CEPS: The rise of the far-right in the EU: what, why and how?

by | Sep 21, 2024

(Sep. 19, 2024 – CEPS, online)

Speakers:

  • Catherine de Vries, Professor, Bocconi University
  • Sophie Pornschlegel, Director of Studies and Development at Europe Jacques Delors
  • Max Griera, European Parliament Reporter, Politico

Moderator:

  • Sophia Russack, Researcher

The panel was organised because of the worrying trend of the far-right gaining more and more power in Member States of the European Union, like France and Germany, which led to the share of the far-right being as high as never before in the European Parliament.

Catherine de Vries started by explaining the difference between far-right parties. Far-right is actually an umbrella term, where ‘far’ can refer to two types of parties: radical or extreme. Radical parties want to change the system by reform, while extreme ones want to undermine parts of democracy. The trick is that they do not tell people ahead of the elections which one they are. As for ‘right’, we can distinguish parties as well: traditionally they have respect for democratic rules, while in a second dimension, they have a nationalist, anti-immigration and anti-elite rhetoric. According to de Vries, far-right parties act strategically when they do not reveal their true intentions in advance, since the average European does like democracy. To detect them, de Vries suggested to pay attention to whether they genuinely respect the ‘liberal parts’ of democracy, for example the rule of law and human rights.

Sophie Pornschlegel wanted to emphasize the difference between liberalism and democracy. She believes that talking about ‘illiberal democracies’ does not help when leaders like Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and parties like Fidesz are simply anti-democratic. The possibility to still have political competition might be lost, once far-right parties come to power. Even so, underestimating them is quite common in Europe, and people from democratic parties often assume that far-right parties in power would be incompetent. According to Pornschlegel, this is the biggest danger, especially since there is already a real shift in values within progressive parties who want to keep up with the far-right and win elections by copying them. Expecting short-term gains when the far-right is obviously playing the long game, like Rassemblement national in France and AfD in Germany, is a strategy that can just as well backfire.

De Vries then shed light on the role of immigration in the rhetoric of the far-right. Taking the French example, she elaborated that Front national – ‘far-right 1.0’ – was very much about immigration which was their key element. However, in order to increase their share of the electorate, Rassemblement national – ‘far-right 2.0’ – attempted to become more moderate. After all, people who vote solely on the basis of immigration constitute a smaller group. The voters of the far-right are now more heterogenous due to these parties no longer being only about immigration. Nevertheless, they do link a lot of issues to immigration, using the age-old strategy of scapegoating. The research de Viers had conducted showed that far-right has used issues, like austerity and public service deprivation, saying that the government has not taken care of people, because instead, they have spent more time and money on immigration. That way, even people who are not anti-immigration might become concerned.

De Vries revealed that what actually matters is the perception of people that the far-right can manipulate, exploiting grievances by linking them to immigration. This has proven to be an effective strategy which has made ‘far-right 2.0’ gain a much larger electorate. More and more people, such as less educated young men, vote for the far-right because of issues, like the state of healthcare and housing, blamed on immigration. Furthermore, the far-right is dominant on social media, due to usually not having as much access to mainstream media. Getting news online makes people more predisposed to get negative information, and even the algorithm seems to favour negative content, creating more opportunity for the far-right. They adjust their messages to certain groups, and that way, get votes from young people, higher educated men and even first generation immigrants who are not satisfied with the current status quo.

Pornschlegel addressed the most recent, shocking results in France and Germany. As already mentioned, the French Rassemblement national achieved it by normalizing itself, in contrast, the German AfD became more popular by being even more radicalized. According to her, far-right parties are not constructive, they do not actually want to solve problems, but pretending is an important aspect for them. Nonetheless, media-pluralism, party competition, elections, civil society, checks and balances can all be in danger, once far-right parties come to power. Democratic backsliding generally happens slowly, over the course of time. There is always a delay at European level, but far-right parties have advanced so much in Member States, that now even democratic parties try to use their strategies to win in the short term, even if that jeopardizes democracy in the long term. Pornschlegel underlined that the cordon sanitaire is crucial, and the media should not help in normalizing far-right narratives.

Max Griera described what happened in the European Parliament, with the two new groups, Patriots for Europe and Europe of Sovereign Nations. The big far-right surge was followed by a rearrangement. Viktor Orbán was quite vocal about reunifying all the ‘patriots’, and many parties were actually interested. The question was always Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni who took a long time to take a position. Before the elections, nobody wanted to commit, but once parties had the exact numbers, they started to count what would be more beneficial for them. They still made the announcements rather late. Interestingly, the new ‘super group’ Patriots is basically ID with Fidesz, Vox and ANO. AfD was considered too toxic by Rassemblement national leader Marine Le Pen, so they had to make their own group. In Sovereignists, AfD is the only big player, and in case someone drops out, they will lose their group status.

Griera noted that ID was not too involved in anything, so we will have to wait and see what Sovereignists intend to do, but he does not expect them to be too active either. On the other hand, Patriots was born out of their ‘urge’ to change Europe in their own way, at least that is what they had told their voters. But how much influence they will actually have, will largely depend on EPP. In every committee, there is a right-wing majority now, even if Patriots and Sovereignists are behind the cordon sanitaire. But as this is an informal system, Patriots has already threatened to attack it. Other groups clearly want to keep them away from positions of power, but far-right groups will still have influence in the Conference of Presidents. That is why there have been more and more chatter about S&D, EPP and Greens wanting to channel power from the Conference of Presidents to the Bureau. Vice-Presidents and Questors of the Bureau are elected, so Patriots and Sovereignists are not there. That certainly is a way to fight them, but from now on, until the end of the cycle, someone from Patriots is going to be the third to speak during plenary sessions, and there is nothing to do about that. Griera closed the panel emphasizing that EPP is the new kingmaker, so they can do anything they want.


You can watch the event here:

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