President of Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen, and her Head of European Elections campaign Jordan Bardella, Nanterre, France, January 17, 2019. Liewig Christian\/ Press Association. All rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n
The 2019
\nEuropean elections are set to see an unprecedented number of far-right parties
\nenter the European Parliament. These parties are for the most part rabidly anti-EU,
\nand widely seen as presenting a danger for its future. However, far right
\nparties have a complex relationship with \u2018Europe\u2019 that the label \u2018eurosceptic\u2019
\ndoes not fully convey. <\/p>\n
Firstly, far
\nright parties have not always been anti-EU. While many of them converged on
\nanti-EU positions, they did not start from there. Both the Italian Social
\nMovement (MSI), a neo-fascist party founded by supporters of Mussolini\u2019s regime
\nin 1946 and which transformed into the conservative Alleanza Nazionale in the
\nmid-90s, and the French Front National (FN, now Rassemblement National), were
\nbroadly in favour of European integration in the 1980s, although they were
\nsceptical about the form it took. <\/p>\n
Guided by
\ntheir opposition to the Soviet Union and their distrust of American power, the
\nparties saw European unity as a means to defend their homelands and remain
\nrelevant in a bipolar world. At the same time, they opposed the primarily
\neconomic nature of the European project. Thus, they advocated in favour of a
\nEuropean common defence and a stronger European foreign policy. While for both
\nparties this appeared to be a way to pursue the national interest by European
\nmeans, it still translated into a form of support for the EEC. <\/p>\n
This did not
\nsurvive the fall of the Soviet Union and, most importantly, the signing of the
\nMaastricht treaty. These two events in particular pushed the MSI to a more
\ncritical stance, and the FN into an area of firm opposition to the European
\nproject. The FN and MSI are also not isolated cases: the Italian Northern
\nLeague and Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) underwent similar changes in their
\nEuropean policies, moving from support for the project to opposition to it . Therefore, it is worth remembering that
\nfar right opposition to the EU is a relatively new feature of the party family.<\/p>\n
Second, even
\nif far right parties do oppose the European Union, this does not imply that
\nthey all oppose it in the same way. If we consider the example of exit from the
\nEuropean Union, this remains a rather marginal position across the European far
\nright. While PVV leader Geert Wilders has famously advocated in favour of
\n\u2018Nexit\u2019 (albeit tuning it down in the 2017 elections), the League\u2019s Matteo
\nSalvini has most recently argued for the need to \u2018reform Europe from within\u2019
\nand take back control of the \u2018beautiful European dream\u2019. <\/p>\n
The
\nRassemblement National, on the other hand, has been shifting position on the
\nissue since 2002, arguing at times in favour of \u2018Frexit\u2019 and at other times
\npushing \u2018only\u2019 for a radical reform of the EU. Thus, while most parties agree
\nthat the EU in its current shape is unsustainable, they may still live by the claim
\nthat \u2018another Europe is possible\u2019 \u2013 although it is not
\nclear what, exactly, this \u2018other Europe\u2019 would look like, and if all parties
\nwould agree on its form. <\/p>\n
Finally, it is
\nworth noting that the far right\u2019s opposition to the EU does
\nnot necessarily lead them to reject \u2018Europe\u2019. In fact, far right
\nparties\u2019 understanding of \u2018Europe\u2019 is grounded in a distinction between
\n\u2018Europe\u2019 intended as a continent and civilisation, and the concrete project of
\nthe European Union. This distinction, inspired by the French Nouvelle Droite
\nand adopted by the Front National at the end of the 1980s, is still alive and
\nwell today in parties that claim to be \u2018pro-Europe but anti-EU\u2019. <\/p>\n
On one side,
\nit is used as a form of \u2018civilisationism\u2019\u00a0 to
\nrecreate the image of a unified European civilisation typically opposed to
\nIslam, and on the other side, to oppose the European Union in the name of
\n\u2018Europe\u2019. This is well exemplified in the
\nclaim made by Marine Le Pen that \u2018For us, Europe
\nis not an idea. Europe is a culture, it\u2019s a civilization with its values [\u2026] I
\nbelieve in the need for a European organisation in the great uproar of the
\nworld and of globalisation, but in no case can this construction provoke the
\ndisappearance of the nations that form it. Our European project will be that of
\nthe Nations and peoples, their diversity and their respect.\u2019 <\/p>\n
In other
\nwords, Le Pen considers that she is allowed to criticise the European Union
\nbecause she is a true \u2018European\u2019 fighting against a \u2018fake\u2019 and anti-European
\nEU. Recent research by McDonnell and Werner even suggests that
\nthis sense of a shared Europeanness has been conducive to alliances on the far
\nright, worth keeping in mind when following group formations in the European
\nParliament.<\/p>\n
These points
\nencourage us to be mindful of the similarities, but also the differences
\nbetween various European far right parties and their views of Europe. They also
\nsuggest that the notion of a \u2018European identity\u2019 is no panacea for the EU.
\nWhile often viewed as a possible solution to the EU\u2019s legitimacy issues, the
\nfar right\u2019s claim to be attached to \u2018Europe\u2019 against the EU suggests that
\ndepending on how it is defined, European identity may pose a challenge rather
\nthan an opportunity for the European Union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President of Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen, and her Head of European Elections campaign Jordan Bardella, Nanterre, France, January 17, 2019. Liewig Christian\/ Press Association. All rights reserved. The 2019 European elections are set to see an unprecedented number of far-right parties enter the European Parliament. These parties are for the most part rabidly anti-EU,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}