Europe’s great shift to the right

It was at once a stunning expression of anger and a distressing measure of apathy. The results of this week’s elections for the European Parliament highlighted two worrisome trends among the citizens of the 27-nation political bloc: the rise of far-right, anti-immigrant parties, and a general decline in voter interest. Only 43.2 per cent of the European Union’s 375 million eligible electors cast a ballot—the lowest turnout in 30 years. Having 213 million people ignore a body that regulates so much is a “bad result,” admitted Margot Wallstrom, the European Commission vice-president. “It does affect the legitimacy of the EU.” But the rest of the world is justifiably more concerned about just who Europe’s motivated voters appear to be:

• In Hungary, the ultra-nationalist Jobbik (“For a Better Hungary”) party took 15 per cent of the vote, winning three of the country’s 22 seats. (The makeup of the 736-member legislature is based on proportional representation.) The party is best known for its angry public rallies against “Gypsy crime,” featuring formations of its black-uniformed Magyar Gárda (Hungarian Guard).
• In the Netherlands, the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) came second in the election, capturing 17 per cent of the vote and four seats. Its leader Geert Wilders is best known for his controversial short film Fitna, which links terrorism to Islamic doctrine. At home, he faces prosecution for “incitement to hatred and discrimination.” And last February, he was banned from entering the U.K., termed a “threat to one of the fundamental interests of society” by the Home Office.
• The Greater Romania Party (PRM), an extremist movement that rails against Transylvania’s “disloyal” ethnic Hungarian minority, won 8.7 per cent of the vote and two seats. Voted out of the Romanian parliament last fall, its leader, Vadim Tudor, is a controversial former journalist and Holocaust denier who has never hidden his ties to the former Communist secret police. It’s unclear if the PRM’s other winner, soccer club owner Gigi Becali, will be able to take his seat. At present he is under investigation for kidnapping and prohibited from leaving the country.
• Austria’s far-right Freedom Party almost doubled its share of the vote to 13 per cent, winning two seats. Italy’s staunchly anti-immigration Northern League, part of the governing coalition, claimed 11 per cent of the vote and eight seats. And in the U.K., the fascist British National Party won two seats—its first-ever victories in national elections—with a historic high 6.2 per cent of the vote.

“I think we’re in for a very hard few years,” says Heather Grabbe, director of the Open Society Institute in Brussels, a democracy-building NGO financed by billionaire George Soros. “It’s the politics of fear. These parties have managed to exploit the current economic crisis, the fact that people are worried about their jobs and their future, and convinced people that this will somehow all be worsened by the ‘strangers’ in our midst.”

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While it was the mainstream centre-right that actually won the election—Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP took 28.5 per cent of the French vote, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom Party captured 35 per cent, and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union took 38 per cent—few traditional parties saw their vote increase. And the left and centre-left vote all but collapsed in many countries. In France, the opposition Socialists took just 17 per cent of the ballots, Germany’s Social Democrats turned in their lowest result ever at 21 per cent, and Britain’s ruling Labour Party captured only 15.3 per cent, its worst showing since the Second World War.

The colliding trends—the rise of the far right and the left’s vanishing act—underline a fundamental shift in European politics, says Grabbe. “In a way, it’s the legacy of 1989 [the collapse of the Soviet Bloc] catching up with the left,” she says. “They don’t have a narrative of how to get out of a crisis like this. They don’t have a clear ideology to offer.” And faced with a choice between the discredited theories of the socialist past, and the rapacious reality of the free-market present, the majority of voters seem to have thrown up their hands in disgust.

Going forward, the biggest question is whether the anger and apathy will spill over to national elections. (Germany, Portugal and the U.K. will all go to the polls within a year.) Despite the fact that the European Parliament now has the power to amend or abolish two-thirds of the EU’s laws, voters in many countries continue to view it as a less important institution than their own legislatures. “It’s not treated very seriously,” says John Curtice, a professor of politics at Glasgow’s University of Strathclyde. “People use it as an opportunity to protest against the government or support smaller parties.”

For example, the BNP’s ascension in the U.K. may say more about the unpopularity of Prime Minister Gordon Brown than anything else. His ruling Labour Party, trailing badly in the polls and battered by an expense scandal, came third in the popular vote, behind not only the opposition Conservatives, but also UK Independence, a libertarian party that advocates withdrawal from the EU. “The Labour vote scattered to the four winds,” says Curtice. The BNP’s two victories came in working-class areas that have traditionally been Labour strongholds, but have been hit hard by the economic downturn.

Even then, the more decisive factor appears to have been supporters of the left staying home, rather than switching allegiances. The anti-immigrant party’s vote increased by just 1.3 per cent compared to 2004. And those worried about a fast slide to fascism in Britain were surely heartened by the spectacle of BNP leader Nick Griffin being forced to run away from a victory press conference after protesters pelted him with eggs. Not exactly Triumph of the Will.