BusinessDay 14 Dec 2017

A4 BUSINESS DAY
C002D5556 Friday 08 December 2017
FT
ANALYSIS
European politics: leaders struggle to contain rising populism
In the last of a series, the FT shows how far-right parties are influencing immigration policy even after losing elections
Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in Marseille
Marseille’s far-right politician
Stéphane Ravier feels
robbed. After winning control
of the Northern district of the
French Mediterranean town in
2014 — one of the dozen victories
emblematic of the National Front’s
surge in local elections that year —
he targeted a seat in the National Assembly.
The race, in June, was his to
lose: the outgoing Socialist had been
convicted of embezzlement. But a
34-year-old political novice threw
her hat in the ring at the last minute.
Alexandra Louis, the candidate
for La République en Marche, President
Emmanuel Macron’s centrist
movement, came second to Mr
Ravier in the first round of voting.
But in an echo of the presidential
runoff, which saw Mr Macron defeat
FN leader Marine Le Pen in May, Ms
Louis won the seat with a 52 per cent
share of the second round vote, amid
low turnout and a campaign to stop
her far-right rival.
“She applied for the En Marche
endorsement on the internet and
secured it hours before the registration
deadline,” says Mr Ravier. “My
voters were gutted about losing the
presidential elections. They didn’t
show up.”
Mr Ravier’s defeat in Marseille is
typical of the impact of Mr Macron’s
unlikely political rise on the FN and
its blend of national-populism in
France. After winning the presidency,
the Europhile leader secured
a large majority in parliament — triggering
a sigh of relief in liberal circles
across the EU.
Rise of the far right charts (europopulus)
Months before, nativist parties
feeding on fears of multiculturalism,
globalisation and European
integration had seemed to be almost
unstoppable. European capitals
braced themselves for a turbulent
electoral year in which populist parties
vowing to upend the EU looked
set for huge gains.
Then the tide seemed to turn.
First there was Mr Macron’s victory
in France. And in September, Angela
Merkel, the German chancellor who
let in more than 1m refugees in
2015-16, most of them from Muslim
countries, won the federal election.
There were hopes that the populist
wave may have peaked: and that
France and Germany would now
come together to relegitimise the
European project.
But academics warn that Mr
Macron might be the exception, not
the rule. More than 11 weeks since
the Bundestag poll, Ms Merkel has
still failed to form a government, and
may face repeat elections. It is not
the most stable of foundations on
which to build an effective defence
of the EU’s liberal values.
Meanwhile, nativist ideas are
continuing to infiltrate mainstream
politics throughout Europe. Some
warn that, as migratory pressures
grow, the EU’s unity could come
under threat.
“Many have misjudged the
French presidential outcome, when
in reality all the facts are pointing
in the other direction,” says Patrick
Moreau, a Berlin-based researcher
at Centre National de Recherche
Scientifique, a French state research
institute. He identifies the 2015 refugee
crisis as the turning point. “Since
then, immigration and its perceived
threat to national identity have been
key factors to understand shifts in
European politics,” adds Mr Moreau.
Anti-immigration sentiment is
on the rise. Nearly two-thirds of EU
citizens believe immigration has a
negative impact on their countries,
according to a survey released last
month by Fondapol, a Paris-based
liberal think-tank.
In 2014, 52 per cent of Europeans
believed immigration was “an
economic burden” according to Pew
Research Center. In Germany, the
rate was 29 per cent — compared
with 51 per cent now saying it has a
“negative impact” in the Fondapol
survey. After a series of Islamist terror
attacks, 58 per cent of Europeans
now view Islam as a threat. They are
ambivalent about refugees: twothirds
of those polled say it is a duty
to rescue them, but 54 per cent say
their countries cannot afford to take
more of them.
It is no surprise therefore that
in a string of elections this year,
voters have veered to the right. Nativism
is now a generally accepted
notion in countries such as the
Netherlands and Austria, says Cas
Mudde, a Dutch political scientist
at the University of Georgia in the
US. “Their leaders have banged on
about a ‘nativism-light’ strategy to
win,” he says.
The trend intensified amid the
economic decline and austerity
policies engendered by the eurozone
debt crisis. Some wonder if it might
recede now that growth has returned
to the region and unemployment is
falling; this is the reformist Mr Macron’s
gamble. But many experts say
it is here to stay. “Populism doesn’t
just feed off economic insecurity, but
also off cultural clashes,” says Jean
Garrigues, a French historian.
Rise of the far right charts (europopulus)
The liberal People’s party of
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte
warned immigrants during elections
in March that they had to assimilate
or leave the country. Sebastian
Kurz, the 31-year-old wunderkind
who took over the leadership of
Austria’s centre-right People’s party,
campaigned on halting “illegal immigration”.
He is now in talks with
the far-right Eurosceptic Freedom
party to form a government and has
also suggested a rapprochement
with the Visegrad group — Czech
Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia
— that opposed Brussels’ plan
to relocate refugees across the bloc.
This tougher line is already beginning
to influence broader EU policy.
Last week, the European Commission
ditched its “burden-sharing”
system in favour of a voluntary plan
and vowed to beef up border controls.
The backtracking may herald
less solidarity among EU members
in other areas: the Netherlands, for
Michael Kretschmer, the new prime minister of Saxony from the CDU’s conservative
wing © FT montage / Getty
instance, now has a four-party rightwing
coalition which has enshrined
a tough stance against eurozone
integration in its coalition deal.
“I fear the rise of the nationalistic
right, which has its roots in the
migration crisis, will put the brakes
on economic reforms too,” says
Enrico Letta, a former Italian prime
minister and head of Institut Delors,
a pro-EU think-tank. “The whole notion
of EU solidarity is under threat.”
Prof Mudde is among those who
believe that “it all falls down on the
Macron-Merkel axis to resist”. But
relying too much on Ms Merkel
might be risky. She, too, is under
pressure from the rightwing of her
party, the Christian Democratic
Union, in the wake of elections in
September that saw the conservative
bloc fall to its worst result
since 1949. Its performance was
particularly bad in Saxony, a small
east German state of 4m people.
Local party chiefs are still shocked
at the outcome in the state, a CDU
stronghold since German reunification
in 1990.
“I have no explanation for it,”
says Ulrich Reusch, the CDU’s regional
chairman in Meissen. The
party was beaten into second place
in Saxony by the rightwing populist
Alternative for Germany, a group
that exploited anger over the influx
of refugees. The election marked a
breakthrough for the AfD. Set up
only in February 2013 to protest
against the Greek bailouts, it won
13 per cent of the national vote and
entered the Bundestag for the first
time, the only far-right party to do
so in 60 years.
Again, the biggest factor was immigration.
Ms Merkel’s decision to
keep Germany’s borders open at the
height of the refugee crisis and the
resulting backlash fuelled the rise
of the AfD, particularly in eastern
Germany.
Saxony, the most successful of
the east German states, with the
lowest unemployment and one of
the best education systems in the
country, did not take in that many
asylum-seekers. But that was the
point, says Detlev Spangenberg,
one of the crop of newly elected AfD
MPs from the state.
“Saxons have looked very closely
at what has happened in the west
of the country, and they don’t want
to end up like that,” he says in his
office in Radebeul. High levels of
immigration have, he says, scarred
Germany’s big cities, leading to
“parallel societies” and “no-go” areas
for police.
Rise of the far right charts (europopulus)
Even CDU politicians say the government
misjudged the mood in the
east. “People here feel ‘we brought
down communism in 1989, we
fought for and won our freedom and
then these politicians come and say
we have to open the border and let
in all these refugees’,” Frank Kupfer,
head of the CDU group in Saxony’s
parliament, says. “There is this fear
that someone is going to come and
take everything away from us again.”