A European establishment spoiled by history is worrying about the future of the EU while the 2019 summer election is approaching. The ballot could be a revolution in the political map with a solid step back of democratic Christians and of social-democratic components of the EU parliament - the traditional roots of the post-war peace process in the old Continent. A “populist” nightmare is involving politicians, media activists, intellectuals and social scholars riddling the image of a future where the founder’s own idea of Europe could be at stake. But is it a real picture? An official source of the Eurobarometer says a few different things: for the first time since 2007, more Europeans do not believe “my voice counts in the EU,” according to a survey of over 27,000 people across the continent. Yet the same poll — released on July 4 to mark one year until the 2019 European Parliament election — also found a warm welcome for the anti-establishment parties shaking up politics in the bloc. So maybe people are smarter than old politicians, and the sovereigntist wave is justified by a really bad management of the refugees-migrant policy and the total incapacity of European governments to handle the complex changes due to a globalization too much influenced by “finance without borders” and running like a bull outside the stable. Furthermore, the EU Commission’s (non-democratic) leadership lost power, and the EU Counsel rises with its national interests. It has been over a decade that the EU has been just a sum of different interests where the stronger count (Germany and its French vassal) and the lesser pay (Greece, Spain, Italy and others).
It is an epic political fail that joins the American and European establishment both punished by elections and characterized by harsh, foolish debate. Hyper-spoiled elites from both sides of the Atlantic got a bad wake up and a hysterical and paranoid reaction because reality has proven to be different from their wishful thinking. Some examples that astonished us are the Hollywood star Robert De Niro with his “F..k the President” with a “privileged” audience’s standing ovation and actress Demi Moore’s statement: “This awful country with disgusting people and everything about it, I’ll boycott everything about Trump” mean that a system short-circuit has occurred, and respect for a country that gives you a chance and for its institutions mean nothing. In Europe, we can see the ugly copy of that already absurd behavioral pattern.
Still, the Eurobarometer survey says there is no danger for EU institutions: the survey, carried out for the European Parliament by Kantar Public, a consultancy firm, found that 48 percent of EU citizens surveyed agree that their voice counts in the EU, while 46 percent disagree — and Brexit appears to have improved the pro-EU mood. Before the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU in 2016, just 37 percent of Europeans agreed that their voice counted in the EU.
However, citizens feel more connected to national politics than pan-European: 63 percent of Europeans agree their voice counts at the national level, with that figure topping 90 percent in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.
The good news for the Eurocrats and politicians preparing for next year’s election is that support for the EU is “the highest score ever measured since 1983,” according to the survey report. It seems there is no danger for the future.
So maybe it is just the end of the first stage of EU building that now needs a further step toward a more democratic phase with the so-called “political” phase after the euro currency stage. Not an easy task. The refugee/migrant issue shows all the limits of unrealistic EU policies better, squeezed among a failed globalism in its priorities like the building of new markets, new consumers, new models of society, new types of families ready to spend more and more fragile to new needs and people’s defensive attitudes that do not allow pro-migrant policies. So, weak European politicians choose a hidden way to achieve this task pushed by the old “globalist” elite: humanitarian emergency, using African and Middle Eastern wars and troubles as valves to set migrant flow. Almost immediately, this project went out of control and the European ruling elite found out how harsh the feedback could be with a sinking political support. Now they are depicting new populism as a danger as the seed for new xenophobic attitudes and the chance fascism could rise again in Europe but is the swan song of an obsolete political paradigm, still watching at the last century, defeated by complexity of the modern world. The paradigm is called globalization, now turned “bad” with is financial influence, the rooms for political parties is limited: how to defend local communities from aberrations and unwilling effects of this system on the one side; take advantage of many chances the global market gives on the other side. To achieve this task you do not need any ideology, but just a vison about the future - like circular (non-destructive) economy - and a strong personal ethic and strong popular mandate to resist to huge market forces that have no soul, ethic or morality but can exert big pressure over national and local government, especially if they are corrupted. The Italian government’s “war” against gambling games business, prohibiting any kind of advertising, is a good example of the new role of politicians that people want. The change of paradigm means that old political categories and narratives are fading. A good example is the Brexit troublemaking process that has been weakening PM Theresa May’s UK government.
The European Parliament’s next election in July 2019 could show a new political map with a great rising of “sovereigntist” and “anti-establishment” parties. In several European countries, including Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Switzerland, right-wing parties have taken the reins of government. And even where populists haven’t gained power, groups such as Britain’s UKIP, the French Front National, and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland are gaining record popularity.
If the survey results are anything to go by, the EU will have difficulty getting more people out to vote next year than they have in the past (turnout in the 2014 ballot was 42.6 percent, a record low). According to this year’s survey results, only half of the EU population has an interest in the Parliament elections. As for what should be on the agenda ahead of the election, citizens picked terrorism as the most pressing topic of discussion, ahead of youth unemployment and immigration. So fear will once again lead public opinion choices.
Could this new political map in Europe change even the Mediterranean framework? Sovereigntist and anti-establishment parties want to break free from foreign economical-political influence and will not exert undue influence over other countries. That could open a chance window to build more local oriented/independent governments and could mean the end stop for a neo-colonial attitude in the Mediterranean basin. Of course nothing will come easy, but even Donald Trump’s anti-establishment attitude could help this change toward more bad-globalism-independent societies and states. The U.S. needs to cut bonds between Berlin and Moscow, but in the meanwhile wants to foster its own relation with Putin. Europe has to stay in the Atlantic full-flagged field but with new rules and far from any Euro Asiatic influence. Even the NATO burden-sharing issue is just a political tool to deal with European countries to balance a negative security bill and a trade exchange. Trump wants to cash credits and to stress the political “croupier” role of Washington in Europe more. The spirit of a pragmatic democrat and tireless unifier like Konrad Adenauer seems to need a big revamp and a new paradigm.
