The extreme right arrives at the European elections in the midst of a reconfiguration process

Von der Leyen’s extended hand to Meloni and the expulsion of AfD from Le Pen and Salvini’s group mark the campaign

May 25. () –

The European elections are destined to be the great leap forward for far-right formations in the European Union, with foreseeable victories in powers such as France and Italy, but the general label hides differences between different parties that are also reflected when it comes to forming families. within the European Parliament, with alliances that have exploded in the middle of the campaign.

Today, far-right groups are divided into two large groups within the European Parliament, with marked differences on key issues such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and other less visible discrepancies on issues of social rights or the economy. Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), the family once led by the British Tories to which Vox belongs, has Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy as its main flag.

It also includes the Civic Democratic Party of the Czech Prime Minister, Petr Fiala, and the Polish Law and Justice (PiS), which in 2023 was forced to leave power in favor of the pro-European Donald Tusk. They are accompanied, among others, by the main far-right groups in Sweden and Finland or the Flemish nationalists of the N-VA, a key supporter of Carles Puigdemont in Belgium.

The Reconquista movement launched by the Frenchman Éric Zemmour also wants to join Conservatives and Reformists, while the National Group, the formation of which the former French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and favorite in France is a member, is integrated into Identity and Democracy (ID). .

To this second family belong the League of Matteo Salvini or the Party for Freedom of the Dutch Geert Wilders, which faces these elections with the guarantee of victory in the last general elections in the Netherlands and with a Government agreement under its arm. The Portuguese Chega also aspires to enter.

However, this group has been shaken by the recent break with the Alternative for Germany (AfD), abruptly expelled after its leader, Maximilian Krah, opined that everyone in the SS cannot be “automatically” considered of Nazi Germany were criminals.

It remains to be seen to what extent these disagreements will continue after the vote, as CIDOB researcher Héctor Sánchez Margalef points out in statements to Europa Press. “One thing is what is said in the campaign and another is what happens when the European Parliament is reconfigured,” he explains, emphasizing that being part of a large group is key to receiving funds and having a voice.

In this sense, he points out that leaders like Le Pen feel obliged in some way to “move away” from statements like Krah’s, especially in the case of the French leader, who wants to “present herself as presidential” and not lose electoral options at the national level. internal.

THE ORBÁN FACTOR

One of the great unknowns continues to be Fidesz, Viktor Orbán’s party, which after breaking with the European People’s Party (EPP) at the dawn of its populist drift, has made an effort in recent years to negotiate a new ultra-conservative political sphere that can serve as a counterweight. to the classic right.

The disadvantages of not joining any group will in principle force him to seek accommodation after June 9, and the bets place him in the ranks of ECR. It is “what makes sense”, according to Sánchez Margalef, who rules out a reconciliation between Orbán and an EPP that he has not hesitated to criticize for supposedly moving away from conservative values.

What plays against Orbán is that he has not finished breaking ties with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, which theoretically distances him from the positions of the ECR groups that have shown themselves to be more in line with kyiv’s theses and encouraged the sending of weapons to Ukrainian forces.

THE DAY AFTER

Historically, the major post-electoral negotiations in the European Union have been led by the popular, social democratic and – to a lesser extent – liberal blocs, but the growing weight of the extreme right has revealed certain cracks that derive from the breaking of taboos at the national level. on behalf of the Twenty-Seven.

In a common note, from the liberals to the Left, including the social democrats, they asked on May 8 to maintain the cordon sanitaire to the extreme right, in order to defend values ​​such as “pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between men and women”.

“We will never cooperate to form a coalition with the extreme right and with radical parties,” they stated, in a message addressed to other “European democratic parties” and that focused on the president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, a candidate for re-election as an EPP candidate.

Von der Leyen has been less blunt in the debates between the candidates to head the community Executive and has marked as a red line not to negotiate with “Putin’s friends”, without pointing directly to any bloc but with a hand extended towards Meloni, since that, in their own words, both work “very well” together.

The CIDOB researcher considers that the “whitening” of the ECR parties is not new, since it has advanced “to the same extent that the cordon sanitaire has been cracking” within the Member States. In fact, the leader of the EPP, Manfred Weber, had already advocated working with Meloni after the 2022 Italian elections.

Von der Leyen “resisted” then, but Sánchez Margalef assumes that if he aspires to a second term he will need to “court” the leader of the Brothers of Italy, because “her weight counts.” In fact, the future Commission will foreseeably have several members from the ECR family among its cabinets, including the Italian commissioner.

The manifesto against the extreme right has also indirectly turned against the liberals, now forced to explain how one of its members, Mark Rutte’s VVD, is a key support for the new Government of the Netherlands, led by the Party of the Freedom of Wilders.

THE PARADIGM CHANGE

The truth is that the wall that separates historically separated parties from others with more centrist positions is not as high as it was in 1999, when the entry of the Freedom Party into the Austrian Government led to the suspension of bilateral contacts between Brussels and Vienna.

In France and Germany, the cordon sanitaire has been maintained, while in Spain the agreements between PP and Vox have been generalized at the regional and local level. At the national level, the far-right is part of the Finnish Government and is the leader of the coalition in Italy, where Forza Italia – a member of the EPP – is a junior partner of Meloni.

It does seem clear that the ‘grand coalition’ between the Popular Party and Social Democrats will lose strength. According to a study by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), it will go from 45 to 42 percent within the European Parliament, expandable to 54 percent if liberals are included – six points less than in the outgoing legislature.

According to this forecast, prepared from surveys published at the national level and prior to possible reconfigurations, anti-European populist parties will be the leading force in nine countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia) and they will be second or third in nine others (Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden).

ID aspires to become the third group with the most MEPs if it manages to go from the current 40 seats to the 98 granted by the aforementioned ‘think-tank’, while ECR also rises, up to 85, with a potential gain of 18 representatives .