2023-06-19 05:00:24
(L to R) Sweden Democrats leader (far right) Jimmie Akesson, Conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, Christian Democrats chairwoman Ebba Busch and Liberal Party leader Johan Pehrson announce the formation of a coalition government , in Stockholm, October 14, 2022. JONATHAN NACKSTRAND / AFP
What was once a political taboo in Europe is becoming commonplace. Agreements between right-wing and far-right parties to form governments or parliamentary majorities are on the rise.
Twenty-three years after the shock caused by the entry into government of the FPÖ of Jorg Haider in Austria, Giorgia Meloni, head of Fratelli d’Italia, chairs the Italian government; the Democrats of Sweden are at the heart of the power and the program of that led by Ulf Kristersson; in Helsinki the True Finns have just reached an agreement with the Swedish People’s Party of Finland and the Christian Democrat movement to form the most right-wing coalition in the country’s history since the Second World War; while in Spain, Vox already imagines being indispensable to the People’s Party to govern after the legislative elections on 23rd July.
Elsewhere, including in France, without formal agreement, the ideas of the extreme right are taken up in the programs of the government rights. At the beginning of the century, while the FPÖ, the Northern League in Italy and the UDC in Switzerland were breaking through at the same time, the anti-Islam and xenophobic discourse of these “Alpine populisms” had widened the gap with the right. Since then, the terrain on which their rapprochement has gradually been built is precisely the same, that of immigration and the rejection of foreigners.
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But now, to a varying extent depending on the country, other subjects bring the lines closer to their extremes. Elements of the culture war have entered the rhetoric of some conservative leaders. The Poles of the PiS, the Fidesz of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Fratelli d’Italia of Giorgia Meloni are thus no longer the only ones to denounce “wokism” and its supposed translations in terms of equal rights and the defense of minorities.
Beyond crude climatoscepticism, some also embrace a populist line, castigating the effects of the energy transition on lifestyle and purchasing power. The unexpected breakthrough in March of Caroline van der Plas’ Citizen-Farmer Movement, which became the leading party in the Netherlands campaigning against the plan to reduce nitrogen in agriculture, struck a chord.
More or less advanced, this “extreme right-winging” of the “traditional” right affects most of the European conservative parties and is accompanied, in parallel, by attempts at normalization, even “de-demonization”, on the part of the radical parties, which put a damper on their criticisms of the European Union (EU), repress their inclinations for Russia and amend their economic program.
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