BRUSSELS — The European Union marks its annual Europe Day on Thursday, but instead of monotonous celebrations, all eyes are on the EU elections a month from now, which herald a sharp rise of the far right and a possible shift away from the climate that sets global trends in the block. policies.
After decades in which EU elections made little impact, the June 6-9 vote is the most important in living memory. It comes at a time of continuing crises on a continent experiencing war in Ukraine, climate emergencies, a geopolitical shift and fundamental questions about the scope and purpose of the EU itself.
“It will be an existential struggle,” said Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and outgoing member of the pro-free-market liberal parliament that has been at the center of EU politics for more than a quarter of a century. He will confront “those who want less Europe and, then, those political forces who understand that in the world of tomorrow a much more integrated European Union is needed to defend the interests of Europeans,” he said in an interview.
In purely political terms, it means those traditional socialist, liberal and green forces that led the EU parliament with the Christian Democrats for the last five years against the rising powers of the hard nationalist right, exemplified by leaders such as Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Georgia Meloni. from Italy.
The vote is the second biggest exercise in democracy behind elections in India, as the 27-nation bloc of 450 million people will elect 720 parliamentarians to serve them over the next five years with swing votes on everything from digital privacy rules up to international standards. trade policy and climate measures.
But more than that, when the results are made public late on June 9, they will be an indication of whether the continental political drift will match the rightward shift seen in much of the world, from Argentina to the Netherlands and Slovakia.
Even if the polls diverge a little on the margins of progress, they all point to one thing: far-right nationalist and populist parties will make big gains.
“If I look at the polls across Europe, more or less, I can always see the same scenario,” said Nicola Procaccini, Meloni’s man in the European Parliament, who is normally considered part of the centre-right, far removed from his party’s neo-fascist roots. Brothers of Italy party.
He said like-minded parties “are emerging more or less everywhere.” That includes election victories in the Netherlands and Slovakia and polls show them leading the way in France with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.
When it comes to the fundamentals, the EU battle could be seen as Verhofstadt versus Procaccini, where one insists that the answer to the EU’s future global challenges is just more joint policies on issues like defence, and the other says how individual member states, with their cherished nationhood at the centre, must always come first.
While 27 nations with often inefficient individual defense programs have left Western Europe at the mercy of American goodwill for much of the last half century, Verhofstadt wants a comprehensive defense union to avoid a belligerent Russia and anticipate a United States. United evasive if Donald Trump assumes the presidency in November. “It is not individual Member States that will protect people,” he said.
“And that’s why it’s an existential struggle. Because if we lose this fight against the right-wing parties, we will be left without defense, without security,” said Verhofstadt.
Procaccini, instead, focuses on what many far-right parties see as an invasion and outright meddling in national affairs by the EU institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg, France. They have specifically attacked the EU Green Deal to keep climate change at bay and have specifically targeted measures to force farmers to adopt more environmentally friendly methods, viewing them as dominant and overriding national decision-making. They want to go back to the timid origins of the EU some 60 years ago, when cooperation was much more voluntary and limited.
“We want to restore the original idea of Europe,” Procacinni said.
Anti-EU parties are unlikely to win legislative power, but a rise to third place behind the Christian Democrats and the Socialists would have a significant impact. If the European Foreign Affairs Council’s forecasts are met, the think tank states that “this ‘sharp turn to the right’ is likely to have significant consequences for policy at the European level…particularly on environmental issues, where the new majority will likely will oppose ambitious EU action to tackle climate change.”
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has already eased some climate rules and her centre-right Christian Democratic European People’s Party, the largest in the legislature, has moved to the right on migration as well. of climate policy.
If the Green Deal were to weaken, it would ensure that, beyond facing geopolitical crises, the EU would also face one of its own making.
Thursday’s Europe Day honors the memory of Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, who once said: “Europe will be forged in crises.”