Bannon’s mission to weaken EU
Bannon said he would invest a ‘‘couple of million dollars’’ in the project and planned to relocate to Europe soon.
However, uniting eurosceptic parties in a USstyle campaign could be mission impossible: Salvini and Orban want to weaken the EU but not leave it, Wilders wants to destroy it and France’s farRight leader Marine Le Pen wants to reform the EU before putting French membership to a referendum.
Previous attempts to unite the far Right have produced little. After elections in 2014, Le Pen and Wilders forged a farRight parliamentary group, but it is the smallest with just 35 out of 751 seats. Salvini belongs to it but Orban does not.
Bannon may get a warm welcome from Wilders in Amsterdam but faces a cooler reception in Sweden, despite a big swing toward the far Right Sweden Democrats in the recent election.
‘‘We aren’t following Steve Bannon’s political work. He as a person is of no interest to us,’’ a party representative told Dagens Nyheter newspaper in July.
Sweden Democrats did not respond last week to emailed questions about Bannon’s project.
Bannon, though, is undeterred, saying in an email to Reuters that the Swedish party’s feat of winning 17.6% of the vote had set ‘‘an example for populists everywhere’’.
‘The end of Europe’
ProEU forces see populist eurosceptics as an existential threat that could lead to the EU’s disintegration and a resurgence of the nationalism that led to two world wars.
Even conservative allies of the eurosceptics are worried.
‘‘They are all extremely different, however they are united by antiestablishment, nationalism and opposition to European bureaucracy,’’ said Renato Brunetta, a prominent figure in the conservative Forza Italia party which forged an electoral pact with Salvini’s League party at home and is allied with Orban’s group in the EU parliament.
‘‘The result is that these ties risk being sufficient to result in victory for this political atmosphere . . . If this were the case, it risks being the end of Europe,’’ Brunetta said.
The EU parliament cannot propose legislation and needs a majority to block laws and budgets, but it can move amendments. With a third of the seats, Bannon says, antiEU lawmakers would represent a serious minority to be reckoned with.
He cautions that Europe’s eurosceptics and populists should not get ahead of themselves. The Movement’s goal is not to win a majority in May.
That would be unrealistic, he said, appearing to backtrack from some previous statements.
‘‘I am not sure these entities can go from the number of seats they have [now] to absolute control in one fell swoop. I think it might take a couple of iterations.’’
Salvini says the elections are ‘‘the last chance for Europe’’ and Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi describes them as the first ‘‘real election for the future of Europe’’.
ProEU parties on the left of European politics are girding for battle as well, although they too are struggling to present a new EU vision that can accommodate calls for more flexible fiscal policy and more controls on migration from Africa.
French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to fight for the proEU camp. However, a senior official in Macron’s Government said he was worried Salvini’s candidates, in particular, would do very well and that the Italian minister could emerge as the leading light of Europe’s nationalist forces.
Frans Timmermans, first vicepresident of the European Commission, said proEU parties needed to make a strong case for change next May as the future of the EU was ‘‘up for grabs’’.
‘‘I think the electorate in all of Europe is still on the fence,’’ he said.
We have spoken to these populist nationalist parties around Europe and one of the things they say to us is that they never get the chance to talk together. They feel
alone.