Far right already governs 7 member states. “EU democratic standards at stake”

Brussels – The old cordon sanitaire policy to keep the far right away from the centres of power has failed to prevent its rise. And now, the moderate right is winking at the more radical parties, with the result that they are already part of the governments of seven EU member states. The warning of Rosa Balfour, director of Carnegie Europe,  is in an editorial published in La Repubblica and other European newspapers: the normalization of the far right could have “nefarious effects on institutions in the long term.”

Just a few days before the European elections, the EU foreign policy think tank has produced a report that lays bare the risks of the radical right’s influence on Brussels’ policies—starting with the assumption that, after the latest coalition agreements in the Netherlands and Croatia, seven out of 27 member states are now governed or supported by the radical right. Together with Finland, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia and Sweden, they account for more than a quarter of the governments sitting on the EU Council. But “now that some politicians are open to new alliances with the far right of the political spectrum,” the question Balfour asks is, “What is the price of normalizing the radical right?”

Emblematic of this is the ongoing attempt by outgoing—and again candidate— European Commission Chairwoman Ursula von der Leyen, who is trying to divide the radical right by “courting some protagonists and isolating others.” Drawing a clear line between the two far-right political groups in the European Parliament, European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and Identity and Democracy (ID), “is crucial to ensure a coherent program for the next Commission” because the two groups are divided on some of the EU’s key priorities: support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia, the need for a greater contribution to NATO, and the umbilical cord with the United States, as the Carnegie Europe report shows. Balfour points out that, beyond von der Leyen’s purely numerical needs to win a second term, the European People’s Party has been “flirting with the radical right for some time, embracing some issues in its program or explicitly playing with allying with some of its members.” Points of contact between the “family values of the European centre-right and the ultra-conservative values of those further to the right” exist, as evidenced by the fact that Viktor Orban‘s Hungarian Fidesz party was a member of the EPP until it explicitly abandoned liberal democratic principles.

But the ongoing normalization of far-right parties “comes at a price,” Balfour warns. It has already paid it on the EU migration policy: “In an attempt to fend off the rise of the radical right, the EU has supported immigration agreements with Turkey in 2016 and, more recently, with Tunisia, Egypt and others, despite the human rights conditions in these countries,” with von der Leyen espousing Meloni’s line on the external dimension of migration as a top priority. Yet,” the Carnegie Europe Director further notes, “the agreements have done nothing to prevent the rise of the most extreme right-wing,” but “have paved the way for a tougher, ethically questionable migration policy, strengthening border controls, increasing returns of unwanted migrants and paying third countries to prevent migration flows to Europe, culminating in the recently approved Migration Pact.

According to Balfour, the next policy area where this pattern will take hold will be climate policy. However, the risk is that it will go even deeper because “policies can potentially be reversed, but if democratic institutions and processes are tampered with, the costs of working with the radical right increase further.” The dismantling of the rule of law in Hungary is the prime example: arguably, Balfour suggests, Orban’s very membership in the EPP (from which he was later forced to leave) “was one of the factors that prevented a timely and vigorous response aimed at preventing Hungary’s democratic retreat.”

The risk is also visible in Italy today: Giorgia Meloni’s government has proposed constitutional amendments that would strengthen executive powers at the expense of Parliament. Changes that would “also weaken the control of the President of the Republic, who is the guarantor of the Italian Constitution,” and that “according to legal experts, could limit the ability of the electorate to censor the power of the government.” The conclusion of Balfour’s reasoning is troubling: “We must ask whether the institutions of the EU will be willing to monitor the standards of European democracy if they depend on the political support of a section of the radical right.” In short, “turning a blind eye to the erosion of democratic standards may have short-term benefits but long-term costs.”