The rise of the far right

In just over a month’s time, over 350 million voters across Europe will have the chance to elect 751 members of the EU Parliament, in a staggered vote that begins in Britain and the Netherlands on May 22 and ends three days later in 20 countries, including Germany, France, Spain and Sweden.

The mammoth exercise, which takes place every five years, is particularly significant this time round: it will be the first opportunity for European citizens to express their views on the union since the sovereign debt crisis and subsequent austerity regimes imposed on much of southern Europe since 2010.

Warnings about the rise of right-wing Eurosceptic parties have accompanied most European parliamentary elections, but thus far such parties have remained a largely fringe phenomenon. However, ahead of these elections there are deep concerns about the gains that could be made by anti-European groups (which often have anti-immigration agendas, too) and the disruptive impact such gains could have on European policy.

The low electoral turnout that has long characterised European elections has provided opportunities for fringe movements with the momentum to get the vote out. Turnout was just 43 per cent in the 2009 European parliamentary elections — despite compulsory voting in some countries — compared with 80 per cent in the 2012 French presidential elections, 65 per cent for the 2010 UK general elections, and 71.5 per cent for the German parliamentary elections of 2013.

Since 2009, popular dissatisfaction with the EU has risen substantially. In member states such as Greece, anger has been fuelled by the austerity regimes and cuts to social welfare imposed by the EU; in Germany, resentment has been stoked by EU-IMF led financial aid initiatives for the benefit of the Union’s less fiscally sound members.

A survey conducted last year by the European Council on Foreign Relations found a sharp drop in the levels of trust towards EU institutions from the pre-crisis days of 2007: in France, the ECFR scale showed a drop from Plus 10 to Minus 22, and in the UK from Minus 13 to Minus 49.

Even Germany, traditionally one of the EU’s staunchest supporters, saw trust fall from Plus 30 to Minus 22. “What is striking is that everyone in the EU has lost faith in the project: both creditors and debtors and euro zone countries, would-be members and ‘opt outs,”’ the survey noted.

The years since the last European elections have also seen a surge in support for right-wing parties. At the further reaches of the political right, Jobbik — an ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigration party — succeeded in cornering just over a fifth of the votes in parliamentary elections held in Hungary earlier this month. In Austria, the far right Freedom Party has also made headway, winning just over 20 per cent in legislative elections held in 2013. In Greece, the avowedly neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, notorious for its thuggish political violence and Holocaust denial, made significant gains in elections.

In France, Front National, with its openly Islamophobic, anti-immigrant agenda, made substantial gains in last month’s local elections. The party, led by Marine Le Pen, has threatened to sue anyone who labels her party “extreme right”, is eager to take its agenda forward to the European level.

In November last year, Le Pen and Geert Wilders, the leader of Netherlands’s Party for Freedom, announced an alliance (the EU Parliament is made up of cross-country political groupings defined by ideology), and pledged to tackle the “monster” that was the EU. Quite how successful their attempt to unite other European parties remains to be seen — the UK Independence Party that has been making big waves in Britain ahead of those elections has so far declined to join. (A grouping in the parliament must have at least 25 Members of the European Parliament, drawn from a minimum of seven countries.)

What happens in the European Parliament is of growing importance. In an attempt to address concerns across Europe about a lack of democratic accountability, the 2009 Lisbon Treaty strengthened the role of the European Parliament, enacting changes that give it the power to approve, change or even reject — but not draft — EU laws (some areas such as foreign policy are excluded, though it does have the right to approve international agreements and trade matters). The eagerness of the parliament to make its voice heard became apparent last year when it voted to suspend the SWIFT data sharing agreement with the US.

There are fears that far-right gains in the polls could lead to policy paralysis in the EU, hindering attempts at reform (for example, within the banking sector) seen as essential to its recovery.

Such concerns were evident among business leaders gathered at Davos this year, with many expressing concerns about the elections. Axel Weber, chairman of UBS, said May’s European elections could lead to more extreme, or anti-European, parties gaining influence in the parliament. He cited the US Tea Party as an example of how such a group could stymie the political process.

At the same time, there are reasons for cautious optimism. Cas Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia and the author of Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe , says much of the concern is hype. He notes that over a fourth of European nations don’t have a far right party, including four that received EU-IMF bailouts (Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus), and that gains by the far right in some countries have been accompanied by losses in others. Using the right’s success in national elections as a basis, he concludes that in a worst-case scenario, the far-eurosceptic camp could at best garner 15 per cent of the seats in the European Parliament.

Counterpoint, a UK research organisation, has analysed the voting behaviour of far right MEPs. Its findings suggest that while many had a tendency to rebel and “vote against the majority on issues that matter to them”, the radical right typically fails to form a united front on issues, focusing “more on its role in gaining publicity rather than participating in policy making activities.”

There are also dangers in overstating the threat of the far right, argues Mudde, who notes how its looming menace has been used by governments as an excuse to justify soft far right policies, such as tougher immigration controls, domestically. “If you can frame your debate as ‘are you for or against?’ and put the label of the far right on the ‘against’ camp, you have a favourable frame for re-election,” he points out.

For all that, the rise of the anti-Europe, anti-immigration, ultra-nationalist right is a concern that must be taken seriously. The onus is on next month’s voters to press the case for a different vision: that of an open Europe, one that embraces reform and renewal.

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