LONDON: Current polling suggests that the nationalist hard right and populist parties will make strong gains, and this could have significant consequences for European-level policies.
The European Union, a bloc consisting of 27 countries, is India’s third largest trading partner with $88 billion trade in goods in 2021, or 10.8% of India’s overall trade for the year. What happens in the EU is therefore of huge importance to New Delhi, particularly when the India-Middle East-European Economic Corridor begins to materialise. As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently pointed out, “IMEC is much more than just a railway or a cable, it is a green and digital bridge across continents and civilisations”.
But there are dangers ahead. Thursday will see the world’s second-biggest exercise in democracy behind the elections in India, with some 400 million voters in the EU, from Finland in the North to Cyprus in the South, Ireland in the West to Bulgaria in the East, going to the polls over four days to choose members of the European parliament. Many consider this to be the EU’s most crucial election in living memory as it’s being held at a time of continuous crisis in a continent which is experiencing a war in Ukraine, climate emergencies, a shifting of geopolitical plates and fundamental questions on the purposes of the Union itself.
Former Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, who served in the EU parliament as a free-market liberal for more than 25 years, put it in a nutshell recently when he said the elections will pit “those of the far-right who want less Europe with those who understand that in the world of tomorrow you need a far more integrated EU to defend the interests of Europeans”. In the past five years the European parliament has been run by the Christian Democrats together with members from the traditional socialist, liberal and green sector, against the surging powers of the hard-nationalist right, represented by leaders like Hungary’s Victor Orban and Giorgia Meloni of Italy. When the votes are made public late next Sunday, it will be an indication of whether the continental political drift will imitate the rightward swing seen across much of the globe from Argentina to the Netherlands and Slovakia.
Current polling suggests that the nationalist hard right and populist parties will make strong gains, and this could have significant consequences for European-level policies. Deep seated problems could be exposed as sufficiently profound to put in doubt the EU’s future as a political entity, leaving it little more than a trading zone. A third of European respondents in a recent in-depth opinion poll believe the EU will fall apart in 20 years, a view echoed by a majority of respondents in China and Saudi Arabia. This global survey, conducted on behalf of the European Council on Foreign Relations, reflected widespread concerns that the international order is breaking up. As well as pondering on the EU’s demise, many respondents believe that the US will no longer be a democracy if the convicted felon Donald Trump wins the next election, and that a Russian victory in Ukraine would be a trigger for disruption and collapse in the world order.
All eyes will be on the results from Germany and France, two countries which are experiencing a strong lurch to the right, particularly in the under-30 age group. A survey in Germany last month showed the hard-line Alternative for Germany (AfD) is now the most popular party among the under-30s. The survey noted that politically conservative and xenophobic statements have increased among this age group as they object to mass “refugee flows” causing lack of housing, overburdened medical services and social division.
In the past decade, the AfD has moved from a conservative, Democratic Party towards a right-wing extremist party as its popularity increased. Towards the end of last year, the AfD hit a new polling high of 23%. What was once unthinkable, that a far-right party could take power in Germany for the first time since the Nazis, suddenly appeared to be not entirely far-fetched. AfD leaders began to talk about far-right boilerplate themes such as the deindustrialisation and destruction of Germany due to “leftish-green” climate policies. They attacked Germany’s coalition government for allowing its borders to be “stormed by hordes of asylum seekers”. The word “remigration” began to be heard in some circles, with some AfD leaders boasting about “remigrating” millions in response to the “mass influx” of migrants from Africa and the Middle East.
In France, immigration is also high on the list of debates as the elections draw near. The loudest voice is that of Marine Le Pen who leads the National Rally party, now considered more democratic and republican than her nationalist father, Jen-Marie Le Pen, the previous leader of the party then named the National Front. Le Pen opposes globalisation and favours a loosely confederated “Europe of the Nations”. She once called for France to leave the Eurozone, but now says she doesn’t want France to leave the single-currency. Le Pen remains firmly anti-immigrant but has recently toned down the rhetoric. She hailed the move by France’s President Macron early this year when, under right-wing pressure, he supported a controversial immigration bill that included a raft of measures aimed at taking a tougher line on immigrants. “One can rejoice in an ideological victory”, she claimed, adding that “national preference is now inscribed in law, and the French will now have an advantage over foreigners”. Polling carried out in France two weeks ago showed that Le Pen’s right-wing party would receive the largest share of the vote, 32%, from the French electorate next week, a nine-point increase from the 2019 election.
Although by far the two largest economies in the EU, Germany and France are not alone in experiencing a move to the right. Five years ago, the fiercely anti-immigrant right-wing Vox party won its first foothold in the Cortes, Spain’s parliament. Since then, Vox’s fortunes have soared and it now holds nearly a third of seats in parliament, having promised a populist agenda of tighter borders. A year ago, an extraordinary 27% of those under the age of 35 voted for Vox in a national poll. Mainstream parties have taken a hammering in Spain, where today one in three people under the age of 25 are jobless while immigration is soaring.
Spain is following the path set by Greece, which last year became the first country in the European Union to elect a far-right bloc of politicians in national elections. Many Greeks say they are tired of being let down by mainstream politicians and afraid for their future. Greece has the biggest debt in the EU and people feel they are getting poorer. There was uproar recently when people discovered a government hand-out policy where even a recently arrived migrant family gets more money a month from the state than a Greek family.
Italy is led by Giorgia Meloni, the country’s first far-right head of government with fascist roots of the post-war era. Her winning campaign in 2022 was steeped in the sharply ideological rhetoric of national sovereignty, ‘traditional families’ and fear of migrants. Since taking office she has toned down the bombast reflected in her party’s slogans, but her party’s lawmakers are still pursuing multiple far-right policies. In the Netherlands, a battle-royal is taking place about the distribution of migrants across this small country. Among four right-wing parties, populist Geert Wilder’s PVV has gained unprecedented support due to an economic and social crisis in the country.
The list goes on and on. Across Europe voters are increasingly supporting far-right politicians who are pushing ant-immigration policies and, in some cases, seeking to restrict democratic freedoms. Protests in nearly every European country have shown how the far-right has become both more visible and a greater threat to democratic values and human rights. The far-right has goose-stepped into mainstream politics, advancing and climbing steadily up the polls, shaping the policies of the traditional right to reflect nativist and populist platforms while occupying select ministerial roles.
Late next Sunday when the results are announced, many expect the rightward drift of the past year will be shown to have turned into a tidal wave. If the polls are correct, ultra-nationalist demagogues and populist-nationalists will likely have secured as much as 25% of the vote, pressurising the traditional centre-right parties to capitulate to an even more extreme anti-immigration and anti-environment position. There is a big danger that many will also adopt an anti-trade position, reflecting the current backlash to globalisation. Economists who were once ardent proponents of globalisation have now become some of its most ardent critics, a theme picked up by the ultra-right across Europe.
Globalisation propelled India to prosperity and any slowing down caused by ultra-right success in the elections could have a serious effect on trade with the EU. A fragmented EU will not be good for IMEC, which is why politicians in New Delhi will be anxiously monitoring the results.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth.