As the EU launches its 2007 Year of Equal Opportunities, Claude
Moraes asks how this sits with the formation in the same week of the first
EU far-right political grouping.
It is a terrible irony that the accession of Romania and Bulgaria
to the EU - bitterly fought by the far right in the European Parliament -
will this week in Strasbourg (week beginning 15 January) give the far right
the breakthrough they have sought for years in the EU - the formation of
their first transnational political group in the European Parliament.
The
new 'Identity, Sovereignty, and Tradition' Group will also include one British
MEP, Ashley Mote, formerly of UKIP until they withdrew the Whip following
his prosecution for housing benefit fraud. There will, interestingly, now
be at least twice as many identifiable neo-nazi MEPs as there are MEPs from
ethnic minorities across the whole Parliament.
With a threshold of only 19
MEPs from at least five EU countries required to form a political group,
in-fighting, criminal charges and the dysfunctional
nature of Europe's neo-nazis has ensured until now that Le Pen, the Belgian
Vlaams Belang, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Italian Lega Nord and others
have existed within the Parliament but never created a clear European neo-fascist
identity. Now the addition of five seats for the anti-Roma, anti-semitic
Greater Romanian Party and one seat from Bulgaria's extreme Ataka Party have
supplied the numbers needed for Bruno Gollnisch, deputy leader of Le Pen,
to lead the Group.
That the formation of the Group is a breakthrough for organised
racism and anti-semitism is beyond doubt - but what is its real political
significance?
A number of European analysts have cautioned that the Group
will suffer from the same crippling inertia that has dogged them separately
in the
Parliament - namely disunity and constant implication in criminal activity
including violence and holocaust denial. This dysfunction has long been symbolised
by the long-standing hatred between the Italian Lega Nord leader Umberto
Bossi and the National Front's Jean Marie Le Pen.
There are also, by definition,
widely disparate nationalistic goals of each far right party - introspective
and concentrated on dividing communities
in their own back yards, rather than putting energy into an EU-wide movement
with coherence.
We have also seen recently with Le Pen and Vlaams Belang that
their bid to appear respectable or to 'modernise' is meeting with very mixed
results.
Another diminishing factor for the new far right Group is the way
in which they have split towards what is now a major grouping in the Parliament
-
the Union for a Europe of Nations (UEN) - now a mix of hard right (Alleanza
Nazionale and Dansk Folkeparti) and more moderate right wingers (Fianna Fail).
In Strasbourg this week the Group will will be joined by the far right Italian
Lega Nord and the deeply homophobic League of Polish Families. The UEN will
now grow from 34 to 44 MEPs crucially surpassing the Greens and GUE/NGL (far
left) groups in the Parliament allowing it real clout with the three main
parties - the EPP (Centre Right) PES (Socialist Group) and ALDE (Liberals).
The
real success for the hard right of course lies not in the arithmetic of the
European Parliament, but the ability for a clearly identifiable political
Group to give extreme, racist solutions to migration and related issues and
to give added drive and clarity to xenophobic messages and organised votes
against progressive legislation in the EU.
The clue to treating the latest developments
with seriousness is the opening gambit of three key strategists - Bruno
Gollnisch, the French MEP and intellectual
deputy leader of Le Pen, currently charged in France with Holocaust denial;
the Austrian MEP Andreas Moelzer, the original ideologist behind the success
of Jorg Haider's Freedom Party (he will be general secretary); and
Frank Vanhecke, the leader of Vlaams Belang. All three represent parties
which have scored significant successes in their own countries. All three
are now
desperately trying to show that they are leading normal mainstream European
political movements to stop non-EU immigration. That is no doubt why they
rejected the name 'Europe of the Fatherlands', which was preferred by some
of their members. At his press conference last week Gollnisch said they are
'normal people with respectable and professional backgrounds' who would address
the mainstream concerns of European citizens - namely migration and globalisation.
Whether they will succeed is a moot point, but there is no doubt that they
want to embark on a rebranding exercise for fascism in the EU, in much the
same way as a violent neo-nazi movement such as the Italian MSI was rebranded
as the Alleanza Nazionale putting its leader Gianfranco Fini in the Berlusconi
government and his party in the UEN political group in the European Parliament.
All
three know that at one level far right populist movements in countries like
Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria have transformed politics and the
left in those countries, while at the same time the far right in the European
Parliament have remained embarassing caricatures with no serious political
influence within the EU.
There is nothing new about the far right fighting
dirty political battles over immigration, Islam or the Roma in Eastern Europe.
The newer strategy
of the new Group is to amplify the recent message of Jean Marie Le Penn,
who, when asked why he maintains poll ratings (TNS-Sofres October 2006) as
high as 18 per cent in the run up to the French Presidential elections, answered:
"Now that people on the left, centre and right use the same language
about immigrants as we do, European voters should consider the original
copy".
The added 'boost' for the Western European far right is the knowledge
that a particularly nasty and growing strain of far right nationalistic politics
in the new member states bolster their numbers. Typical is of this is Jan
Slota of the Slovak National Party who wants to pay Roma Slovakians to undertake
sterilisation - he leads one third of the Slovakian coalition government
that runs one of the fastest growing economies in the region.
Another recent
Eastern European example of how the far right clearly affect mainstream politcal
events came last year as the Hungarian Truth and Life
Party (MIEP) helped steer the chaotic riots that threatened to bring down
the Hungarian Socialist Party government of Ferenc Gyurcsany. The Hungarian
unrest has echoes across Eastern Europe as unease and resistance to the effects
of globalisation and market reforms are deftly exploited by the far right
who raid the political toy-box of the 1930s for old standards such as anti-semitism
and anti-liberalism and portrayal of post communist centre-left parties as
fundamentally dishonest.
Of course the strains of nationalism throughout
Europe are complex - but the 'big players' of Western European fascism sense
an opportunity, as when
last September the neo-nazi National Party of Germany leapt into regional
prominance as support for the ex-communists sagged.
And what about the impact
on the UK? The BNP knows that in at least two UK regions the possibility
of a BNP MEP exists - we now have ten UKIP MEPs to
illustrate what is possible but the election of a British neo-fascist at
the next European Elections would be far more serious with a ready-made European
political group to join, with the extra political funding and media opportunities
that come with that status. It is a danger that must be recognised and fought
- as many on the left across the UK are doing.
It should also be interesting
to see in which political group David Cameron will now place his increasingly
dysfunctional Conservative MEPs now that
he has committed to withdrawing them from the centre right EPP.
As well as
the obvious and direct threat of the far right is the much greater and growing
danger of the 'mainstreaming' of their message. Parties of the
centre across the EU have transformed their language and policies under pressure
- to have a continual lobby at the heart of the EU will clearly add to that
pressure.
It will also help compromise or occasionally cause voting problems
for the progressive voices within the EU who have succesfully taken through
EU legislation
such as the Race Equality Directive and Employment Directive (outlawing discrimination
across the EU on the grounds of religion, disability, sexual orientation
and age), and wider social legislation or amendments to major legislation
bringing a greater social dimension to European law making.
An immediate irony
is that the new group and the bolstering of the more extreme elements of
the UEN come at the same time as the German Presidency
of the EU launches the 2007 Year of Equal Opportunities. Germany and Angela
Merkel are throwing their weight behing the year and have already come up
with eye-catching if controversial initiatives such as a European-wide holocaust
denial law.
The reality is that the formation of the new far right group
may succeed in its aims, or prove a disappointment to hard right national
movements across
Europe. The fact remains that pursuing a progressive agenda on a whole range
of issues in the EU will be that much more difficult. Should we be worried?
Yes. The EU will have to help treat the deep causes as well as the more obvious
symptoms of the rise of the far right in its midst. That ensures difficult
times ahead for the EU. It should also stimulate progressives on the left
to seek lasting answers to a movement set to grow.
Claude Moraes is a Labour MEP for London and Chair of the European
Parliament's All Party Group on Anti-Racism. He is also the European Parliamantary
Liaison
Officer on the NAAR Executive Committee