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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is an FT contributing editor, chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, and fellow at IWM Vienna
Next week’s elections to the European parliament won’t be a festive affair for the political mainstream. Parties to the right of the Christian Democrats in the European People’s party will win more seats and influence than ever before. They are likely to be the clear victor in several EU member states including France, Italy, Hungary, Austria, and the Netherlands. The Greens and the Liberals are expected to lose seats. As a consequence the next European parliament will be more polarised and fragmented than ever.
National political leaders tend to view European elections as wars fought with dummy rounds in which many are wounded but nobody is killed. But the long-term consequences of this shift to the right are for the moment unclear. Is the rise of the right a structural trend or an emotional reaction to Europe’s changing fortunes? Will it trigger an anti-extremist mobilisation, as has happened in Germany? And will European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s strategy of both splitting with and fraternising with parties to the right of her own political family, the Christian Democrats, work? Or will Europe sleepwalk into a much darker scenario?
Many on Europe’s far right today have been shaped by the failure of Brexit. They are haunted by a fear of winning and being forced to deliver on their radical promises. They remain Eurosceptics or Euro-pessimists, but are not openly anti-European. And despite recent discussions between Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Rally, and rightwing Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, they do not present a unified bloc. The recent expulsion of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) from the Identity and Democracy group in the European parliament, triggered by Le Pen, is the latest sign of how hard it would be to house all the continent’s rightwing radicals under one roof.
The migration emergency initially fuelled popular support for the far right. But since the heated days of the 2015-16 crisis much has changed. Mainstream parties have now become highly cautious about sticking their necks out on migration policy, arguing instead for the strengthening of external borders. And in power, the far right has begun to understand that Europe actually needs migrants if it hopes to preserve its economic competitiveness.
A recent survey conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations demonstrated that the major effect of the far right entering government in Italy has not been a reduction in illegal migrant numbers but decreasing public anxiety about migration. The far right might not be all that great at stopping migrants, but it seems they’re more effective than liberals in helping voters digest the changing demographic reality of European societies.
Demographic anxiety is the predominant sentiment on the right, but this isn’t the same as simple hostility to foreigners — rather, it has to do with the fear of the economic and political consequences of ageing and shrinking populations.
The central paradox of these elections, therefore, is that migration is not a divisive issue in the way it was five or ten years ago. Rather than migration policy, it may be the European Green Deal that is most affected by the growing strength of the far right. The future of the EU will be structured by the clash between two “extinction” rebellions. One is the revolt of the climate activists who are terrified that if we do not change our behaviour radically, we will destroy life on earth. The other rebellion is that of the “Great Replacement” right, which fears that failure to do something urgently about migration and fertility will spell the end for the European way of life. They differ on almost everything except a shared sense of urgency.
What makes the consequences of next week’s poll difficult to predict is that the shape and character of the new European majority will be decided in two rounds. Europeans will vote in June; Americans elect their president in November. The outcome of the US elections will be felt particularly keenly in Europe.
A victory for Donald Trump will undoubtedly embolden the European right. But Trump is unpopular in Europe, while the ability of the far right there to influence him is minimal. This will be the case especially when Washington’s policies on trade, China or Nato run counter to Europe’s strategic interests. The far right will be forced to choose between its ideological alliance with Trump and the risk of being seen at home as the useful idiots of an American president. Internationalism is never easy, but the internationalism of the nationalists is a particularly difficult trick to pull off.
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