Right-wing populists continue to win in Europe – a “difficult” scenario for the unelected EU leaders
Europe’s far-right won another victory this week when Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and her party, the Brothers of Italy, won large in the country’s general election. It is the first time since 1948, when Italy’s anti-fascist constitution came into force, that a party with fascist roots has come to power in the southern European country.
This follows a similar pattern as happened in Sweden two weeks ago, when that country’s far-right won a significant election victory. Seen as a beacon of liberal social democracy in places like the US, Sweden will now be ruled by once fringe populist right-wing parties.
We may even see this emerge in historic Eastern Europe, as recent local elections over the weekend in the Czech Republic were modest progress for the country’s populist opposition. Led primarily by billionaire ex-prime minister Andrej Babis and his party, ANO, this is by no means a win for the ideological right – but it does show resentment towards the current centre-right establishment in power.
The political direction of Europe, as evidenced by these elections, reveals several interesting things. Mainly that people are pessimistic about the future, that the contradictions in European democracy are facing a serious test and that populist movements in Europe are tolerated by the US as long as they follow the prevailing foreign policy consensus.
On the first point, we can see that people are worried about the future, which then sends them to anti-establishment political movements. At the beginning of this month, a 70,000 Czechs took to the streets to protest the rising cost of living. The organizers of the demonstration were explicitly anti-EU, anti-NATO, and in favor of negotiating directly with Russian gas suppliers, for example, but those present were largely not united by any common ideology or concrete policy.
In the Czech Republic, general uncertainty about working and living conditions has translated into gains for populist movements across the spectrum. It shows the municipal elections during the week and it shows next year’s measurements presidential election will follow a similar trend. The same can be said of virtually every European country, as people become more desperate and disillusioned. The Italian and Swedish extreme right campaigned on exactly the same feeling and fear of unaffordable living costs.
At the same time, Brussels is seriously concerned about the rise of populism in Europe and apparently has the tools to remedy the situation. Two days before the elections in Italy, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen commented on the prospect of a Meloni-Salvini government. Her words were telling.
“If it goes in the difficult direction in Italy… I have spoken about Hungary and Poland before. The European Commission has the necessary tools.” she said at Princeton University in the United States.
This is a serious contradiction, as an unelected bureaucrat in Brussels is talking about using his power, somehow, to undermine the election results of a sovereign EU nation. As von der Leyen mentioned, the EU has indeed encountered serious challengers in Poland and Hungary in particular.
Brussels has been at odds with Warsaw and Budapest over what EU officials have described as policies by their ruling far-right governments that threaten democracy and the rule of law. EU Economic Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said last year that Poland’s legal policy “violated the general principles of autonomy, primacy, effectiveness and uniform application of Union law and the binding rulings of the ECJ.”
At the same time, the anger against Hungary has been even more pronounced. In a Report issued this month, the European Parliament said that Hungary has become a “electoral autocracy” and can no longer be considered a full democracy, and also claims that European values โโare under systemic threat in the country. The central European country has also been a notable stopgap in the EU on sanctions against Russia, securing its own offers with Russian energy suppliers despite cross-bloc disdain for Moscow.
That leads to another point, which is that the Scots in Washington have been relatively calm about the election results in Italy (and Sweden) because these far-right movements have not bucked the mainstream Western foreign policy line. Hungary, meanwhile, was the only EU country not invited to the White House Summit for Democrats in December.
So for Washington, not all fascism is the same. A political party can whip up hatred of immigrants, invoke Christian supremacist ideology, and even be out and out apologetic for World War II war criminals. But as long as they stick to the NATO-friendly line (or join the group, as in the case of Sweden), all is well. The latest report from Politico’s EU Bureau on the White House’s reaction to the Italian election makes it extremely clear.
Just note the US administration’s response when pressed. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Monday “[Italy is] a NATO ally, as you know, a G7 partner and member of the EU, so we will work with the new Italian government on the full range of shared global challenges, including supporting Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian aggression.”
As long as Italy’s new government sticks to the Western consensus on Ukraine, they won’t have any trouble from old Uncle Sam.
Source: sn.dk