It gets tiresome, constantly having to wonder whether the princes in charge of Europe, namely the heads of state or government and all of their commensal ministers, are sowing the seeds of populism and other forms of extremism on purpose. This time, it’s Italy’s turn (see EUROPE 11974).
To be quite clear about it, Italy’s political classes need no lessons from anybody when it comes to unstable and unsound governance. You don’t need me to tell you that in Italy, as in other places, the phenomenon of ‘dégagisme’, stemming from popular dissatisfaction with established professional politicians, is much in evidence. For instance, how much credibility can a political party led by an octogenarian who has been disbarred from holding office possibly have? With all due respect to the European People’s Party which, as Mario Monti reminds us, saw fit to consider Berlusconi the “last bastion against populism” (Le Monde, 2 March; our translation), it may just have given itself enough rope...
No, as a former Green MEP of Belgian nationality, François Roelants du Vivier, so rightly observed, the European leaders must now learn to live with a “different Italy, a country that has decided to take its revenge on a political class (‘la casta’) that has been spurned to an unimaginable degree due to its corruption, nepotism and blatant ineffectiveness” (Facebook, 5 March; our translation). It deserved to be said, but even so, let’s not absolve ‘Europe’ of all responsibility: “let us admit our guilt”, this member of the old guard added, noting that on this occasion, the “selfishness of northern Europe” got “a taste of its own medicine”.
We can all agree that the success of the ‘anti-establishment’ parties, such as the League and the 5 Star Movement, lies largely in the regrettable absence of European solidarity towards Italy – let alone Greece – over the influx of refugees it experienced. “We chose not to deal with the migration issue at European level as soon as it arose”, commented MEP Alain Lamassoure, a former French Minister for European Affairs, who immediately went on to say that “if the Europeans bear a responsibility for the misfortunes of Italy, this can be found in the selfishness not of ‘Brussels’ and its institutions, but of Rome’s major European partners, first and foremost France and Germany” (La Croix, 6 March; our translation). There can be no clearer way of coming out and saying that the fault lies with the national leaders...
And having reached this conclusion, it is tempting to point the finger of blame solely at Viktor Orbán and others from the region who are hiding behind him to pull up the drawbridge against a fair distribution of refugees. It would be a reasonable thing to do, but superficial. The problem lies deeper and is much more politically complex, as shown by this question about the European border guard corps, raised by Lamassoure: “if we really want it to be effective, are we, the French, prepared to hand over all of our customs officers and most of our border police to European level?” Which countries would be prepared to make a commitment to do this with no loss of time? And to ask the question is to answer it...
And the answer to the question is that the European Council does not build Europe, it simply manages it from one week to the next, everything boiled down to the acquis or thereabouts. It manages it through a complex system of red tape that aims solely to preserve the national interests – or, at least, what looks like the national interests in the short term. It is this Europe, which invokes the sacrosanct rules of discipline, which is suffocating more and more of its citizens, that is spreading the feeling that their children’s futures will be less bright than their own, that is plunging them into a state of powerlessness to do anything about decisions made far above their heads.
The researcher Margherita Movarelli, of the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, hit the nail on the head when she explained that many of those people, in Italy and elsewhere, who are now casting protest votes belong to what used to be known as the ‘moderate electorate’: “middle-class households, entrepreneurs, but also factory workers, unemployed people of different ages and social status and young people deprived of opportunities in a country which, unfortunately, seems to have increasingly less to offer. Put simply, these are ordinary people. They feel betrayed and are disappointed in the parties which they traditionally voted for and are hoping to see their conditions improve” (Wilfried Martens Centre, 7 March).
On that basis, we cannot but feel that our colleague Pierre Haski also hit the nail on the head when he said that “once again, it is not the populists who are strong, but their opponents who are weak, worn out by their inability to adapt their countries to the winds of globalisation and give some hope back to a world of worry” (http://www.nouvelobs.com , 5 March; our translation). But are the members of the European Council not the figureheads of parties whose actions in the member states are bolstering the civil defiance that is meat and drink to the ‘anti-establishment’ parties? Are they not, above all, leaders who, without being subject to even the most basic democratic checks and balances at European level in most cases, are lacing the EU and, hence, its member states, into a straitjacket that is making the European project intolerably uncomfortable for increasing numbers of citizens?
The paradox is that as Henri Lastenouse, secretary general of ‘Sauvons l’Europe’, observes, this is causing a truly European political landscape to emerge by default: “election after election, we note that although there is no unified democratic space, there are unquestionably trans-European tides of public opinion. Indeed, although they are expressed through national silos, at different dates and on different terms, the political issues and dynamics at work within each member state are evidently similar. This will not necessarily lead to a better world, because the theme of these new democratic tectonics is to pit Europe against populist movements”.
How much longer will the citizens, the sections of European civil society hoping to dig the European project out of the mess the European Council has got it into, allow this to go on?
It is time to react and to make it clear that the amalgam between populist movements and parties that want only to redesign European integration cannot continue. Otherwise, inevitably, the most dangerous extremist nationalistic forces will win the day.
Michel Theys