Populists' Successes In 2018 Elections Evidence Of Public Mistrust In EU Establishment

Populists' Successes in 2018 Elections Evidence of Public Mistrust in EU Establishment

Anti-establishment political forces continued to strengthen their political positions in 2018, with Europeans giving in to populist parties in every new parliamentary election, and lawmakers from establishment parties in Italy, Sweden and Germany being forced to cede their seats in their respective parliaments.

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th December, 2018) Anti-establishment political forces continued to strengthen their political positions in 2018, with Europeans giving in to populist parties in every new parliamentary election, and lawmakers from establishment parties in Italy, Sweden and Germany being forced to cede their seats in their respective parliaments.

The failure of national governments to address domestic political problems exacerbated by the decision-making crisis in the European Union seems to have finally made EU citizens disillusioned about current policies, which has, in turn, led more and more Europeans dancing to the tune of populists.

In reviewing the national parliamentary elections of this year, experts have concurred that the votes' results reflect the Europeans' increasingly critical attitude toward the current political course and illustrate the crisis of confidence in modern governance mechanisms.

Italy held its parliamentary elections amid a state of extreme uncertainty � polls were not predicting a clear victory for any of the parties running. In the lead-up to the vote, experts argued that if none of the parties managed to gain the majority of votes needed to form a government, the country would plunge into long and challenging coalition talks that were sure to bring political instability to the boot-shaped state.

During the campaign period, populist and anti-establishment political parties managed to benefit from the disgruntled population, which was tired of economic problems and absence of desired reforms, by not hesitating to point out that the taxes of hard-working Italians were being spent on things like benefit payments for migrants.

"The so-called establishment showed all its lack in answering to the people's issues ... Sovereignty is the answer people expect after the failure of 70 years of global policies, which killed economies and crushed confidence in a brighter future," Massimiliano Fedriga, a member of the Chamber of Deputies from the far-right Lega party, told Sputnik on election day, March 4.

The Italian parliamentary elections became a sensation, making the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) the most popular single party with 32.7 percent of the vote, followed by the center-right coalition (37 percent of the vote), consisting of anti-immigrant Lega, run by incumbent Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini; center-right Forza Italia, run by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi; and euroskeptic Brothers of Italy. Meanwhile, Italy's ruling Democratic Party (PD) faced a sharp drop in public support, receiving only 18.7 percent of the vote.

The fact that Italians have been tempted by the promising pledges of right-wing political forces came as no surprise. Even then-Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni warned ahead of the vote that the populist sentiment was among the key problems of the general election in the country, with the nihilist forces running a campaign against the ruling party and criticizing almost every aspect of its policies.

"Today, many voices across the continent suggest shortcuts and easy solutions derived from improvisation and the ruthless exploitation of legitimate worries ... We do not need propaganda, we need time ... We have to keep our track," Gentiloni dismissed the criticism speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January just a month before the election.

The election results were hailed by euroskeptic and populist groups throughout Europe. Politicians argued that the Italian elections had turned into a flagrant example of the crisis of confidence in the European Union where Europeans were becoming increasingly mistrustful toward Brussels and EU structures.

However, the euroskeptics' success in the election did not translate to a unity of opinion in their future discussions on forming the government. The talks lasted for about three months and raised public concerns about the possibility of a new election. Against the backdrop of growing tensions in Italian society, the Lega party and the anti-establishment M5S movement managed to form a new cabinet in May.

"We secured all strategic ministerial posts in a new government to implement our domestic and foreign policy programs. We got the post of regional affairs minister, who will concentrate on bringing autonomy to Veneto and Lombardy regions, we got the post of agriculture minister to protect Italian-made products on the European market and worldwide. When it comes to the most important matters for Lega such as security, we secured the post of the interior minister as well," Paolo Grimoldi, a secretary for the Lega party in the northern Italian region of Lombardy, told Sputnik.

Despite much skepticism surrounding the prospects of the Lega-M5S government, the newcomers in the ranks of EU political heavyweights never stopped showing their temper to other EU member states, making life a nightmare for Brussels with their tough stance on migration and budget policy plans.

In 2018, right-wingers also struck a blow against one of Europe's most stable and solid political forces, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), as well as its partner in grand coalition, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), in the election to the parliament of Germany's state of Bavaria.

In October's parliamentary elections in the southeastern state, the CSU lost its ultimate authority in the region after receiving only 37.2 percent of the vote and thereby depriving itself of the ability to independently from the local government. Bavarians turned out to choose the Greens (17.5 percent) and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD, 10.2 percent) over political old-timers.

That happened just a year after the AfD party for the first time entered the country's Bundestag with its motto: "islam has no place in Germany." This bold statement was the party's way of criticizing Merkel's open-door policy toward migrants.

The AfD had been building its 2018 election campaign by antagonizing Merkel's ruling bloc.

"The [CDU/CSU-SPD coalition] does not even try to give perspectives or to offer solutions to the most important challenges Germany is confronted with today: illegal immigration, lack of border control, Euro crisis, ongoing transfer of foreign debts into Germany, exploding charges for renewable energy, one of the highest tax rates in Europe, debt reduction in Germany etc. ... It has become crystal clear that CDU, CSU and SPD have not learned anything from the severe mistakes they made in the past 4 years," Dr. Roland Hartwig, the vice chairman of the AfD party faction in Bundestag, told Sputnik shortly after the newly formed coalition government began its work at the beginning of the year.

The attempts of the new government to reduce public tensions with pledges to adopt more decisive policies toward the most acute problems, particularly migration, were not heeded by the Germans, almost two-thirds of whom remained dissatisfied with the policies of the new government throughout the year.

The Germans' promises fatigue resulted in the CSU's humiliating defeat in the Bavarian election, which became, perhaps, the party's worst performance ever and, according to certain experts, one of the reasons that pushed the CDU to end Merkel's almost 20-year leadership in an attempt to "purify" itself of recent policy failures.

WELFARE MODEL'S VULNERABILITIES

The parliamentary elections in Sweden turned out to be more evidence of the populist parties' increasingly strong positions, with the country's population having picked the clear political messages of the right-wing over unfulfilled promises of the ruling red-green coalition.

Sweden's Nordic model also turned out to not be sound enough in the face of the migration problem as the Swedes found themselves unwilling to share the benefits of their welfare model with newcomers. The issue turned into the most divisive factor of the election campaign, with the Sweden Democrats (SD) right-wing party, a kind of enfant terrible of the Swedish politics, calling the government's migration policy "reckless" and, surprisingly, pushing mainstream parties to adopt a tougher stance and move to the right on the matter.

A surge in crime in immigrant neighborhoods and summer's arson attacks involving dozens of cars in the country, put a law-and-order issue on the campaign's agenda as SD lawmakers blamed increased gang violence on immigrants and called for allowing the repatriation of foreign citizens convicted of serious offenses in Sweden.

The September 9 general election marked the worst performance of Sweden's red-green coalition made up of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party which received 144 seats in the country's legislature, just a seat more than the opposition Alliance comprising of the Moderate Party, the Centre Party, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats. The parliamentary vote also saw the SD, which made the biggest gains in the election with the calls for the restoration of the Swedish national identity, the third largest single party with 62 seats.

The vote's outcome pushed Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the Swedish opposition alliance, to call on the country's government to resign just after the preliminary results emerged, claiming that the red-green coalition's government had exhausted itself.

"[The opposition] alliance is larger than the red-green bloc. The government should resign. I respect [Swedish Prime Minister] Stefan Lofven. But he should resign now," Kristersson said on election day.

According to experts, the vote's results reflected the disenchantment of the middle class, which has always formed the basis of the Social Democrats and, therefore, the ruling coalition's public support, with the government's course against the backdrop of rising inequality, the welfare model's failures and law and order concerns.

Since the vote, which left neither political force with the majority, the Swedish parties have been following the Italian scenario trying to reach a compromise and agree on a coalition to form a government. Meanwhile, the Swedish parliament rejected two candidates for the post of prime minister Kristersson and Lofven and now has two more attempts to appoint him or her. If the parliament does not endorse a prime minister in the next two votes, a snap election will be called.

Therefore, Sweden proved that victory in the election is only half the battle parties have to make a choice between sticking to their pledges without having the ability to implement them and showing flexibility by modifying campaign promises in order to translate at least some of them into reality.

According to experts, the failure of the political establishment to listen to the public's problems and provide an adequate response to them resulted in the growth of public discontent that made Europeans shift their attention to populists and their radical solutions.

"These silent citizens vote for populist parties, on the left or more often on the right, who promise to listen to them, to clean up the state and give them a direct say in state affairs," Nicola Tournay, the communications director of the Belgian Parti Populaire (PP), told Sputnik.

Benjamin Biard, a political science professor at the University of Louvain (UCL) in Belgium, suggested that the problem went even deeper and meant a crisis of representative democracies in Europe.

"There is an increasing lack of trust in institutions whose functioning is impaired by corruption and/or inefficiencies. The criticism of the Brussels technocrats and the European Union goes in the same direction. Europe is accused of being totally disconnected with reality and inactive," Biard stated.

The Guardian newspaper recently reported that the support for populist parties had tripled over the past 20 years and that European populist leaders have pledged to form a populist euroskeptic coalition in the 2019 European Parliament elections.

A recent poll issued by the Europe Elects polls aggregator on December 5 revealed that the European Parliament's main euroskeptic groups Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) and Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) could count on 16.8 percent of the vote in the European Parliament elections, scheduled for May 23-26. However, throughout the year support for populists stood at just over 20 percent. Many argue that the significance of results will be determined not only by the number of votes received but by the ability of euroskeptic groups to form a single political force in the EU legislative body.

Despite the fact that, in terms of the number of parliamentary seats, populists might not seem to be very influential, a potential quarter or fifth of votes will be enough to block crucial decisions in the EU legislature, something which may result in a law-making crisis. In addition, the surge in support for populists might cause extensive debate regarding the replacement of major EU jobs, in particular, the European Commission president.

The migration issue, the eurozone crisis and the ratio between national sovereignty and EU institutions the three key issues of concern for EU citizens are likely to become the main sticking points between the establishment and populist forces at the future parliament. The three matters have been the strongest drivers of anti-EU sentiment in the bloc over the past years, and Brussels' delay in tackling them suggests that euroskeptics are likely to continue harnessing power in the future.