John O'Brennan: Far-right ascendancy across Europe — we can't be complacent about where that brings us
Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right party PVV, or Party for Freedom, talks to the media after a meeting with speaker of the House Vera Bergkamp. Picture: AP Photo/Peter Dejong
The earthquake created by the success of the Freedom party (PVV) in topping the poll in last week’s Dutch general election has to be placed in the context of the wider rise of the far right across Europe.
Irrespective of whether the PVV gets to form a new government (unlikely), its success should not have come as a surprise: in 15 out of 27 EU member states, the far right is currently polling at or above 20%, the highest aggregate level of support for far right parties since the 1930s.
This is something that should set alarm bells ringing around Europe in advance of next June’s European Parliament elections, but instead there seems a great deal of complacency in EU capitals about the scale of the changes occurring in the electoral landscape.
In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) is polling around 22% in recent polls, only a few points behind the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) but significantly ahead of the governing coalition parties. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Chancellor Olof Scholz is trailing the AfD by 5-6 points and the Green Party is fully 10 points behind, after a precipitous decline in its popularity this year.
Recent regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse saw significant gains for the AfD. The surprise here was that this was in the western part of Germany where the party has performed much more poorly in previous elections, compared to its heartland in the former East Germany. The AfD is now in prime position to significantly increase its representation in Brussels and Strasbourg.
In Italy, Georgia Meloni leads a far right party, the Brothers of Italy, in coalition with another radical right party, the Lega, and Forza Italia, Silvio Brelusconi’s former party. In one year in office the government has already initiated legal action against prominent journalists and relentlessly attacked LGBTI rights.
In Sweden, the far right Sweden Democrats are not in power but the government depends on their vote for a majority in parliament. They have exerted a great deal of influence on government and, in the process, helped to push the centre of gravity of Swedish politics further to the right.
In Finland, the Finns party received 17.5% of the vote in the general election earlier this year and is part of a four-party coalition government, with seven seats at cabinet. Commentators expect to see a further increase in representation for both the Sweden Democrats and the Finns in the European Parliament after the 2024 contests.
In Hungary, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party has ruthlessly hung on to power since 2010 by rigging the electoral system in its favour while ‘capturing’ every important state institution, from the judiciary to both public and private media platforms and universities.
The one place in Europe which has bucked the trend of far right growth recently is Poland, where last month’s parliamentary election saw a vast mobilisation of opposition voters that managed to oust the ultra-nationalist governing party, Law and Justice. It is highly likely that a new centrist Polish coalition, headed by former Prime Minister and European Council president, Donald Tusk, will take office before Christmas.
Law and Justice remains a muscular presence in Polish politics, however, especially in rural parts of the country and it will return a large number of MEPs next June.
So what do these alarming developments at national level portend for next year’s European Parliament elections?
First, it is highly likely that Germany, France, Italy and Spain will be the key battlegrounds for the obvious reason that these member states are allocated the most number of seats in the European Parliament (314 out of 720 seats in 2024).
Second, it is important to understand just how important the European Parliament is to the EU legislative process. When the first democratic elections were held in 1979 it was fair to say that the European Parliament constituted little more than a ‘talking shop’. But over the next four decades the Parliament acquired more and more legislative power, so that it now stands as the equal of the Council of Ministers (where governments are represented) in most areas of EU policy. So, it really matters who gets elected to the European Parliament.
Third, when they are elected, MEPs join one of a number of so-called ‘political groupings’ or party ‘families’. The European People’s Party (EPP) consists of centre-right conservative parties. Fine Gael MEPs sit within this group. The EPP is the largest group in the current parliament with 178 MEPs (down from 187 in 2019). Fine Gael has been stung by the announcements of sitting MEPs Frances Fitzgerald and Deirdre Clune that they will not stand in 2024. Ireland is just one of the jurisdictions where the EPP is clearly struggling at present. It is very likely to lose seats next June and, for the first time in a quarter century, may no longer be the largest political group in the Parliament.
The second largest force in the current Parliament is the centre-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S and D) with 141 seats (down from 147 in 2019). This group is also likely to lose seats in June, with the Centre left struggling in France, Germany and Italy in particular.
The third largest force is the liberal Renew Europe grouping with 101 seats (up from 98 in 2019). This group includes President Macron’s Renaissance party and Ireland’s Fianna Fáil. President Macron’s massive plunge in popularity in France in the wake of the pensions controversies earlier this year is inevitably going to bleed into his party’s vote next June. That in turn is going to considerably reduce the number of MEPs returned by the Renew Europe group.
On the far right, there are currently two big groupings with a total of 138 seats between them. The Identity Europe (ID) group currently has 76 seats and the European Conservative Reform (ECR) group has 62 seats.
These are the two groups threatening a significant breakthrough in these elections which, if it happens, will bring extraordinary change to the way the European Parliament transacts business. The big problem for the EU political process will arise if these two groups are able to put aside the (sometimes considerable) tensions between them and cohere into a muscular far right grouping.
My calculations, based on current opinion polling across the EU member states, is that these two groups would return more than 200 MEPs, an increase of about 40% on their numbers in the current parliament. On a really bad day this number could rise to closer to 250 MEPs. This would potentially make it impossible for the European Parliament to act as a unified institution within the EU architecture and likely slow down legislative activity very considerably.
The 2024 European Parliament elections are thus shaping up to be one of the most important electoral battles of recent times. They will take place months before the US Presidential and congressional elections in November 2024. There, the stakes are also enormously high, as opinion polls suggest that there is every chance that Donald Trump will win for the second time, despite his extraordinary legal travails. These contests will go a long way toward deciding whether the democratic world continues to shrivel or begins a fightback against authoritarian and far right ideology.
