Wake up! After these elections, Europe is again in danger
The Guardian
Don’t let anyone tell you the results are ‘not so bad’. The hard-right vote can pull the entire EU to the right, and imperil Ukraine.
A Europe that just celebrated on the beaches of Normandy the 80-year-old D-day beginning of its liberation from war, nationalism and fascism now again faces fascism, nationalism and war.
(Text continues underneath the photo.)
The National Rally’s lead candidate Jordan Bardella with Marine Le Pen on the campaign trail in Paris on 2 June. Photograph: Vernier Jean-Bernard/JBV News/ABACA/REX/Shutterstock.
Please don’t be reassured by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s complacent statement that “the centre is holding” during what we might call E-day – 9 June 2024, when the results of 27 different national elections to the European parliament were announced. That’s true in the aggregate distribution of seats between the main party groups in the European parliament, with her own centre-right European People’s party group coming out comfortably on top. But the EU is run by national governments even more than by its directly elected parliament, and E-Day produced hard-right successes in core member states that range from the significant to the shocking. (...)
What we need is a combination of national governments and European institutions that between them deliver the housing young people currently cannot afford, the jobs, the life chances, the security, the green transition, the support for Ukraine. Will Europe wake up before it is too late?
Tags: #eu #european_union #european_parliament #fascism #ukraine #france #germany #netherlands #italy #poland #hungary #immigration #elections