. In the first you can see the evolution since 1990, while in the second bar chart there is a comparison with the previous and 2022 elections.
Data visualisation by Europe Elects for EURACTIV
Who’s electioneering?
After a poll-packed September, Austria elects its President on Sunday (9 October). Incumbent Alexander van der Bellen, from the Green party, is expected to be comfortably re-elected to the largely ceremonial post and boasts the support of the two largest parties.
In state elections in Germany’s Lower Saxony on the same day, meanwhile, polls suggest that the governing SPD will narrowly hold off the Christian Democrat CDU, with the Green party likely to make significant gains that make a red-green coalition the most likely outcome.
Capitals-in-brief
Mink Covid crisis prompts snap poll. Danish PM Mette Frederiksen has announced a snap election on 1 November following threats of a non-confidence vote over a scandal involving the culling of several million mink that, critics say, could lead to a new coronavirus variant. Polls put her centre-left bloc neck and neck with the centre-right ‘blue bloc’.
No flags, please, we’re British. UK PM Liz Truss attended the inaugural meeting of the European Political Community on Thursday in Prague, but the EU flags were removed from outside the gathering following demands from London. EU leaders were also urged to make their presence as “discreet” as possible.
Serbia gets European border backing. Austria and Hungary have given their support to Serbia’s plans to tighten the ‘Balkan route’ by imposing stricter visa rules for countries from which large numbers of migrants are currently entering the EU in return and will offer more police and border protection services at the border with North Macedonia.
Inside the institutions
Time for Schengen. EU governments will vote in December on whether to grant Romania and Bulgaria’s accession to the Schengen passport-free travel area after more than ten years of delay.
Treaty change delay. Legal experts suggest that governments are violating EU law by not initiating the procedure for a European Convention that would kick-start the treaty reform process. In June, the European Parliament formally requested the launch of a Convention, but EU leaders are yet to respond four months later. They are legally required to answer in October, although it is likely that the Czech government’s plans to send a ‘questionnaire’ on the matter to national capitals will fudge the issue until the new year.
What we are reading
- Is This the End of ‘Socialism for the Rich’ asks Yanis Varoufakis
- Mattia Ferraresi, editor of Domani, analyses Giorgia Meloni’s election win (The New York Times), and Lorenzo Marsili, activist and European Alternatives founder, looks at a possible response (The Guardian)
- Paul Goodman on Liz Truss’s woes (Conservative Home)
Thanks for reading. If you’d like to contact us for leaks, tips or comments, drop us a line at [email protected] / [email protected] or contact us on Twitter: @EleonorasVasques & @benfox83
[Edited by Alice Taylor/
Source: euractiv.com
