|
|
The Strache circus is of course also a problem for right-wing populists outside of Austria, because the issues raised by the video are a problem for them all across Europe. For months the AfD itself has been tangled up in several party donation scandals involving Alice Weidel, the party's floor leader in German parliament, as well as its leading candidates heading into this weekend's European elections, Meuthen and Guido Reil. [...]
Kremlin Shifting Strategy
No less troubling is the fact that the Ibiza video once again sheds light on the close contacts many right-wing populists in Europe have with Russia, a problem for which the AfD has also been in the headlines. In April, DER SPIEGEL, ZDF, La Repubblicaand the BBC reported on the activities and connections of Markus Frohnmaier, a member of German parliament with the AfD. A document circulated inside the Russian presidential administration at the time of the Bundestag election campaign describing the politician as potentially becoming "a deputy under absolute control" of Russia. [...]
The BND, Germany's foreign intelligence agency, and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the country's domestic intelligence apparatus, are currently detecting a change in the Kremlin's strategy. Rather than relying solely on its own media and channels for campaigning and aiming to steer the agenda, it is now focusing much more on individuals, a small group of parliamentarians were recently told in a classified meeting. They were informed that the people selected by Moscow included somewhere between a half-dozen and a dozen members of the Bundestag. [...]
Loans from Moscow
Similar episodes can be found all across Europe. When Marine Le Pen's Front National, now known as Rassemblement National, convened a party conference in Lyon in November 2014, the guest list was similar to that of Salvini's rally in Milan and delegates from Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party also attended. That same year, Le Pen's party had received two loans from Russian banks amounting to 11 million euros to help finance its election campaigns.
Two years later, the French right-wing populists asked Moscow for another 3 million euro loan, but it is unclear whether it was ever granted. [...]
In Great Britain, the National Crime Agency is investigating suspicions that Brexit leader Nigel Farage received money from Russia through indirect channels. Many consider it probable that the Kremlin sought to manipulate the Brexit vote to destabilize the European Union.
There is a greater amount of urgency surrounding these questions in the aftermath of the Strache-Ibiza video. Are economic interests at stake when Matteo Salvini's Lega party repeatedly advocates an end to the EU's "useless, or even harmful" sanctions against Russia? Do the Greek far-right parties get money for their frequently expressed conviction that there is a "natural alliance" between Greeks and Russians? How does Russia's president exploit the image he enjoys as being one of the last guardians of true values among European groups of both extremes? A leader who seeks to prevent what he describes as a weakened, immoral, decadent EU from prevailing?
"There is conspiracy of all the radical right-wing nationalists everywhere, apparently with the help of the Kremlin, or of oligarchs round the Kremlin, to disrupt this union," Guy Verhofstadt, a prominent Belgian member of European Parliament, told the Times of London on Wednesday. The German newspaper Die Welt this week quoted former French President François Hollande as saying that whoever votes for populists in Europe is "giving their vote to Trump and Putin."
That may sound preposterous, but it has long since become apparent in the European Council, where European heads of state and government still establish the broad parameters of EU policy. Coalition governments that include populist parties are often more open to influence from abroad than others. Once example is Middle East policy. Countries like Hungary have begun diverging from the European stance to serve American interests. Because Hungary stood in the way, the EU was not able to condemn the Trump administration's decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as a diplomatic mistake in December 2017. Budapest essentially became Donald Trump's advocate in Brussels.
The unanimity requirement for important decisions in the European Council thus gives populists veto power. And their partners abroad are quick to praise them for services rendered. Twelve days ago, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was showered with praise by the U.S. president himself during a visit to the White House. Orbán, Trump said, does a "tremendous job" and is "highly respected all over Europe." [...]
The EU isn't equipped to stand up to such adversaries. It does have a couple of instruments it can use to punish intractable member states, but it hardly ever uses them. EU countries worried about being punished in the future regularly block their deployment. The dream of outgoing European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that the EU might one day become a global political player seem illusory. [...]
But the populists are currently finding success with their assault on the political establishment. They have representatives in parliaments across the continent, and established parties in almost every country in Europe are worried about their advance. [...]
The numbers show that the populists are generally still far from securing a majority on a national or European level -- Poland and Hungary notwithstanding. But in places like Italy and Austria, they are becoming more than just convenient partners for parties in need of parliamentary majorities and in France, they could become the largest party in the country. In many European nations, it has become increasingly difficult to put together stabile governments made up of moderate political parties. [...]
Clever politicians like Salvini or Strache are perfectly suited to an era in which voters prefer watching videos than reading essays. But the current wave of populism aimed at the European Union and its Brussels headquarters is more than just a game being played by self-obsessed demagogues online media. The current form of populism, whose actors pose as the uncorrupted in a sea of corruption, has many roots: real problems and unrealistic expectations; broad fears of eroding financial security; feelings of being left behind. That is where populism derives its strength. And the anger that comes with it is perhaps best studied in the Eastern European countries that joined the EU a decade and a half ago.
These European elections are falling on a European anniversary that is being largely ignored. Fifteen years ago, the EU incorporated an entire group of Eastern European countries, enabling the peaceful unification of the continent - an historical godsend that led to a Nobel Peace Prize for Brussels. Today, however, this same EU has a terrible - catastrophic even - image within the right-wing governments in these countries.
Established Everywhere
In many parts of Eastern Europe, the EU is seen as a conspiracy of overpaid, traitorous bureaucrats. Like the communists before them, it is said, the EU technocrats are intent on reeducating the Eastern Europeans. [...]
That is the message delivered by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice party in Poland, and by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz Party. The governments in Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia also include similar figures. EU-skeptics have become established everywhere in the region.
And yet, contradictions abound. No halfway influential party in Eastern Europe wants to leave the EU. Despite the success of the Kaczynskis and the Orbáns, the EU enjoys tremendous support from the Baltics to the Balkans, including 90 percent support in Poland. The governments clearly have no mandate to escort their countries out of the EU. Indeed, surveys indicate that people there have more trust in the EU than in their own elites.
There is an economic explanation. Between 2004 and 2020, 356 billion euros will have flowed into the 10 accession countries from the European Structural and Investment Funds alone. Struggling state economies have transformed into regions of significant growth. [...]
Eastern Europeans have been delivered the message that they are second-class members of the bloc - poorer and still backwards, and that they should become real Europeans, real democrats before they speak up. [...]
The resulting feelings of inferiority have fueled right-wing populists. [...]The 2015 refugee crisis plunged half of Europe into temporary chaos, but more than anything, it gouged out a chasm between West and East. [...]
Thus far, every attempt at a broad, right-wing alliance in Europe has failed miserably, with the Front National itself having been part of many of those failures. The new concept for a European Alliance for People and Nations is also unlikely to go anywhere and conflict seems unavoidable.
The AfD in Germany and Lega in Italy are roughly as far away from each other on economic and finance policy as the liberals from the FDP and the far-left Left Party are in Germany. There are also deep, seemingly unbridgeable ideological rifts between Le Pen's party and the PiS in Poland and Fidesz in Hungary when it comes to society, family and women. As such, the planned right-wing "super fraction" is nothing more than a typical populist mélange of braggadocio and canniness. Likely the most important motivation for cooperation is the prospect of forming a large fraction that would automatically become more visible in European Parliament. It would also be handed more responsibilities, receive more speaking time and, most importantly, get more money.