The expansive wave caused by the overwhelming victory of Geert Wilders in the Dutch elections on Wednesday transcended The Hague to be felt throughout Europe. There were chills in Brussels, Paris, Berlin and Madrid. In Budapest and Rome, euphoria.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was quick to be the first to congratulate Wilders to the tune of the song Winds of Change while Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini proclaimed that “a new Europe is possible”. From the opposition, the French Marine Le Pen celebrated that her victory “gives hope to Europe”. The joy of Wilders’ good result is obvious that the programs of his parties collide (the Dutchman campaigned during the pandemic against “giving money to Italy”, refuses to accept migrants who have arrived through the southern border and wants to laminate the EU budget, a goal that would put Orbán’s Hungary in serious difficulties, for example).
At the moment, the shared goal is the elections of 2024. The advance of the populist right and the far right since the asylum crisis of 2015 is patent on a continental scale and these parties could find a new shock in the context of insecurity and economic fears that dominate the continent when, in June, almost 400 million citizens are called to the polls.
The fatigue that grows due to the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine and the accelerated energy transition, the tensions caused by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in Europe and the fear that the new crisis will cause more immigration and insecurity are the background landscape on when the European Parliament elections will be held, an event that many voters perceive as less relevant than the national ones and are more inclined to cast a protest vote.
Wilders has clearly governed European waters and has known how to fish in a more than turbulent international landscape. “The result of the Dutch elections sends a signal that the European Union cannot afford to ignore,” warns Elizabeth Kuiper, an analyst at the Brussels think tank European Policy Center, who highlights the growing support for anti-immigration positions in different European countries. Asylum policy was the issue that brought down the last coalition government led by the liberal Mark Rutte, which proposed reducing the right to family reunification. Called to the polls early, a majority of voters have opted for the harshest political option, Wilders.
“Clearly, the mobilization of voters who express political unrest must be tackled on a European scale in the coming years”, points out Kuyper, with a view no longer to the elections to the European Parliament, but to the work program for the next five years. “The EU must demonstrate that it can solve social problems and develop a just climate transition”.
The latest national poll projections point to the fact that the European Conservatives and Reformists group (CRE), to which Vox belongs, the Polish Law and Justice (PiS) or Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, the object of desire of the Popular Party European, become on June 9 the third political force in the Eurochamber, above the liberals. In the next legislature, it is possible that there will be between 40 and 50 more seats to the right of the EPP, according to parliamentary sources.
This result would pose a serious dilemma to the EPP: keep alive the grand coalition of conservatives and socialists on which the EU has been built, or build an alternative majority with populist and far-right parties, a cooperation that has already become normalized in national scale in Italy, Sweden or Finland, for example. Both the leader of the EPP, Manfred Weber, and the Italian foreign minister and former president of the Eurochamber, Antonio Tajani, have openly defended the second option, which is not shared by the German CDU, but the enthusiasm has been mitigated in recent years months.
Despite the fact that Weber does not give up on attracting Meloni to the PPE, his prudence could be due to the reluctance of the liberal group to cooperate with CRE or Identitat i Democràcia (ultra-right without palliatives), because “in this case” there would not be a majority “without getting your hands dirty”, according to parliamentary sources, or to the difficulties in pushing forward legislation with a base as heterogeneous as the political magma on the right of the classic right.
