Problems in the EU parallel those in the U.S.
Germany, March 23, 2017
After the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s surprise election, many of us feared that right-wing populism would continue its momentum and win other Europe elections as well. After the Dutch vote, we breathed a sigh of relief. But will populism be stopped in its tracks?
Geert Wilders, head of the populist right-wing PVV, is best known for his opposition to Islam. A member of the anti-EU “Nationalist International”, along with France’s Le Pen, Germany’s AfD, Austria’s FPÖ, Italy’s Lega Nord, Britain’s Ukip, Wilders seems to be the most extreme of the group, at least when it comes to Islam. He has called for banning the Koran and mosques in the Netherlands, where Muslims make up about 6% of the population.
For many months prior to the election, Wilders’s PVV was leading the polls. But when the votes were counted on March 15, his party came in second with 13.1%. The clear leader was the center-right VVD, headed by the current prime minister, Mark Ruute, which won 21.3%. Still, the PVV added 5 seats in parliament to its total from 2012, while the VVD lost 8. The biggest gain was chalked up by the Greens, with 10 seats.
So, is the Dutch election a harbinger of things to come? The Economist argues it will have little impact on the French election, which is the one that counts. If Marine Le Pen wins, she will try to pull France out of the EU, which would probably spell the end of the unification project. Currently, Le Pen is expected to make it to the run-off election on May 7, but ultimately lose to the pro-EU candidate Emmanuel Macron.
For those of us who support the liberal international order, which has dominated the West since World War II, we can breathe a sigh of relief over Wilders’s loss. But we should not be complacent. Nationalism and populism are still powerful forces in Europe as well as the United States. We can’t stop populistm by ignoring it and hoping it’ll go away. We can either fight it, give in to it, or strip its supporters away.
Fighting populism is essential, or it will win. We need to object to extremist statements and resist its agenda. But resistance alone won’t defeat populists, since they draw strength from people’s real problems. Giving in to populism is certainly no solution. The free societies we’ve built in Europe since WWII would be threatened, and we could slip back into an age of competing nationalisms and periodic war.
Stripping populist supporters away is the only way to win. This means taking their fundamental concerns – their interests – seriously and looking for ways to meet them. What are these concerns? Fundamentally, people are afraid of losing what’s important to them: their jobs, their communities, their countries.
Globalization, free trade, and economic change have made many people better off, but have also hurt others. The American “Rust Belt”, which has lost manufacturing jobs that you could support a family with, has been replicated in regions throughout Europe. While this will always happen in a dynamic economy, the people who lose their jobs need help to get back on their feet. Since the “Neoliberal Revolution” of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, little has been done for them.
Many people also see their communities threatened by drugs and crime. While violent crime in the US has fallen over the years, many think it has gotten worse. Crime and drug addiction must be fought, but people also need to hear the truth.
Ultimately, populist voters may be most afraid of losing their countries. At a gut level, they fear being overrun by foreigners, especially Muslims, who make up about 6% of the population in France, the Netherlands, and Germany. Due to migration and birth rates, which are higher among Muslim immigrants than native Europeans, their share is growing. These demographic trends are fundamentally changing European countries, and many people don’t like it.
It’s easy to write this fear off as racism, but that would be naïve. While many Muslims have integrated well into European society, some have not. When Turkish President Erdogan tells Turks in Europe to have more children and calls them the future of Europe, fear of demographic changes is hardly irrational.
Finally, the European Union has become a favorite whipping boy for populists, who argue it’s undemocratic and a project of the elites. The EU certainly needs to be reformed, but its biggest problem is ineffectiveness, not heavy-handedness. The EU’s inability to help the southern periphery overcome the last recession and its failure to handle the refugee crisis suggest we need a stronger Union, not a weaker one.
These basic problems – jobs and wages, crime and drugs, migration and integration, and the EU’s ineffectiveness – are difficult to solve. But the future of Europe, and of the West, will depend on how well we do it.