They didn’t even wait for the final results of the elections in the Netherlands. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán sent a congratulatory message to the leader of the Dutch Eurosceptic far-right party Geert Wilders on Wednesday evening after learning of the victory, according to poll estimates. Minutes later it was the French Marine Le Pen and, after a while, the Italian Matteo Salvini, two leaders of parties further to the right of the European spectrum.
His joy is twofold: a fellow believer has won in a member state of the community club, and moreover, he has not achieved this in any country. He won in the Netherlands, one of the founding countries of the European Union, which is usually a key country in shaping alliances between the twenty-seven. But it is also the nation that years ago put the finishing touches to the European constitution that never came into being or that rejected the association agreement with Ukraine in a referendum in 2018. She is also the one whose result in the local elections This spring marked a turning point in terms of the implementation of green policies and how they were viewed by various European parties.
The rise of European ultra-conservative formations, observed with victories such as that of Giorgia Meloni in Italy or the conquest of the second electoral place for the Sweden Democrats, seemed to have stopped in July in Spain and in September in Poland: Vox and Ley and Justice (PiS , the Polish acronym) lost positions and, in the Polish case, the government. The explanation for these slowdowns, as well as this recent progress, is not the same for every site, as Cas Mudde, Dutch political scientist and reference in studies of the far right, reminds via email: “Every national election is just that, national. “. “, he clarifies. “There were specific reasons for the Spanish and Polish results, not regional or global ones. “Vox ran a poor election campaign, while PiS suffered from government fatigue,” he adds, recalling that the ultra parties today leading the polls in Austria, Belgium, France, Hungary and Italy. “Hope for the future, today in the Netherlands; tomorrow in Flanders,” emphasized the ultra-Flemish Vlaams Belang, which is leading the polls in Belgium.
There is still no final assessment within the European institutions. They are still waiting for the formation of a governing coalition or the content of their government program. “The Netherlands is a founding country of the EU, a very strong member of our union,” said European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer when asked whether the Netherlands could become the next United Kingdom (Wilders promised a consultation on this in his election manifesto). the country remains in the EU). However, the insistence on historic Dutch membership – “we continue to count on the Netherlands as a strong member of the EU,” the spokesman added – shows some concern within the European institutions. Not because of a new Brexit, but because of a hardening of positions on key issues such as migration, EU enlargement and the environment.
Wilders’ European allies take it for granted: While Orbán posted the 1980s hit “Wind of Change” on X, the old Twitter; Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, an ally of Wilders’ PVV in Europe – his party, the Lega, is as much part of the Ultra ID European Parliament group as Le Pen’s National Rally – congratulated “friend” Wilders on an “extraordinary victory”, which shows that “a new Europe is possible,” he explained. A Europe that, as Le Pen noted in another message, must recognize an “increasing commitment to the defense of national identities.” In statements this Thursday on France Inter radio, the Ultra leader stressed that the Dutch results “show that more and more EU countries are denying how it works and want us to be able to control massive and completely anarchic immigration again .”
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“We can wait [del nuevo Gobierno] “Make it more Eurosceptic,” predicts Mudde, who sees it “increasingly likely” that a leader will be formed with Wilders at the helm. Polish researcher Pawel Zerka from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) Analysis Institute has even more doubts about whether this is the future. He expresses caution when he says that with Wilders at the helm in The Hague it is possible to block EU enlargement, question the climate agenda or a tougher migration policy. Something that has already begun for Roderick Kefferpütz, head of the Brussels office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation (close to the German Greens): “This election turbulence is very worrying and is causing the EU to act more cautiously.” “We take a stand on issues “that require urgency and action, such as climate change,” he emphasizes. The expert recalls that the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, “has already highlighted this strategy by stating that the time has come for implementation, to carry on as usual instead of moving forward with bold actions.” This he did in his final State of the Union address.
Researcher Camino Mortera from the think tank Center for European Reform sees the “most interesting” question as whether the cordon sanitaire in the Netherlands will be cut to the right and what position the conservative liberals of the previous prime minister will take. Mark Rutte.
She sees an increasingly polarized panorama: “That’s the trend I see in Europe. The main direction [consenso político entre populares, liberales y socialistas que ha marcado la UE desde su fundación] “It disappeared,” he laments. And that raises the question of what will happen after the European elections in June next year. Both Mortera and Zerka from ECFR see a risk in the increase in extremes on the left and right. The Pole even points out that there could be an institutional deadlock if both options reach a third of the chamber, although he makes it clear that this is not what the polls predict.
Alberto Alemanno, professor at the Jean Monnet Chair in European Law at the HEC business school in Paris, also looks to June 2024 when he points out that in the Netherlands there will be an alliance between ultras and traditional conservatives, as is the case is already the case in Italy; After the European elections, a coalition in Brussels could move in this direction.
A similar scenario is feared with Heinrich Böll. “While it is worrying that the traditional center-right conservatives are losing ground to the far right, this is not just a victory for the ultras in the Netherlands,” warns Kefferpütz. In this context, consider that more than 50% of Dutch seats are distributed to new parties. A trend is emerging that could soon also be observed in Germany, where the new list led by Sarah Wagenknecht, who left the post-communist Die Linke to found a left-wing extremist party, but is able to join the extreme right of the To steal alternative votes for Germany (AfD), he already achieved “double-digit numbers in the first survey”. A trend that will carry over to the European Parliament, he predicts, where this wave of new parties will “make the European Parliament more diverse, but also make the task of making commitments and agreements more difficult.”
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