Far right’s plans for Europe would benefit Xi, Putin and Trump
By The Guardian Editorial
Following the Brexit referendum in 2016, then-National Rally president Marine Le Pen was in a predictably celebratory mood. The UK’s vote to leave the EU was the first breach in the “Brussels Wall,” she said.
Le Pen’s party was at that point committed to taking France down the same path, given the chance, but as the UK’s self-inflicted economic wounds became a cautionary tale for the rest of Europe, the notion of Frexit was put on ice.
Instead, Le Pen now hopes to lead far-right allies in hollowing out the EU from within. This month, she and Alternative for Germany leader Alice Weidel outlined their visions of a “Europe of nations” in which EU institutions would be stripped of cash and power. Weidel’s “new deal for Europe” would abolish elections to the European parliament, and seek German opt-outs in areas such as migration, defense and common borrowing. Le Pen’s party proposes slashing French contributions to the EU budget by 60 percent over a five-year presidential term, and ending the role of Brussels in proposing common policies for the 27 member states.
Similar ideas have long circulated in far-right thinktanks, but they are now in the programs of parties that lead the polls in France and Germany — Europe’s historic engines of integration. Weidel has targeted 2029, when the next German election is due to take place, as the year in which a critical mass of anti-EU leaders can begin to effectively unravel the European project. By then, Eurosceptic ultra-nationalist parties could conceivably be in power in France, Italy and Poland.
Faced with plotting in plain sight and a putative timetable for action, the response of pro-European forces has been distinctly underwhelming. From the economy to the climate emergency and security, Europe faces challenges that can only be properly addressed through the greater pooling of resources, allowing it to punch its continental weight.
Former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi has warned that without an industrial policy to compete with China and the US, the continent faces an existential struggle. However, other than the beleaguered and soon-to-be-departed French president Emmanuel Macron, it has been hard to find any EU leader speaking with the same sense of urgency.
Le Pen and Weidel’s interventions should be treated as a wake-up call. The kind of Europe they envisage would be less than the sum of its parts, distracted and weakened by competing national interests. In relation to defense, the moves toward European strategic autonomy would be undermined. The green transition, in the absence of collectively agreed goals, would stall. Adopting such a direction of travel would be an act of continental self-harm, opening up vulnerabilities that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (and any “make America great again” successor to US President Donald Trump) would eagerly exploit.
As a pivotal period in the history of the EU approaches, the time to start making such counterarguments is now. The case for a strong Europe at a time of geopolitical volatility and anxiety is overwhelming, but it will need vigorous advocates as a battle for hearts and minds looms.
For the time being, to paraphrase poet William Butler Yeats, the pro-Europeans appear to lack all conviction, while their opponents are full of passionate intensity.
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