14 June 2024

ECFR's Garton Ash: Wake up! After these elections, Europe is again in danger

A Europe that just celebrated on the beaches of Normandy the 80-year-old D-day beginning of its liberation from war, nationalism, and fascism now again faces fascism, nationalism, and war.

Please don’t be reassured by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s complacent statement that “the centre is holding” during what we might call E-day – 9 June 2024, when the results of 27 different national elections to the European Parliament were announced. That’s true in the aggregate distribution of seats between the main party groups in the European Parliament, with her own centre-right European People’s Party group coming out comfortably on top. But the European Union is run by national governments even more than by its directly elected parliament, and E-day produced hard-right successes in core member states that range from the significant to the shocking.

None of these Eurosceptic parties will be so stupid as to advocate following Britain’s Brexit by trying Frexit, Dexit, or Nexit. Instead, they will continue to pull the EU to the right from inside, with an even harder line on immigration, determined opposition to the green measures urgently needed to address the climate crisis, reduced support for Ukraine, and – nationalist as they all are – clawing back national control from Brussels. So don’t let anyone tell you it’s “not so bad”. It’s bad, and could get worse.

Most dramatic is France. I was in Normandy for the D-day anniversary and watched President Emmanuel Macron trying to use the international commemoration event (the one British prime minister Rishi Sunak missed) to tell an inspiring story about how that liberation paved the way for today’s EU. But in the surrounding villages I saw mainly election posters for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and heard stories of widespread support for it. Sure enough, on E-day the National Rally scored a stunning victory, winning more than 30 per cent of the vote and trouncing Macron’s liberal centrist Renaissance. In the little town of Ver-sur-Mer, where my father landed along with so many other British soldiers to begin the liberation of western Europe on 6 June 1944, the National Rally got some 33 per cent of the vote. Another significant chunk of votes in Ver-sur-Mer went to Marion Maréchal, Le Pen’s even more extreme niece, the name of whose party, Reconquête, suggests a ‘reconquest’ of Europe from allegedly alien and especially Muslim inhabitants, as openly advocated by its founder Éric Zemmour.

Then came the bombshell. Macron, whose always extraordinary self-confidence is now visibly tipping into hubris, announced that he was dissolving the French parliament and calling fresh elections on 30 June, with a second round on 7 July. “I can only salute this decision”, replied Le Pen. This is a huge gamble, counting on the excellent French two-round electoral system for voters in most constituencies to prefer another candidate over the National Rally one in the decisive second round. But given the depth of popular anger, there’s a serious risk that – just three days after Britain gets a government of the pragmatic, very cautiously pro-European centre-left in its election on 4 July – France may get a government of the Eurosceptic hard right, binding the hands of Macron, the continent’s leading advocate of a stronger Europe. If so, this would be France’s Brexit moment, although without the resulting exit....

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