Changing the EU will be no easy task, even for populists

Is the European Parliament about to go into meltdown with the arrival of an invading army made up of crusader populists?

This is the big question facing Brussels as the European elections dawn across all 28 member states, including an officially reluctant UK. All the available evidence suggests that the parties that make up what is loosely called the Far Right are set to secure their greatest pan-continental breakthrough since the 1930s. The fear is that the “crazies” will disrupt the traditional governance of Europe to the extent that chaos reigns and nothing gets done that does not conform to a new hyper-nationalist agenda.

Many would say, and a good thing, too. It is high time, according to the critics, that the cosy centre-right/centre-left alliance that has dominated Europe for the last 20 years be given a kick up the backside. For too long, they say, the leaders of Europe’s Deep State, for whom the idea of a supra-national Union long ago achieved cult status, has made all the big decisions, ignoring the concerns of those who see member states, within secure borders, as the most responsive and efficient expression of democracy.

At the national level, the necessary breakthroughs have already been made. Italy is governed by two populist parties, The League and the Five-Star Movement. In Germany, the Bundestag, which has always prided itself on the exclusion of extremists, has had to accept the emergence of the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) as the nearest thing to an official Opposition to Angela Merkel. Austria is governed by a coalition of the moderately-right Austrian Peoples Party and the hardline Freedom Party. In Sweden, too, and in the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark, populists are on the march.

But it is in the East that the greatest existential threat is being posed. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have established themselves as the Visegrad Group, committed to rejecting all edicts from Brussels of which they do not approve, not only on immigration, but on regulation, justice and standards. In alliance with Italy’s Matteo Salvini and Luis di Maio, they were already a force to be reckoned with. From July 1, that force could be all the greater.

Perhaps the greatest single challenge to centrist presumptions will come in France, where the Rassemblement National – formerly the Front National – of Marine Le Pen looks poised to make a comeback after its poor showing in the presidential and National Assembly elections in 2017. Le Pen has been tomorrow’s woman since long before yesterday, but it could be that on this occasion her time has come.  The eruption of the Gilets-Jaunes has been the catalyst here, allowing her to draw strength from the frustrations of ordinary citizens that goes beyond mere bigotry and prejudice. Emmanuel Macron looks to be on a hiding to nothing. His back-of-an-envelope En Marche movement never had its roots in the people, and the humiliations heaped on him by the street protests of recent months have only added to a sense that Jupiter is turning retrograde. If the Far Left (which is also polling well) and the Far Right are both expanding, someone has to feel the pinch.

In England, of course, the Brexit Party, looks set to supplant Ukip as the largest-ever UK delegation to Strasbourg, hell-bent on reducing the Commission, Council and Parliament to a super-state of impotence. The irony that if Remain had won the referendum he might have ended up as the leader of a revolution, rather than a thorn in Brussels’s side, is no doubt not lost on Nigel Farage. He could have been the Messiah. Instead, whatever he may yet achieve in the UK, he will long be remembered as the John the Baptist of European populism.

But it would be a mistake for the insurgents to get carried away by their own rhetoric. Triumphalists of the Right would have us believe that the new Parliament that meets for the first time on July 1 will be hobbled unless it guarantees to return power to the people – that is, to the member states – over the course of its five-year mandate. But they are likely to discover that the Old School, though reduced in numbers, will continue to hold key positions, most obviously the presidencies of the Commission and Council in succession to Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk.

The Parliament itself may well turn out to be 30 per cent populist, giving the hard-right the power to block or delay proposals made or agreed in Brussels. But the other 70 per cent of MEPs can be expected to unite on the core issues of “values” and regulation. Cunning, experience and the ability to twist arms are what count most in Europe, and it will take the new boys and girls time to learn the ropes and win friends. There will be no shortage of battles. Not all, however, will be won by the Right. In the end, it will be the c-word (compromise) that most defines the next five years.

This is not to say that there is room for complacency in the Centre. EU decision-making may well be on the cusp of important change. Since 1999, when the European People’s Party, which groups together the centre-right across the Continent, consolidated its grip on power, the EU has been a reflection of two things: conservatism (with or without a religious dimension) and an unshakeable belief in the institutional destiny of Europe. “Ever Closer Union” – a phrase that first appeared in the preamble to the 1957 Treaty of Rome – is the goal of the EPP that, up until now, has been challenged only by the UK and fringe parties of the left and right.

Today, the easy assumptions underpinning Ever Closer Union are not only being questioned, but in many cases rejected. It is probably true to say that more than half of European voters think there is too much Europe and not enough democracy and that this has been the fault overwhelmingly of the EPP. Not all of those who are sceptical of further integration are populists, or extremists of any kind. They include reformers who have no wish to abolish the single currency, still less the single market or customs union, but feel that too many edicts are coming down from Brussels without anyone asking their approval.

Alienation is the buzz-word here. Large numbers of the EU’s 515 million citizens find it increasingly difficult to associate themselves with what is going on in their name in Brussels. The euro crisis in 2008-12 intensified what was already a growing resentment. The migration crisis of the last seven years, which the Commission seems to think comes under its exclusive jurisdiction, added fuel to the fire. In Italy, Greece, the former East Bloc and, more recently, Spain, defiance of the instruction that each member state should take an allocation of what are for the most part Muslims looking for a better life became a matter of what in America would be termed states’ rights.

Ever since the creation of the Common Market, there has been a North-South divide in Europe. Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece have been ranged in economic terms against Germany, the Benelux and Scandinavia, with France and Britain somewhat awkwardly holding the middle ground. Today, there is also an East-West rift. The nations, formerly under Soviet control, that were incorporated into the enlarged EU in 2004 have received an unprecedented level of financial support from Brussels. This has not stopped them from falling back into old habits, with governments seeking to limit the independence of judges, placing curbs on the media and reinforcing their borders against immigrants in defiance of the Schengen agreement on open frontiers.

In response, the EPP – previously stretched by its association with Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi – has suspended the membership of Fidesz, the governing party in Hungary, led by the maverick Viktor Orban. Now they are waiting to see where his MEPs will sit when the new Parliament is convened.

What the EU calls populism, Orban and others call the right to make their own decisions. Reconciling the two will be the main task of the incoming European Parliament. Should it fail, the entire European Project could find itself splitting at the seams.

An early test of the new reality will come when the European Council, made up of heads of government, tries to appoint a replacement for Juncker, whose trouble-hit term of office ends in November. The EPP this week reaffirmed its “unwavering support” for Manfred Weber, a member of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, who has never held executive office but is leader of the group in Strasbourg, where he has built a reputation as a solid party man and an experienced late-night power-broker.

As the spitzencandidat, intended as the EPP’s shoo-in, Weber has run into heavy flak. It is not only the fact that, unlike all previous Commission Presidents, he has not held high office (he is in fact virtually unknown in Germany), it is also the recognition by Parliament in general – the Socialists as well as the Populists – that the People’s Party no longer lives up to its billing and is campaigning on little more than fumes. It may be that with support from Angela Merkel and the enthusiastic backing of the Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Weber will make it through the process. But he will first have to convince France’s Emmanuel Macron that a more centrist candidate – most obviously the chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier – would not be the better choice and then go on to defeat the Socialist Frans Timmermans, already in situ as Juncker’s number two.

Initially, the choice will be for the Council to make. But the Parliament’s ratification, which in the past has been seen as automatic, cannot after this month’s elections be guaranteed. Europe is entering a new and stormy period. The enfants-terribles of the Right are coming of age and the only thing we can be certain of in the years ahead is continued uncertainty.

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