Series of elections will shape EU’s future
AFTER two turbulent years for Europe – knocked sideways by Brexit in 2016 and shaken by the rise of the far-right in too many corners of the continent – 2018 could also prove a difficult year.
The election last year of Europhile Emmanuel Macron as French president was a challenge to the ambitions of Eurosceptics not only in France, but elsewhere across the bloc – but that does not mean such currents are a spent force.
That particular brand of populist Euroscepticism that blends anti-immigration and racist sentiment along with an insular view of the world continues to draw support, especially in central and eastern Europe.
Austria begins the year (and will take over the EU presidency for the second half of 2018) with a coalition government that unites the Freedom Party – a far-right party originally founded by former Nazis – with the conservative People’s Party.
Three months after populist Eurosceptic billionaire Andrej Babis became prime minister of the Czech Republic and the far-right embedded itself in parliament, Czechs are voting this weekend to elect a new president, with the incumbent – the provocative septuagenarian Kremlin ally Milos Zeman – a favourite to win. A Babis-Zeman team in a country which in December hosted a meeting of European far-right parties would strain relations with Brussels when it comes to EU policy on issues like immigration. It would also bolster the increasingly right-wing tinge of the regional alliance of central European nations known as the Visegrád Group, which also includes Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
Hungarians will go to the polls this spring for parliamentary elections where outspoken Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s right-wing populist Fidesz party is hoping to regain its two-thirds majority lost in a 2015 by-election. In the background is the far-right Jobbik party, Fidesz’s biggest rival.
Poland will hold local elections later in the year, while at the same time facing disciplinary measures from the EU over controversial judicial reforms that could yet lead to Poland’s EU voting rights being suspended.
Poland, along with its fellow Visegrád Group members, is challenging Brussels on the question of immigration, particularly in relation to migration quotas for EU member states. All signs are that the Visegrád Group – more emboldened now by the populist currents that dominate it – will continue on a collision course with Brussels this year, refusing to accept EU law and the rules they signed up to with EU membership.
Looking southwards and Italy’s general election in March, the polls so far suggest the populist Five Star Movement could emerge as the single largest party. Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is back in the spotlight leading his centreright Forza Italia party and hoping to overturn a ban against him taking office.
The question of migration is likely to be key during the election campaign – particularly among the far-right – given Italy has found itself the main landing point for migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.
Farther west, Spain remains caught up in its spat with Catalan separatists.
WITH so much to suggest that the EU’s crisis of confidence will continue this year, the challenge is how to prevent it turning into a serious political crisis that would further rock the foundations of the bloc. Key to this will be how the Franco-German relationship plays out under Mr Macron and Angela Merkel.
Almost four months after Germany’s election, Ms Merkel is still struggling to form a coalition. In a New Year’s Eve address to the nation, the German leader put forward a vision for her fourth term in office that drew heavily on enhanced co-operation with Paris to boost the engines of Europe’s economy and manage migration, while remaining committed to an EU underpinned by tolerance and pluralism.
“Twenty-seven countries in Europe must be impelled more strongly than ever to remain a community,” she said. “That will be the decisive question of the next few years.” This year of key elections will tell us much about what direction that question may go.