Does the far right want to break up the European Union from within?

This article on the far right in Europe is published in issue 24-25 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 18 June 2024.

These Europeans are not like the others. Until now they had been a national consensus test. The vote on 9 June is for the first time what it always should have been: a moment in which – aware of how crucial the EU is – we choose a vision. But this risks being a joke for pro-Europeans if the vision sabotages the European project from within.

“They will come in and then turn off the light,” the writer told me Paolo Rumiz, restless. «Ursula von der Leyen puts herself in the hands of Giorgia Meloni and the far right; he flirts with us shamelessly. He is bringing into the control room those who will empty the EU from within.” This very clear image – the light being turned off from within – conveys in an instant what has been in the making for a long time.

In 2021 the two far-right groups – i Melonian conservatives and the sovereignists of Identity and democracy like Lega and Rassemblement National – were talking about merging. In order not to lose centrality, the main European political family – the centre-right of the Popolari, to which the German Christian Democrats and von der Leyen belong – has done the first pact with the devil. Many would follow: today in Sweden, Finland, Holland and elsewhere, the far right participates in European governments. The 2021 pact was the forerunner: Meloni boycotted the union of Ecr and Id, thus obtaining a tactical alliance with the Popolarias well as a vice-presidency of the European Parliament for Ecr in 2022.

Now the pattern repeats itself. Le Pen, convinced by the polls that she will leave the vote as first party in France, returned to the charge, inviting Meloni to join forces. Von der Leyen in turn relaunched, courting the prime minister on Eurovision: during the TV debate between presidential candidates, she described her as a democratic pro-European compatible with the EPP. The three-way dynamic shows that the cordon sanitaire towards the extreme right is no longer there, what remains is the internal competition within the right over who will lead the assimilation process. The Popolari hope to draw on new energy but remain the leaders; Le Pen wants to appear presentable to take over France, and therefore she got rid of Afd. Meloni boasts that he “can talk to everyone” and will use this role to influence the Union’s agenda further to the right.

It already happens. Von der Leyen’s commercials – which he presents himself as war president in bulletproof jacket – are a hymn to the borders to be defended. Over a year before the vote, the EPP, ECR and ID synchronized against migrants and the climate.

“They will transform our Europe into a money dispenser for big industry,” says Rumiz, thinking of von der Leyen’s privileged relationships with corporations – from Big Pharma to the military industry – and the pro-business agenda of right-wingers like the Melonian one . If in the last mandate leaders like Scholz and Macron gave up on relaunching European integration, from 9 June there is a risk of disintegration; «Europe of nations», he calls her Meloni. Nowadays no one is preaching exit: after all, why leave the EU when you can crumble it from within?

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