Centre-left parties should reject any dialogue with the far right in the EU countries, said leaders at a Party of European Socialists (PES) congress held at the weekend in Berlin.
PES’s short-term plan is “to win the European elections in 2024”, the party’s leading voices said, underlying the importance of the battle against the rise of far-right parties.
Former Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven was elected as the new PES President at the gathering, and Löfven played down the prospect of co-operation with the new-right parties that have gained strength in recent months.
“Cooperation? Yes, but you have to also draw a line where cooperation is not possible. We will cooperate with those who at least admit that every human being has the exact same value,” Stefan Löfven told journalists.
“We are confronting autocrats with our EU cohesion,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a speech at the end of the congress, where he also endorsed the European Commission’s efforts to deal with rule of law violations, which are “unacceptable”, according to Scholz.
The head of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group in the European Parliament, Iratxe Garcia Perez, took an even harder line, telling journalists that on issues such as treaty change or Russia sanctions, there is no space for dialogue with them.
“Giorgia Meloni cannot guarantee stability in Italy,” she said, referring to the relative winner of recent elections in Italy.
According to the Polish co-leader of Lewica, EU lawmaker Robert Biedron, far-right parties are like “Trojan horses”. They promise things they could not deliver”, he told EURACTIV.
He used the Polish energy security case as an example. “When they were coming to power, they were saying that Poland is independent. They fought against green energy, and now Poland is the most dependent country on Russian coal in the EU,” he said.
Similarly, German EU lawmaker Gabriele Bischoff told EURACTIV that the normalisation of the far right, such as Meloni’s party, which she called “post-fascist”, is “dangerous” and pointed out the risk of alignment with governments such as Viktor Orban’s ‘illiberal democracy’ in Hungary.
Looking at the centre
European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans laid out a different strategy in his speech, saying that socialists must “target the centre-right” for dialogue. “The centre-right potentially has people we can work with. We can make this offer to them.”
However, the centre-right in Italy, including Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, has decided to be part of Meloni’s future government, a choice which was heavily criticised by a series of MEPs.
“For us, one thing is clear, we do not dialogue with neo-fascists or post-fascists,” Portuguese MEP Pedro Marques told EURACTIV.
Meanwhile, Spanish MEP Fernando Lopez Aguilar told EURACTIV that the centre-left must be more proactive in combating the rise of the far right.
“A lesson to learn is that [far right winning] cannot be taken as a fact. If you really foresee that the extreme right is on the rise, then it is your duty to do your very best to stop it to prevent that from happening, to overturn the tendency of the polls and eventually to win” he said.
German MEPs demand Forza Italia's EPP explusion if it joins Meloni government
Three German MEPs have demanded the expulsion of Forza Italia from the European People’s Party if they joined Meloni’s government, according to a letter published on Twitter on Wednesday (5 October).
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Benjamin Fox]
Source: euractiv.com
