Despite repellent views on immigration and nationalism, the European hard right isn’t generally all-out protectionist
Italy really has given Europe’s political scientists something to chew over by electing a government of not just one or two populists but a three-party coalition including varying flavours of far and hard right. The power-seasoned League led by Matteo Salvini and the ideologically more moderate Forza Italia under Silvio Berlusconi have now become junior partners, with Brothers of Italy under Giorgia Meloni the leader of the trio...
Elsewhere in the EU, even populists who profess affection for autocrats and protectionists have often gone along with the mainstream of EU trade policy. Fans of open trade were concerned after the rightwing populist vote increased in elections to the European Parliament in 2014 and 2019. In the event, many of those MEPs (though not particularly the Italians) have been relatively keen on supporting trade deals.
A highly effective constraint on populist subversion of EU internal market or trade policy is the lack of rival poles of economic activity to orient around. The most obvious example, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, has consistently indicated his openness to influence from Moscow as well as his affection for the economically nationalist Trump.
But Hungary’s economic centre of gravity very clearly remains in the EU: it’s been called an “Audi-ocracy” for the influence of component manufacturers supplying Germany’s car industry, which is itself oriented to global exports. Even before the Russian economy was crushed by sanctions over Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union was a pitiful alternative to the EU, a small rabble of economically backward Russian satellite states...
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