Will Europe’s centre-right parties accept defeat or sell their souls to the hard right?

Paul Taylor
Mon, 28 August 2023 

Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

There was a time when clear blue water separated Europe’s mainstream centre-right from the Eurosceptic populists and xenophobes of the hard right. A Christian Democrat such as Helmut Kohl or Angela Merkel would have had nothing in common with – and nothing to do with – a nativist such as Marine Le Pen or Geert Wilders.

No longer. In the run-up to the 2024 European Parliament elections, once-sharp lines between pro-European conservative parties and the nationalist far right are blurring as both seek to tap into public anger or anxiety over migration, the cost of living, the green transition and gender diversity.

The longstanding “cordon sanitaire” against cooperation with the hard right is fast crumbling, first at local and national level and now potentially in Brussels too. That matters because the European parliament must approve all the EU’s net zero climate and energy legislation, and the right is already trying to water it down.


In recent weeks, Spain’s conservative People’s party has fallen just short of victory in a general election despite declaring its readiness to govern with the anti-immigration Vox party, which has intellectual roots in Franco’s fascist ideology. The leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) opposition, Friedrich Merz, suggested his party should work locally – though not at national or European level – with the extreme-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which has soared to second place in national opinion polls. However, Merz had to row back after protests from within his party.

And the successor to Dutch prime minister Marc Rutte as leader of the centre-right liberal VVD party, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, (Rutte resigned in July triggering a snap election that will be held in November) has ditched a longstanding refusal to work with Wilders’ anti-immigrant PVV party.

Mainstream conservative governments in Sweden and Finland meanwhile have taken office thanks to the support of hard-right nationalists in, respectively, the Sweden Democrats and the Finns party.

In Italy, the hard right last year won power in a government headed by Giorgia Meloni of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy. In France, the conservative Gaullists of Les Républicains are vying to outdo Le Pen and her extreme-right rival Éric Zemmour in demonising Islam and proposing new ways to stop asylum seekers. Party leader Éric Ciotti wants to officially declare that the French constitution has primacy over European law in order to impose quotas of asylum seekers.

That is the same assertion with which hard-right nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary are defying the EU’s treaty order over the independence of their judiciary.

The reasons for this lurch to the right are clear. Europe’s big-tent centre-right parties are now succumbing to the electoral fragmentation that has afflicted the mainstream left, with green and radical-left groups luring voters away from social democratic parties. In a more diverse, individualistic society, conservative voters are no longer so bound together by the church, family values or free market ideology. They differ on economic protectionism, European integration, climate action and social issues such as LGBTQ+ rights.

In Germany, the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, which bestrode the country’s postwar political landscape for decades, scored just 24.1% in the 2021 general election following Merkel’s retirement. Even with its current 26% rating, the centre-right has no hope of forming a conservative government without the AfD, which is polling above 20%. Yet cooperating with the nativists has hitherto been taboo, not least because of the long shadow of Germany’s Nazi past.

But all over Europe, mainstream conservatives face the same dilemma as they struggle to win back lost chunks of their electorate among blue-collar, rural and middle-class voters, and to attract younger people tempted by a far-right protest vote or abstention.

Marginalising and demonising the radical right has failed to staunch the losses. Adopting part of the populists’ vocabulary and policy on issues such as migration and identity has not worked either, except perhaps for Denmark’s Social Democrats.

Other options include seeking to engage and moderate the far right through coalitions, or making targeted pitches to discontented voter groups such as farmers and suburban motorists who fear that the EU’s Green Deal, pushed by a European Commission led by German Christian Democrat Ursula von der Leyen, will take away their cars and ruin their livelihoods.

Manfred Weber, leader of the European People’s party (EPP) centre-right umbrella group, is experimenting with both approaches as he seeks to reposition the long-dominant political family before next June’s EU-wide vote.

In January, he met Meloni to explore a possible alliance between the EPP and the nationalist European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR) after next year’s elections. The EU legislature is currently dominated by a three-way centrist pact between the EPP, the Socialists and Democrats, and the market-liberal Renew Europe group.

The ECR includes Poland’s rightwing ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), Spain’s Vox, the Sweden Democrats and the Finns party. Yet Weber has repeatedly declared that the EPP would not work with “far-right extremists”, explicitly naming Le Pen, the AfD and PiS.

In July, he made an unsuccessful attempt alongside the ECR and the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group to defeat the EU’s nature restoration law, a key environmental protection measure that he said would burden farmers and force up food prices. Weber is trying to project the EPP as the farmers’ and motorists’ friend without embracing the hard right’s denial of climate science. It is a precarious balancing act, especially when it pits him against Von der Leyen from his own party.

Related: ‘The Eurocentric fallacy’: the myths that underpin European identity

A formal alliance with the ECR seems unlikely, not least because it would require the support of liberals including French president Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party. If such a pact did come about, it would probably push back against ambitious European Green Deal targets, take a tougher line on asylum and migration policy, and resist any erosion of national sovereignty.

More plausible is that Weber is trying to lure Meloni’s rising party into joining the centre-right EPP, which would strengthen its hand with its current partners.

While EPP officials say this is just about tactics and responding pragmatically to public concerns, Weber and his political family face a fundamental choice.

In deciding whether to ostracise, imitate or forge alliances with the nationalist hard right, Europe’s mainstream centre-right parties must choose between potentially losing voters and losing their souls.

Paul Taylor is a senior fellow of the Friends of Europe thinktank and a former European affairs editor at Reuters

International Far-Right Fight Night Comes to Budapest

Michael Colborne 
May 3, 2023

This weekend, Budapest is due to play host to an event that far-right extremists have bragged online will be “the biggest radical nationalist event since coronavirus.”

Scheduled for 6 May, the organisers of ‘European Fight Night’ boast that the event in the Hungarian capital will feature up to 15 combat sports fights with participants from 12 different countries.

According to social media posts promoting the event, it will also play host to concerts and opportunities to buy merchandise from far-right fashion brands. Yet despite the publicity push, secrecy remains a priority. Similar events in Germany have previously been banned. Organisers have also stated attendees won’t be allowed to take photos or videos, and that they’ll kick out anyone who does or who shares the exact location of the event.

Observers have long sounded the alarm on the international far right’s use of combat sports to train up for physical confrontation and prepare for attacks against their perceived foes.

Some experts like Robert Claus, who wrote a book on the far-right martial arts scene, even say that combat sports events like European Fight Night also help facilitate international networking and recruitment.

Past research by anti-facist groups has linked the organisers of European Fight Night to some of the most secretive far-right extremist groups in Europe — including violent neo-Nazi groups that have been banned in several countries. One of the organisers of European Fight Night has even discussed links to local chapters of these banned groups in previous media interviews.

Meet the Organisers

European Fight Night, at least publicly, presents itself as having three primary organisers: Hungary’s Legio Hungaria, Germany’s Kampf der Nibelungen (“Battle of the Nibelungs”), and Pride France.

In a video released on multiple Telegram channels on February 27, members of each of the three main organising groups appeared side by side to promote the Budapest event and encourage their far-right comrades across Europe to attend.

A screenshot of a February 2023 promotional video for European Fight Night, featuring Legio Hungaria’s Béla Incze (left), Kampf der Nibelungen’s Alexander Deptolla (centre) and Pride France’s Tomasz Szkatulski (right). The video was filmed in Sofia, Bulgaria: a far-right extremist march organiszed by the Bulgarian National Union took place two days before the video’s release, and this video was filmed near their headquarters.

Béla Incze heads up Legio Hungaria, a small far-right extremist group from Hungary. Incze once served as an assistant to a far-right member of Hungary’s parliament before reportedly losing his job for assaulting a police officer. Legio Hungaria, while not a large group, has managed to garner attention for their actions since being founded in 2018, including vandalising a Jewish community centre in 2019, destroying a Black Lives Matter statue in Budapest in 2021 and reportedly assaulting journalists covering a far-right event in 2023. Bellingcat also revealed in a 2021 investigation that a senior Legio Hungaria member played a key role in racist and homophobic displays at Hungarian national team football matches.

Hungary fans display a sign during the EURO 2020 match between Germany and Hungary. Bellingcat later revealed the banner had been in the possession of a member of Legio Hungaria prior to the match. Pool via REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach.

Alexander Deptolla is the public face of Kampf der Nibelungen. Started in 2013, Kampf der Nibelungen — often referred to by the abbreviation KdN — was once the largest far-right combat sports event in Europe, with its October 2018 version hosting an estimated 850 fighters and spectators. However, authorities in Germany banned the event in 2019, and KdN’s 2020 ‘online’ version saw fewer than half of the planned fights broadcast thanks to a police raid where some were being filmed ahead of time. Deptolla even took to social media afterwards to state that KdN wouldn’t be organising any more events in the immediate future. Nonetheless, German authorities reportedly restricted an abortive attempt at a September 2021 ‘National Fight Night,’ as a September 2022 court ruling upheld the ban on KdN’s events. Despite this, they are still the biggest of the three organisers of European Fight Night. Some German observers have argued that European Fight Night is essentially planned as a “replacement” event for KdN outside German borders.

Alexander Deptolla (left) interviewing French far-right lawyer Pierre-Marie Bonneau (right) at a far-right extremist event in Sofia, Bulgaria on February 25, 2023

 (Michael Colborne).

Tomasz Szkatulski of Pride France is a Polish-born French neo-Nazi who is reported to have helped organise and even participate in events like European Fight Night for several years. Szkatulski emerged from violent football hooligan scenes in the city of Lille, though now appears to spend much of his time in Bulgaria. Covered in Nazi tattoos, Szkatulski was reportedly convicted and sentenced to a year in prison in 2008 for assaulting a man of African origin with a bicycle chain; he has also reportedly been involved in other acts of violence, including alleged attacks on LGBT+ establishments. Szkatulski is also an associate of American far-right extremist Robert Rundo, who was arrested in Romania in March 2023 and is awaiting extradition to the United States.

Szkatulski did not respond to requests for comment from Bellingcat asking about his involvement in European Fight Night, past reports about his 2008 conviction (or alleged involvement in other apparent acts of violence), as well as his relationship and contacts with Rob Rundo.

When contacted by Bellingcat on Telegram to ask if he would like to respond to the details in this story, Deptolla of KdN said simply: “Hi. No thanks. Bye.” Legio Hungaria similarly declined to answer Bellingcat’s emailed questions about the details contained in this story and about Incze, citing unhappiness with Bellingcat’s reporter’s previous reporting on the group.

Behind the Scenes

There’s also a much less public side to European Fight Night and other far-right combat sports events, where some of the most secretive, publicity-averse extremist networks in Europe operate.

Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s domestic intelligence agency, has publicly stated the members of the Hammerskins, an international white supremacist gang, have been involved in organising Kampf der Nibelungen events since 2013. Journalists and researchers have also extensively documented the Hammerskins’ links with KdN.

As noted in Bellingcat’s 2022 investigation of a planned far-right extremist concert in Belgium, the Hammerskins have a significant presence across Europe. They tend to be secretive about their activities but are organised, with chapters, hierarchies and different patches for prospects and full members. Members of the Hammerskins have been extensively involved in criminal activities, including assault and even mass murder.

But it isn’t just Kampf der Nibelungen that works with the Hammerskins. In a February 2023 interview with an American far-right extremist website, Incze stated that his Legio Hungaria organisation had “a strong relationship” with the Hungarian Hammerskins, evidenced by their appearance and central role in previous events Legio Hungaria has hosted.

Incze also said in the same February 2023 interview that Legio Hungaria cooperates with the Hungarian branch of international neo-Nazi organisation Combat 18. Founded in the UK in the early 1990s, Combat 18 is closely associated with the Blood and Honour neo-Nazi group that is banned in several European countries.

In his 2020 book on Europe’s far-right combat sports scenes, German author Robert Claus reported that Tomasz Szkatulski had been affiliated with Blood and Honour structures in France; his Blood and Honour affiliations have also been discussed in other reports, although Szkatulski did not respond to Bellingcat questions asking about this. Claus also told Bellingcat he had knowledge that Blood and Honour associates would be hosting a concert the evening of 6 May for European Fight Night attendees.

Bellingcat was not able to independently confirm this claim. However, Blood and Honour’s Hungary branch has also promoted European Fight Night on its Telegram channel.

“These networks are generally very much involved in [far-right combat sports] events, either by hosting them themselves or by providing important organisational aspects,” Claus told Bellingcat, referring to the Hammerskins, Combat 18 and Blood and Honour.

A ‘Fundamentally Violent’ Ideology

But barely a week ahead of the event, European Fight Night’s main organiser had already run into trouble. On April 28 Deptolla took to KdN’s Telegram channel to tell fans that he and other German far-right extremists had been banned by authorities from leaving the country to travel to Budapest. Claus told Bellingcat that this German travel ban could seriously impact the event, since KdN and its German comrades are the largest of the three main organisers.

Even if European Fight Night doesn’t go on quite as its organiszers have hoped, Claus says it is still a dangerous event. “Violent key figures and groups of the neo-Nazi scenes from different parts in Europe are expected to come to Budapest,” Claus told Bellingcat. “Their ideology is fundamentally violent, fascist activists [who] use combat sports to train for racist attacks and other kinds of brute force.”

With a concert and other events alongside the fights, Claus warned, “the international neo-Nazi scene gets its combination of violence and sports, political hatred and music, the cultural package which pre-terrorist neo-Nazism has to offer.”

Bellingcat asked Hungarian national police about the European Fight Night event, whether they were aware of it and whether they had taken or planned to take any steps to prevent the event from taking place, or prevent any specific foreign extremists from attending. They did not respond before publication

Michael Colborne is a journalist and researcher at Bellingcat; he leads Bellingcat Monitoring, our project to research and monitor the far-right in central and eastern Europe. He tweets at @ColborneMichael.

Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our Patreon channel here. Subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on Twitter here and Mastodon here.

EU's radical left targets social problems to beat the far right

Story by DPA International

 • 

Walter Baier attends AFCO committee meeting in the European Union. The president of Europe's largest coalition of far-left parties Walter Baier has told the European Newsroom (enr) that fighting the far right will be a priority in the forthcoming European Parliament elections. 

Francois WALSCHAERTS/European Parliament/dpa© DPA International

The president of Europe's largest coalition of far-left parties has told the European Newsroom (enr) that fighting the far right will be a priority in the forthcoming European Parliament elections.

“Fighting the far-right is a moral and a cultural obligation," Walter Baier told the enr in an interview this week. "There can be no compromises with the agenda of hatred, of anti-Semitism, of scapegoating the migrants," he said.

The 70-year-old Austrian has been president of the European Parliament's Party of the European Left (PEL) since December 2022. The PEL is the largest faction of the 37-member far-left bloc in the European Parliament, where pollsters predict a far-right surge in the elections to be held in June.

According to Baier, fighting the European far right requires strong social politics, respect for the interests of employees, the liberation of young people from economic insecurity and guaranteed access to decent housing.

The PEL's manifesto “is written from the perspective of the working class and young people,” said Baier, the former head of Austria’s communist party.

”It cannot be that large parts of our societies are worried about heating their homes during the winter or that they are afraid of the necessary ecological transformation,” he added.

Baier said that to combat the extreme right, it is essential to address the ”social interests of the working classes."

Climate change must also not be forgotten in the fight for social justice, he said. “Ecological reorganization must go hand in hand with the reduction of social inequalities,” Baier said.

Last month, the PEL chose Baier to be its so-called lead candidate in the elections. He will visit around ten EU member states to campaign, he said.

In principle, that makes him the faction's choice for president of the European Commission, an office currently held by German conservative Ursula von der Leyen.

But in practice, the elections won't decide who gets the top job.

Instead, the leaders of the EU's 27 member states will meet behind closed doors to choose a sole candidate - most likely von der Leyen - and then ask the parliament to confirm the appointment.

Last time, von der Leyen - who was no group's lead candidate in the 2019 elections - was confirmed by only the slimmest of margins.

This time, she is the lead candidate of the centre-right European People's Party, but she appears unlikely to win support from PEL representatives. Baier said “she is not the right person” to implement the social policies his group wants to see.

A RIGHT TO DECENT HOUSING

Baier wants to establish decent housing as "a fundamental right in the primary law of the European Union."

He said fulfilling that right means imposing limits on rents and creating a European fund to help municipalities and cooperatives build houses.

“We would like the European Union to invest in the housing sector." The PEL also wants "strict and rigid regulation" of platforms like Airbnb, Baier said.

In addition, the group wants an EU directive “that obliges member states to introduce legal limits on rents and to ban fixed-term tenancies and forced evictions from primary residences.”

TIME FOR UKRAINE TO NEGOTIATE

Baier echoed Pope Francis' call for Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war with Russia, which launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“I believe helping the Ukrainian people means now making attempts to end the war,” said Baier.

Baier underlined that his faction – whose 26 members include Germany’s Die Linke, France’s Communists and Greece’s Syriza – “absolutely condemned the Russian aggression” in its manifesto.

He wants the EU "to take diplomatic efforts to start negotiations to achieve a ceasefire and to achieve the withdrawal of the Russian troops,” Baier said.

“In this regard, I fully support what Pope Francis was saying. Now it’s the time to end the war, and now it’s the time to negotiate and stop killing,” he said.

In an interview broadcast earlier this month, the Argentine pontiff urged Kiev to “raise the white flag and negotiate.”

The Ukrainian government reacted with fury. The Vatican insisted the words “white flag” were intended to mean a cessation of hostilities, not a surrender.

LEFTISTS CAN BRING WESTERN BALKANS INTO THE EU

Baier also said leftists in the EU can help Western Balkan countries that want to join the bloc to meet the membership criteria.

He recalled the Copenhagen criteria, which were set in 1993 as basic conditions for EU accession, emphasizing the importance of respect for human rights and the rule of law.

“I would also add respect for trade union rights and labour rights. I think that the European Left Party, which is in contact with left forces in different countries of the Western Balkans, can play a constructive role in creating these conditions, which are laid down in the Copenhagen criteria,” Baier pointed out.

Europe’s Mood of War Is Whitewashing the Far Right

Ahead of June’s EU elections, centrist politicians are again calling for a vote to stop the far right. But the far right has already won mainstream credibility — and it’s because it accepts the EU’s increasing devotion of public funds to the defense industry.

By Francesca De Benedetti

April 8, 2024
Source: Jacobin


Israeli President Isaac Herzog meets European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen [ Dursun Aydemir - Anadolu Agency]


Forget the “cordon sanitaire” against the far right. Today, European neoliberalism is defended by a cordon into which such forces have already been integrated. The European Union’s future is being built well before citizens actually cast their votes on the first weekend of June: the paradigm shift is here already.

Until the 2019 European Parliament election, it still made sense to talk about a barrier against the far right. Now it is completely broken. One of the main reasons why the so-called center right has come to terms with far-right leaders such as Giorgia Meloni is their common pro-business purpose.

Amidst the campaign for June’s election, Brussels’s attitude toward investing public money in the defense industry, and European leaders’ push for a “war economy,” don’t just show that they prioritize the profits of a few. The building of a “wartime” narrative and the call for unity also serve to preempt criticism and help pave the way for forthcoming decisions and appointments in the EU institutions.

“At the top of the European institutions, a less ideological approach is needed,” French president Emmanuel Macron recently said. He favors a top EU position for Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank (ECB) chief. The European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is campaigning for a second term, which in her case means fronting EU policies ever more to the advantage of corporations; she had done it already with Big Pharma, and now it’s the turn of the agro-industry and the defense sector.

Even if many don’t realize it, an increasingly neoliberal Europe is being built before our eyes — and its political leadership now includes the far right. But proposing an alternative has already become more difficult. While reactionaries are on the march, a progressive front against them is sorely lacking.
The Neolib Trinity

There is much talk about von der Leyen, Draghi, and outgoing Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte taking on key roles after June. The trio share a remarkable compatibility with the neoliberal pact. Although voters have to wait until June 6–9 before they pick the new EU Parliament, European leaders are already negotiating what will come after.

EU politics have a well-known unwritten rule with a German name: the so-called spitzenkandidat (“lead candidate”) process, which implies that the presidency of the European Commission should be entrusted to the frontrunner from the most-voted political family. This would suggest that European voters have direct control over at least one of the leading positions in Brussels. But in real (political) life that’s not how things work.

This was flagrantly obvious in 2019, when the spitzenkandidat from the European People’s Party (EPP) — Manfred Weber, today the leader of this center-right grouping — was outmaneuvered by Angela Merkel. During the negotiation among heads of government, the then German chancellor — and EPP member — Merkel imposed her defense minister, von der Leyen, as president of the EU Commission. She’s now running for a second term, as the EPP’s chosen spitzenkandidat, despite many delegates from her political family preferring not to support her.

National leaders are even more influential when it comes to the renewal of the presidency of the European Council, which brings together the twenty-seven heads of state and government to define the European Union’s political priorities. Draghi seems a likely pick for this position, although his sponsors prefer not to endorse him publicly: premature moves would squander his chances.

NATO will also change its secretary general in 2024, later than expected. It was no accident that incumbent Jens Stoltenberg has extended his mandate — his staying in post till this fall will allow top EU and NATO picks to be decided in combination. Today, Rutte, who as Dutch prime minister stood out as a “frugal” defender of austerity, is putting himself forward for this NATO role.

There are three key dates to see who is going to hold the EU’s steering wheel. From June 6–9, Europeans will vote. On June 17, an informal meeting of heads of government will enter into negotiations. But the unofficial time for the decision is right now: for there are already intense behind-the-scenes talks. Von der Leyen discussed this question with Meloni during her Italian trip in January. The Italian premier in turn talked with Macron about appointments at the last European Council. And the French president had negotiated with Olaf Scholz a few days before, when he went to Berlin.

The waltz of convergences is underway. The final outcome is subject to unforeseen factors until the end, but the neoliberal assumptions of the main players are set. After the EU and its leaders preached austerity during the years of the financial crisis, the pandemic provided a trigger to increase public spending not in support of welfare but to restore an ailing capitalist system.

Here is the scenario that is currently being worked on. With von der Leyen remaining as the president of the Commission, EU policies will be increasingly biased toward corporations. Already during the pandemic crisis, von der Leyen acted as a strong ally of Pfize-BioNTech, using private communications (texts and calls) with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla to negotiate a higher-price vaccines contract; the European Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating her over “interference in public functions, destruction of SMS, corruption and conflict of interest.” At that point, the EU Commission president also hindered the Trips Waiver, a temporary patent waiver aimed to reduce the huge inequalities in global access to vaccines. During her ongoing spell in office, corporations have privileged access to decisions in Brussels.

With the campaign for a second term already in the pipeline, last fall this attitude sharpened, with the aim of attracting EPP’s major voters, i.e., businesses. In September, the Commission president announced the appointment of an EU small and medium enterprises envoy. She also asked ex-ECB chief and former Italian premier Draghi to prepare a report on the future of European competitiveness, stating that “a competitiveness check should be conducted on every new piece of legislation.”

Then winter came, and it was the season of agribusiness: Copa Cogeca, the most powerful farmers’ lobby, and the tractor protesters were greeted with deference in Brussels. Quite the opposite, climate activists were criminalized by European governments. The Green Deal, the only patch of progressive color in von der Leyen’s presidency, ended up faded by blows of derogations. Plans for the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) — whose green goals were considered so much “blah blah blah” by Greta Thunberg — were further cleansed of climate issues.

At the beginning of March, EPP delegates had to meet in Bucharest to endorse von der Leyen as their frontrunner. The Commission president showed up with a big gift. On the eve of the EPP congress, the EU commission launched a “new defense industrial strategy.” The legislative package is a wink at the defense industry as well as at Macron: the French president is pushing to inject funds into the sector, and von der Leyen will need his support to be confirmed for a second term.

However, Macron’s office aims to achieve the best negotiating conditions, and that is why at the end of March, when journalists asked the French president about von der Leyen’s future, he said that “the EU presidency must not be hyper-politicized: the president must rise above the parties.” This statement recalls the main argument with which the former Goldman Sachs man and former ECB chief Draghi was called into the Italian political arena to become prime minister. The callback is not accidental.

Since 2023, Macron’s entourage has considered Draghi an option for a top EU job, in the first instance as president of the European Council. The plan is precisely to propose him as a somewhat impartial name, as the former savior of the euro and the future savior of a Europe trapped amidst multiple crises, wars, and rising right-wing forces.
Rally ’Round the Corp

Thus the vicious circle closes: after austerity and anti-social policies have increased support for right-wing populism, another dose of neoliberalism is proposed as the medicine.

There is a reason why the word “resilience” is so fashionable in Brussels, after the globalization of capitalism has shown its full limits. Instead of extending social rights, strengthening welfare, and redistributing wealth, the rabbit in Draghi’s hat will consist of increasing EU’s public debt in order to aid business. No matter if austerity cuts social expenses: paradoxically, public funding can be used without restraint when it helps global private players to perform well and capitalism to reconvert itself once more.

With the alibi of preparing the report on the future of European competitiveness, Mr “whatever it takes,” as Draghi is known for his response to the Eurozone crisis of the 2010s, is already having close discussions with European governments to whom he is explaining how to manage global challenges: with an “enormous amount” of investment; and “public money will never be enough.”

Draghi and Macron — two figures who are certainly receptive to the demands of the big players in finance and the global economy — have shared the idea of new, common debt, jointly issued by EU member states along the lines of “Next Generation EU,” since they sat together at the European Council as national leaders. Then as now, they have to face Berlin’s reluctance in this regard.

Launching the “war economy” and referring to “European boots on the ground in Ukraine,” the French president played a lead role in generating hype around the increase in military spending, and in promoting the narrative about the risk of EU becoming directly involved in a war. This trend is due not only to Macron’s love for defense corporations.

It is important to note that the European center left is also aligned with this focus on the defense industry. At the beginning of march, Socialist leaders gathered in Rome for their European party congress. German chancellor Scholz spoke in favor of increasing military spending. The Danish premier, Mette Frederiksen — also a name in the running for the presidency of the European Council — is ready to cut welfare for this purpose: “Europe must curb welfare spending to deter Russia with prolonged defense funding increases,” she told the Financial Times.

Political scientists usually refer to the so-called “rally ’round the flag effect” to explain how, faced with a perception of external threat such as war, the entire nation identifies with the leader and critical attention is reduced.

There doesn’t need to be a war for that, although war is all around us today. Thirteen years ago, in Italy, the rise of the spread (the gap between German and Italian bond yields, taken for a measure of investor confidence in Italy) was presented by mainstream media and politicians as a cataclysmic event. This framing paved the way for the rise to government of Mario Monti, a former EU Commissioner, and his “blood and tears” austerity policies.

Already back then, the call for a “technical” (rather than party-political) government was made. In fact, anything but merely “technical” in its interventions, Monti’s leadership was politically oriented by a neoliberal compass, as could be seen from his government’s austerity policies, including a disputed pension reform. Becoming prime minister in 2021, Draghi was presented to Italian public opinion as a savior who would get the crisis-hit parties of a bind. The same framing could now be used at the European level: this summer Macron will perhaps describe him as the new messiah.

The expected electoral success of the far right is going to favor this type of narrative, because it will provide the bogeyman, or to put it another way, a “threat” that favors the rally ’round the flag effect. But this is a game in which each side plays their role: when it comes to neoliberal policies, the far right and the mainstream parties are on the same page.

The dismantling of the cordon sanitaire was triggered by the European People’s Party three years ago, when it began a tactical alliance with Meloni. This cooperation is mainly based on a common neoliberal attitude. Italy’s prime minister goes beyond laissez-faire: she often says that the state “should not bother those who have a business.” After including a criminal shield for tax evaders in a decree, during a trip to Sicily Meloni referred to the fight against tax evasion by shopkeepers as a case of pizzo di stato: that is, she compared taxes to a state-imposed mafia racket. While the far right shows sympathy for tax evaders, no sympathy goes to those on the tougher end of things. Meloni abolished the so-called “reddito di cittadinanza,” a social safety net that benefitted vulnerable groups, and she used International Workers’ Day to issue a decree that further reduces restrictions on precarious contracts.

In February, in the European Parliament, Reconquête — the xenophobic and Islamophobic party in France led by Éric Zemmour and Marion Maréchal — joined Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) grouping, which is a bridge to the EPP. This is only apparently paradoxical. Even though it is the most far-right force in French electoral politics, Zemmour’s party “has a neoliberal approach and it exploits a process of radicalization of the bourgeoisie,” Jean-Yves Camus, one of the leading experts on the French far right, told me.

Despite the rhetoric of leaders like Macron and Weber, who still devote inflammatory words against the threat of the far right, they are the ones who normalized it. The neoliberal perspective is the trait d’union that binds them together. Immediately after June’s elections, the far right is going to provide the self-defined centrists a perfect alibi to divert the EU in an even more neoliberal direction. It’ll be a call to “rally ‘round the corporations” that European policy increasingly serves.

Populist radical versus traditional extremism

Not your father’s far right


All over Europe, the new, populist far-right parties have become part of the political scene. They’re not defined, as the old far-righters used to be, by what they want, but by what they don’t want.

by Jean-Yves Camus

Extensive research into far-right populism over the last 30 years has yet to find a precise, workable definition for this catchall term, and we need more information on the political category it covers. Since 1945 Europeans have used “far right” to mean a range of very different phenomena: xenophobic and anti-system populism, nationalist-populist political parties, and even religious fundamentalism. But the term should be used with caution because, for militant rather than objective reasons, movements labelled as far-right are often assumed to be a continuation (adapted to contemporary circumstances) of nationalist-socialist, fascist or nationalist-authoritarian ideologies, which is not the case.

German neo-Nazism — and to some extent the National Democratic Party — and Italian neo-Fascist movements (CasaPound Italia, Fiamma Tricolore and Forza Nuova, which together represent only 0.53% of voters), certainly follow their models’ ideology. So do the modern avatars of movements that emerged in central and eastern Europe in the 1930s: the League of Polish Families, the Slovak National Party and the Greater Romania Party. But in western European elections, only the now defunct Italian Social Movement, which became the National Alliance in 1995 after its leader Gianfranco Fini steered it in a more conservative direction, has managed to bring the far right out of marginality (1). In eastern Europe the far right is stagnating (see map): though the success of Golden Dawn in Greece and Jobbik in Hungary (2) show it is not dead, it is very much a minority.

The values of this traditional far right are unsuited to an age that does not seek grand ideologies preaching a new humanity or a new world. The cult of the leader and of the single party does not satisfy the demands of fragmented, individualist societies in which public opinion is formed by televised debates and social networking. But the ideological legacy of the old-fashioned far right remains fundamental. It is primarily an ethnic view of peoples and national identity, from which stems a hatred of enemies both external (individual foreigners and foreign states) and internal (ethnic and religious minorities and all political opponents). But it is also an organic, often corporatist, social model founded on a political and economic anti-liberalism that denies the importance of individual freedoms and the existence of social antagonisms, except those between the “people” and the “elite”.

To the populist and radical right

In the 1980s another category of populisms began to have electoral success, and the media and commentators called them far-right too. Yet some sensed that comparing them with the fascist movements of the 1930s was no longer valid, and would prevent the left from developing a proper response. How were we to refer to xenophobic populism in Scandinavia, the Front National in France, Vlaams Blok in Flanders or the Freedom Party of Austria? The political scientists’ battle over terminology began: “national populism” (used by Pierre-André Taguieff) (3), “radical right”, “far right”. It would take a whole book to analyse the semantic arguments, so let us just say that these parties shifted from the far right to the populist and radical right. The difference is that formally, and usually sincerely, radical-right parties accept parliamentary democracy and elections as the only route to power. But though their institutional plans are vague, they emphasise direct democracy through popular referendum, rather than representative democracy. They all have slogans referring to a clean sweep, and to removing from power elites (meaning social democrats, liberals and the conservative right) they deem to be corrupt and out of touch with the people.

To these parties, the “people” form a trans-historical entity that includes the dead, the living and generations yet to come, linked by an unchanging, homogeneous cultural background. This leads to a distinction between “pure-bred” nationals and immigrants (especially non-European), whose right of residence and economic and social rights the parties wish to restrict. The traditional far right remains anti-Semitic and racist, but the radical right has found a new enemy, internal and external, in Islam, with which it associates all who come from countries with a Muslim culture.

Radical right parties defend the market economy because it allows individuals to exercise a spirit of enterprise, but the capitalism they promote is exclusively national, which explains their hostility to globalisation. They are national-liberal parties, believing that the state should intervene not only in areas of traditional state competence, but also to protect those left behind by a globalised economy; this is evident from the speeches of Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National.

Happy to participate

The radical right differs most from the far right in showing less hostility towards democracy. Political scientist Uwe Backes (4) has shown that German law accepts radical criticism of the existing economic and social order as legitimate, but defines extremism — which rejects the values embodied in basic law — as a threat to the state. So we could define movements that totally reject parliamentary democracy and the ideology of human rights as belonging to the far right — and those that accept them, to the radical right.

The two groups also occupy different political positions. The far right is in the position of what Italian researcher Piero Ignazi calls the “excluded third” (5). It glories in its non-participation and draws strength from it. The radical right would be happy to participate in government, either as partners in a government coalition — like the Northern League in Italy, the Democratic Union of the Centre in Switzerland or the Progress Party in Norway — or to vote with a government in which it does not participate — like Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands or the Danish People’s Party. These parties exist between marginality, which if prolonged prevents them from winning many votes at elections, and normalisation, which if too obvious can lead to a decline. Can they survive?

In Greece’s 2012 legislative elections, the neo-Nazi movement Golden Dawn won nearly 7% of the vote (6), after nearly 30 years as a tiny group. This does not mean that its esoteric Nazi racism suddenly won over 416,000 voters: those voters had initially preferred the traditional far right, the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), which had held seats in the Greek parliament since 2007. But there was a key development between the two elections in 2012: LAOS joined the national unity government led by Lucas Papademos, whose goal was to get parliament to approve the new rescue package agreed by the troika (7) in return for drastic austerity measures. Having become a radical right party (8), LAOS had lost some of its appeal compared with Golden Dawn, which had refused to make any concessions.

But in most European countries, the radical right has either supplanted its far-right rivals (Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands) or succeeded, like the True Finns (now the Finns Party), in establishing itself where the far right has failed.

Lately, the radical right has met electoral competition from parties founded on sovereignty agendas that centre on leaving the European Union, and exploit national identity, immigration and cultural decline, yet are not regarded as extremist or racist. They include the Alternative for Germany, the UK Independence Party, Team Stronach in Austria and Debout la République, led by Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, in France.
Defined by dissent

The term populism is often misused, especially to discredit criticism of the neoliberal ideological consensus, questioning of the polarisation of European political debate between conservative neoliberals and social democrats, or any expression at elections of popular discontent with the failings of representative democracy. Academic Paul Taggart, despite his fairly precise definition of rightwing populism, cannot resist comparing it with the anti-capitalist left, overlooking the basic difference between it and the radical right — the right’s explicit or latent racism (9). For Taggart, as for many others, the radical right is not defined by ideology but by its position of dissent within a political system where the only legitimate choice is seen as between liberal and centre-left parties.

Giovanni Sartori’s theory is that the political game revolves around the distinction between consensus parties and protest parties. Consensus parties can exercise power and are acceptable as partners in a coalition, and they illustrate the problem of democracy by co-option in a closed system: if the source of all legitimacy is the people, and a significant proportion of the people (15-25%) vote for a populist and anti-system radical right, how can we justify protecting democracy from itself by keeping that right away from power — though without, in the long term, managing to reduce its influence?

This question is important: it also concerns the attitude of opinion leaders to the alternative and radical left, which is delegitimised because it wants to transform society rather than adjust it. The radical left is often referred to as the mirror image of the radical right. Political scientist Meindert Fennema has defined a vast category of protest parties, opposed to the political system and blaming it for all ills, while offering no specific answers. (Is there, in fact, any specific answer to the issues the social democrats and neoliberal-conservative right have failed to resolve?)

Europe’s problem may be the rise of the radical right, or it may be a change in the right’s ideological paradigm. Significantly, over the past decade, the traditional right has become less reluctant to accept radical groups as partners in government (10). This is more than electoral tactics and arithmetic. In France, voters now often move back and forth between the Front National and the Union Pour un Mouvement Populaire, and the old model of rightwing movements with different ideologies no longer gives a true picture. France will probably now have two competing right wings — one nationalist-republican (morally conservative and grounded in sovereign issues, synthesising the plebiscitary tradition and the radical right in the form of the Front National, a return to the idea of the national family); the other a federalist, pro-European, pro-free trade and socially liberal right.

All over Europe, the power struggle between rightwing movements is happening along similar lines, with local variations — nation state versus European government; “One land, one people” versus multicultural society; “total subordination of life to the logic of profit” (11) or primacy of the community. Europe’s left will have to recognise that its adversaries have changed before considering how to beat the radical right at the ballot box. And there it has a long way to go.


Jean-Yves Camus
Translated by Charles Goulden


Jean-Yves Camus is a research associate at France’s Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques (IRIS). His latest book is Les Droites Extrêmes en Europe (The Far Right in Europe),Seuil, Paris (forthcoming).


(1) His current party, Future and Liberty for Italy, won 0.47% of the vote in the February 2013 election.


(2) See G M Tamas, “Hungary without safety nets”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, February 2012.


(3) Pierre-André Taguieff, L’Illusion populiste (The Populist Illusion), Berg International, 2002.


(4) Uwe Backes, Political Extremes: a Conceptual History from Antiquity to the Present, Routledge, Abingdon, 2011.


(5) Piero Ignazi, Il Polo Escluso: Profilo del Movimento Sociale Italiano (The Excluded Pole: a Profile of the Italian Social Movement),Il Mulino, Bologna, 1989.


(6) The May 2012 legislative election failed to produce a majority capable of forming a new government and a further election was held a month later.


(7) The International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission.


(8) Its leader, Georgios Karatzaferis, was formerly a member of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s New Democracy party.


(9) Paul Taggart, The New Populism and the New Politics:New Protest Parties in Sweden in a Comparative Perspective, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1996.


(10) The Northern League in Italy, the Freedom Party of Austria, the League of Polish Families, the Greater Romania Party, the Slovak National Party and the Progress Party in Norway.


(11) Robert de Herte, Eléments, no 150, Paris, January-March 2014.

The Resistible Rise of the Far Right in Europe

By NPA Antifascist Commission

May 24, 2024

Source: International Viewpoint


Image by Elekes Andor, Creative Commons 4.0

In Italy, the far right, with Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party and the Lega (formerly the Northern League), have together led the government since the parliamentary elections of 25 September 2022, in addition to the right-wing Forza Italia party of the late Silvio Berlusconi.

In Sweden, two weeks earlier, the Sweden Democrats (SD) were among the winners of the parliamentary elections of 11 September 2022. [1] Winning 20.5%, the SD became the country’s second largest political force in terms of votes, behind the Social Democratic Party (30.3%), now in opposition. The Moderate party (classic right, 19.1%) then succeeded in forming a coalition with the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the SDs. Although the latter party did not hold any ministries, it did have a governmental parliamentary majority dependent on it and a seat on the “coordination” committee of the coalition parties. The governmental agreement largely bears its signature on immigration and security.

In Finland, following the parliamentary elections of 2 April 2023, the True Finns party became the second political force with 20.1% of the vote, nipping at the heels of the traditional right-wing party, the National Coalition Party (20.8%). Here, the far right has entered the government of the conservative Petteri Orpo, occupying ministries alongside the main right-wing party as well as the Christian Democrats and the Swedish minority party. The True Finns hold the ministries of Economy, Finance, Interior, Justice and Social Affairs. Remarkably, since the summer of 2023, Finland has been gripped by a succession of strikes and university protests against the anti-social “reforms” implemented by this government, the latest of which was a strike described as political (even though a draft law is intended to ban so-called political strikes) lasting fifteen days from 11 March 2024, against new employment legislation.

In other European countries, the far right is in a strong position. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, founder in 2008 (and legally the only member to date) of the Party for Freedom (PVV), emerged as the leader of the leading electoral force in the last parliamentary elections on 22 November 2023, with 23.49% of the vote, after having obtained 10.79% in 2021. Although the PVV subsequently failed to form a government with Wilders as Prime Minister due to a lack of parliamentary support, the Netherlands appears to be moving towards a coalition government with the PVV as the leading force. In addition to the PVV, a future coalition is expected to bring together a farmers’ party that protests against environmental standards (the BBB), a right-wing liberal party (the VVD) and a split from the Christian Democratic Party.

In Austria, the fragile federal government has brought together the conservative right (ÖVP) and the Greens since January 2020. But the far-right FPÖ party is expected to win the forthcoming general election in autumn 2024, where it is projected to receive around 30% of the vote. [2] In the meantime, the FPÖ is currently in government in three of the country’s eight regions.

In Eastern Europe, while the national-conservative PIS party lost the parliamentary elections in Poland on 15 October 2023, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungarian Fidesz party, in power since 2010, still governs in Budapest. The two parties cover a spectrum that, in France, would encompass both the right and part of the far right. In Hungary, they are joined by a far-right party that is not part of the government, Jobbik (“The Best”); this party has tried to refocus in the most recent period, but at the risk of splitting off from a harder, more extremist current that gave rise in 2018 to the Mi Hazank (“At Home””) movement. The polls currently forecast Jobbik’s share of the vote to fall to less than 3%, compared with 6.34% in 2019 and 14.67% in 2014, but the new Mi Hazank formation is expected to break through with more than 8%.

TWO GROUPS IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

The far right in the European Parliament is represented mainly in two separate groups. On the one hand, the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, created in 2019, which includes the French Rassemblement national (RN), the Italian Lega, the Dutch PVV, the Austrian FPÖ and the German AfD party. [3] On the other, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, whose backbone was initially made up of the British Conservatives until they left the European Parliament following Brexit, which includes Fratelli d’Italia, the Swedish Democrats, the True Finns and the Spanish party VOX. The Polish PIS is now the largest force.

However, in March 2021, Fidesz left the European People’s Party (EPP, which brings together the classic bourgeois right) and is negotiating to join other groups, including the ECR and ID. The Hungarian party could play a pivotal role, bringing these two groups closer together. Although there are noticeable divisions between the ID and ECR, particularly on economic issues, the majority of ECR members are more or less neoliberal on economic issues, even if part of the ID group emphasizes populist social demagoguery like the French RN – at least as long as these parties are in opposition in their respective countries.

Lastly, the French Reconquête party, which is also presenting a list for the European elections but is not guaranteed to pass the 5% vote threshold required to enter parliament, currently sits in the ECR group with its only outgoing MEP, Nicolas Bay, elected in 2019 on the RN list. However, in addition to belonging to different parliamentary groupings, there are deep divisions – apparent or real – running through the far right “family”.

CLEAVAGE OVER RUSSIA

The majority of these parties in the European Union, especially in the western part and in Germany, were historically very supportive of, and even explicitly linked to, the Russian regime in the years after 2000. But this position has become much more difficult to assume publicly since the start of the war against Ukraine.

The French RN is currently one of the most outspoken critics of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The reason is simple: France’s main far-right party believes it is so close to coming to power nationally that it cannot afford to adopt a stance that would put it at odds with majority opinion. As during the 2022 presidential election campaign, when, after the announcement of the start of the war in Ukraine, the RN was forced to throw out 1.2 million copies of an eight-page leaflet because it was illustrated with a photo showing Marine Le Pen with Vladimir Putin to demonstrate her qualities as a “stateswoman”. In the days that followed, Marine Le Pen claimed that Ukraine was a positive illustration of a “national liberation struggle”, claiming that her party was following the same logic.

Other parties, structurally allied to the French RN, are not taking the same position. This is the case of the FPÖ, which has also had a formal cooperation agreement with Putin’s United Russia party since 2016. Some of its representatives now claim that the agreement was “only formal”. However, Karin Kneissl, the foreign minister appointed at the end of 2017 at the suggestion of the FPÖ (although she does not hold a party card), invited Vladimir Putin to her wedding in August 2018. In September 2023, Kneissl announced that she was moving to St Petersburg. Moreover, since the arrest on 29 March 2024 of a former agent of the Austrian National Security and Intelligence Directorate for spying for Russia, the Austrian state apparatus has been rocked by revelations of pro-Russian activities.

At no time has the French RN questioned its alliance with the FPÖ, which is a pillar of its policy of European alliances. Worse for the RN’s current official position, their parliamentary group (ID) expanded its ranks at the end of February 2024 to include the Bulgarian party Vazradjane (“Renaissance”) and the Slovak National Party (SNS). Both are close allies of Vladimir Putin’s regime within the European Union. As far as the Bulgarian party is concerned, three of its deputies took part in a United Russia meeting in Moscow on 16 February 2024. As for the SNS, in Bratislava it is part of a coalition government which, along with Fidesz in Hungary, has the most pro-Russian foreign policy of all the member countries of the European Union.

PSEUDO-CLEAVAGE ON “REMIGRATION”

Another, largely artificial, divide emerged in February 2024. Since mid-January 2024, there had been massive demonstrations against the German AfD party, with over a million people taking part in various German cities. The motive was the publication on 10 January 2024 of a report shot on hidden camera about a meeting held behind closed doors between AfD party executives, members of the identitarian movement, representatives of the most right-wing wing of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union, classical right-wing) and a section of the employers’ association. At the conference, the Austrian identitarian activist Martin Sellner – who has since been banned from entering Germany – spoke out on the subject of “remigration”. [4] Sellner had fantasized about deporting two million people, including German nationals who were “poorly integrated” or “complicit in mass immigration”, to an unidentified model state in North Africa that would take them in.

Marine Le Pen then distanced herself from the German party, publicly questioning whether she should continue to work with it in the European Parliament. The co-president of the AfD party, Alice Weidel, wrote her a public letter, citing translation errors and claiming that her party was only calling for convicted foreign criminals to be deported “in accordance with the law”.

The fact remains that this divide is largely imaginary, with Marine Le Pen’s public stance due solely to her desire to put on a good show in the eyes of public opinion, wishing to avoid any “extremist” appearance. However, one of the pillars of the ID group in the European Parliament, the FPÖ, and in particular its president Herbert Kickl – who was Austrian Minister of the Interior from 2017 to 2019 – has been shamelessly using the term “remigration” for years, without Marine Le Pen having found fault with it, until now.

ANOTHER EUROPE, FREE OF FASCISM

The real divisions are not within the far right, whose positions can be very elastic, but between the far right and its opponents. European leaders need to revive and reorientate their national economies (budget cuts; increased exploitation; “structural” unemployment), against a backdrop of a race to war. In the face of popular discontent, reactionary, patriarchal and xenophobic demagoguery, combined with the repression of mobilizations, leaves plenty of room for the far right, which often appears to be the only real opposition party. In this sense, the necessarily neoliberal policies of the European Union are a stepping stone for European fascism.

It is up to us to fight on the basis of fundamental positions, rejecting their ideas, which remain unacceptable in all forms. We demand open borders and a Europe-wide redistribution of wealth. Immediately, we are in favour of a European minimum wage and equal social rights for all. This means breaking out of the shackles imposed by the EU, and will require major victorious mobilizations across the continent.

April 2024

FOOTNOTES

[1] Founded in 1988, the Sweden Democrats were initially an openly neo-Nazi party, which has now “normalized”.

[2] The FPÖ, the Freedom Party of Austria, was created in 1955 from the rubble of Nazism by transforming the “League of Independents”, itself created in 1949. Austria’s political life was controlled by the Allies during the Second World War until 1955, when the Treaty of Neutrality was signed, restoring full sovereignty to the Austrian Republic. Until 1955, it was impossible to reconstitute a party that was too close to historical Nazism. As soon as the obstacle was removed, the FPÖ was set up, its first president Anton Reinthaller (who died in 1958) having been Secretary of State for Agriculture under Adolf Hitler.

[3] Founded in 2013, the AfD (Alternative for Germany) is a far-right party expected to win around 18% of the vote in the coming European elections.

[4] “Remigration” is a concept coined by Renaud Camus, a French far-right writer.

Translated by International Viewpoint from Revue l’Anticapitaliste.

UK’s Rwanda bill is doomed for political failure

MIREIA FARO SARRATS and TAREK MEGERISI 

26th April 2024
SOCIAL EUROPE

European governments should remember that not only does such a policy not work to deter migration—it will politically damage any party that adopts it.
Diversity advantage: the colourful Lisbon neighbourhood of Mouraria is enlivened by a range of retail entrepreneurs, including from south Asia (Mauro Rodrigues / shutterstock.com).

When the British government first advanced its bill to send migrants offshore to Rwanda back in April 2022, the then home secretary, Priti Patel, promised it would ‘change the way we collectively tackle illegal migration’. Two years later and with the bill finally passed into law, the policy is a floundering disaster: it is unlikely to deter illicit migration, damages the global standing of the United Kingdom by violating international law and endangers refugees’ lives, all at huge financial cost.

Nevertheless, Patel was disturbingly prescient. Germany’s own conservative party, the Chirstian Democratic Union, is now advancing its own Rwanda scheme, Italy is flirting over a similar enterprise with Albania and the European Commission is trumpeting comparable schemes across north Africa in the build-up to the European Parliament election.

The idea has undeniably caught on, yet the Rwanda bill has not stopped regular or irregular migration. The most recent year-on-year statistics show net migration to the UK at a record high. On top of this, irregular migration rose by 17 per cent a year after the Rwanda bill was first unveiled as the ultimate deterrent for small-boat crossings of the English Channel


Extreme version

The Rwanda bill is, after all, just an extreme version of the failing externalisation policies which already dominate European migration policy. Externalisation policies aim to push border management on to a third country, thereby stopping and processing migrants before they cross into Europe. Over the past decade, Europeans have desperately and enthusiastically engaged in such deals with almost every southern neighbourhood country. It has cost Europeans tens of billions of euro, severely undermined their positioning as advocates of human rights, warped relationships with Europe’s southern neighbourhood and damaged other foreign-policy goals.

Ultimately, it has not even stopped migrants arriving, but only caused more hardship and deaths en route. In Italy, for example, which has a policy of externalisation, the number of migrants who arrive irregularly has nearly returned to 2016 levels.

Not only has externalisation proven to be an unsuccessful way to regain control over migration, maximise migration’s benefits or mitigate its negatives, but a Rwanda scheme has already failed in Israel.

Nevertheless, the British government has pursued the bill despite the UK Supreme Court unanimously declaring it unlawful, given the scheme’s propensity for refoulement—defying the legal principle that any asylum-seeker should not be returned to somewhere they’re at risk of harm. Instead, the British government put itself above the law, issuing a new bill to forcibly designate Rwanda a safe country while providing ministers powers to disregard inconvenient sections of international human-rights conventions. Given the UK’s founding role in the European Convention on Human Rights and a history of advocating for international norms, multilateralism and the rule of law, the bill has done more to tarnish the UK’s reputation than help the government ‘take back control‘ over migration.
‘Looking tough’

Given the Rwanda bill seems doomed to fail, it is worth asking why the idea is so popular among other European governments. European politicians across the spectrum seem to believe they must ‘look tough’ on migration to win votes and stave off the far right. This means adopting the right-wing framing of migration as a security threat and only challenging the finer points of how right-wing migration policies are implemented.

But recent polling for the European Council on Foreign Relations reveals European politicians are trapping themselves in a migration hysteria of their own creation. Of the major crises Europeans feel most strongly about, migration polls beneath all others of the past decade. Those who are moved by immigration are mostly concerned about controlling arrivals, with data also intimating that populations become less concerned over immigration once they become more familiar with those migrating. The crisis Europeans feel most strongly about, by a significant margin, is in fact the economy—a crisis that migration can help alleviate.

The electoral significance of migration is therefore not as voters’ main priority but as an indicator of the right wing’s success in making migration a symbol of the European Union’s failures. Moreover, there is such tribalism among the right over migration that right-wing constituencies remain suspicious of any mainstream candidate who tries adopting their rhetoric. This suggests that echoing the right on migration does not even win right-wing votes.

Given these facts, it’s no real surprise that, despite making the Rwanda bill a headline policy, the UK’s Conservative Party is polling at an all-time low, along with perceptions of how it is handling migration, all while pushing voters over to the far-right Reform party. After all, the bill is profligately expensive, costing £290 million before a single person has even been deported. In the context of widespread government cuts and a cost-of-living crisis, such a policy seems tone-deaf. And stoking anti-migration anxieties while resorting to increasingly desperate measures to pass the bill amid record-high immigration does not exactly demonstrate control.

For other European parties mimicking the migration policies of Britain’s Conservatives, these political dynamics will almost certainly remain. Such policies will still lose votes, even in the unlikely scenario the UK government is able to make a Rwanda scheme stop illicit migration.

Mainstream European politicians’ approach to migration on the campaign trail and in the halls of power is clearly backfiring. After decades of intensifying externalisation, third states are controlling migration flows while the far right is controlling migration discourse.
Breaking from dogma

This election year must be the year mainstream European politicians break from the far-right migration dogma that led to the Rwanda bill. Recent history shows that another election cycle of mainstream parties hyper-fixating on migration over other voter priorities, while competing over ever more extreme policies, will only aggravate fears of migrants, economic profligacy and an image of failure—dynamics that will make a bad situation worse and deliver further returns to the far right.

In their campaigns, rather than trying to co-opt a discourse describing migration as a threat, mainstream candidates should challenge this discourse, highlight its decade-long failings and relate the topic to specific voter concerns. They should make solving migration about improving processing and integration and boosting the economy, rather than brutalising migrants and refugees.

After all, it’s the cost and optics of thousands of destitute asylum-seekers awaiting processing, unable to work or join communities, that shape the image of failure. In many ways, such policies are doing the far right’s job for them. In the UK’s case, where 94 per cent of asylum-seekers are also employment-seekers, an alternative policy of fast-tracking to employment could have netted the UK £211 million annually and bolstered an economy in recession. This kind of discourse and policy shift then sets up the platform to build the medium- to long-term collective approach needed to sustainably control migration.

If mainstream European politicians learn from the mistakes of the Rwanda bill, then perhaps Patel will be proved right in the way she least expected: the Rwanda bill will change how we collectively tackle migration, but by becoming the symbol of just how badly Europe’s externalisation policies are failing, on every metric possible.

This was first published by the European Council on Foreign Relations



Mireia Faro Sarrats
Mireia Faro Sarrats is the communications officer at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, she played the same role at the European Institute of the Mediterranean. She has a masters in human rights, democracy and globalisation from the Open University of Catalunya.


Tarek Megerisi
Tarek Megerisi is a senior policy fellow with the middle-east and north-Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, focused on European policy-making towards the Maghreb and Mediterranean regions, especially Libya.