Follow Us

Follow us on Twitter  Follow us on LinkedIn
 

15 October 2013

French-Dutch eurosceptic alliance forming within the context of rising populism across Europe


Far-right French and Dutch populist party leaders Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders are in talks about forming an anti-Europe alliance. Le Pen's Front National won the local by-elections and leads the French polls for the European elections in May.

Partially translated from the German and French

As the Times (subscription required) reported, leaders of two of Europe’s hard-right parties, France's Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands' Gert Wilders, could campaign together in an attempt to cement the anti-immigrant fervour gathering pace across the Continent.

Fresh from a by-election triumph on Sunday, Marine Le Pen, president of the French National Front, said she was looking for common ground with Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV). Their goal, she said, was to be at the core of a pan-EU, anti-euro, anti-immigration movement embracing disparate sceptic groups. Such a tie-up could see the hard-right block European attempts at further co-operation and co-ordination after EU elections next year.

"We are still in the process of trying to assess in what form we can coordinate and cooperate our efforts. But we are willing to do so", Mr Wilders said in an email to the Financial Times (subscription required). "We all want to do whatever we can to turn the forthcoming European elections into a Europe-wide electoral landslide against Brussels", he said.

The Independent writes that Mr Wilders has already been on a European tour this summer to try to persuade like-minded parties in other countries to endorse a common eurosceptic and anti-immigrant platform next May, with limited success: The Northern League in Italy, Vlaams Belang in Belgium and the Democratic Party in Sweden have reacted coolly to the idea. The United Kingdom Independence Party rejected the alliance outright.

Among committed Europeans in Brussels, the eurosceptic mobilisation is dreaded as a sort of barbarian invasion. Many fear that it threatens not only European integration but also the free trade and open borders that have accompanied it, reports the FT. José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, dedicated most of his annual state of the EU address last month to an urgent plea for pro-integrationists to stand up to the assault. Yet the populists notched up another victory at the weekend, when Ms Le Pen’s National Front won a by-election in the Cote d’Azur region, as reported by the Nouvel Observateur. The triumph was underscored by a new poll showing the party leads the pack for European elections with 24 per cent support.

According to an online CSA poll for BFM TV, 46 per cent of the French think far-right leader Marine Le Pen is "the best challenger" to Socialist President François Hollande and Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. Le Pen comes well ahead of former UMP Prime Minister François Fillon (18 per cent) and Jean-François Copé (13 per cent) who recently contested the leadership of the UMP, France’s main centre-right party.

On the other hand, the Front National are not without limits, argues Jérôme Fourquet, director of the Public Attitudes and Corporate Strategy Department of Ifop in an article for the Policy Network. If the next election should result in further success for the party, the internal sociological contradictions at play within its electorate should eventually lead the movement to reach a ceiling, albeit a ceiling that could be higher than that which has been achieved so far. He argues that as the Front National moves to attract left-leaning voters with welfare chauvinism it risks losing its more traditional right-wing conservative support. 

The Welt warns that the growing support of eurosceptic forces across Europe is no longer just an indicator of dissatisfaction and the classic "protest votes". The movement seems more deeply rooted and could threaten with their predicted success in the European elections in May how the EU is going to develop. "The Friends of the European Union will have no other choice than to explain more clearly and make the locig of the EU more evident so that it will be met with more approval", writes Thomas Schmid. 





< Next Previous >
Key
 Hover over the blue highlighted text to view the acronym meaning
Hover over these icons for more information



Add new comment