Malgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat: We have to speak not of united, but of diverse and pluralistic souvereignism in Europe. And its main allegiance is not to Russia, but to… itself
A cross-border talk in plural about the extreme right parties in the EP
Vladimir Mitev
Malgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat is a Polish journalist focused on international relations and social issues. She is one of the founders of Cross-border Talks. Currently, she is a consultant to migrants in Poland, supporting them to claim their rights in interaction with the Polish authorities. Malgorzata believes that EU sovereignism is not understood correctly, because it is in reality a diverse movement, with a lot of national and regional specifics, with diverse views on social or geopolitical issues, etc. The ability to make a distinction and be aware of nuances and specifics is a key to being able to understand and treat this political tendency and its supporters right. Malgorzata also believes that its appearance and affirmation has social, economic and cultural reasons, which will prolong its existence no matter how much it is demonized.
Ms. Kulbaczewska-Figat, the EU conservative populism and extreme right was considered either pro-Russian or pro-American until the July 9, 2024 EU elections. What happened after that date was the emergence of even more groups of the extreme right – we have the European Conservatives and Reformists group (dominated by the Italian, Polish and Romanian sovereignists), there is the Identity and Democracy group (dominated by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally), there is the newly formed Patriots for Europe bloc (which unites mostly party members of the former Austro-Hungarian countries) and there is another blog in formation “Europe of Sovereign Nations” (which will be led by the Alternative for Germany). What is the meaning of this multiplication of sovereignist formations? What is their main political allegiance – to the USA, Russia or China, or to the national states and regional blocs to which they belong?
I would say that the main political allegiance of the extreme right or conservative populist parties is to… themselves. We are talking about political structures created to maximize the number of votes they can get at home, often centered around a national idea and in most cases around a charismatic leader. Second, they are faithful to the nation-state principle, because it is the national idea that drives them, as opposed to the ideas of European integration, multiculturalism, or open borders. Not all far-right parties preach open conflict with the EU or an exit of their respective countries from the community, but all of them play with the negative dynamic between their own nation/state and the European or even global community, which supposedly deprives the nation of its authenticity, imposing legal solutions and political moves.
It is a fact that a number of far-right politicians seem to believe in Putin’s Russia as a country restoring “traditional values” against “gay Europe,” or even show, or showed before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a kind of fascination with Vladimir Putin as a strong ruler. It is also a fact that Russia has actively sought contacts with conservative populist parties for its own purposes. But this is still not enough to say that being a far-right party in Europe implies political allegiance to Russia, as there are also far-right parties with a clear willingness to be part of the European community, to support Ukraine, etc. – Fratelli d’Italia is the strongest example.
There is a tendency to see the extreme right in the European Parliament and in European politics as a monolithic bloc. How justified is it to think of it as something devoid of differences and nuances? Who is the ultimate leader and spokesman of the extreme right in Europe?
There are a number of issues on which the parties classified as far right do not agree, even if they share Euroscepticism, anti-migration attitudes and in many cases also homophobia and anti-feminism. In addition, the parties have their alliances and tensions among themselves: let us just look at how the different groups in the current EPP were formed, with the AfD being shunned by the National Rally and the Polish Konfederacja being blocked from joining the ECR and eventually seeing its members split into different factions.
Geopolitical orientation, or the position towards Russia and the Ukrainian war, is one thing on which the parties in question have different approaches. Economic and social policy is another. There are far-right parties that stand for limited social solidarity and active state support only for members of their own nation, like the National Rally, and there are parties that combine extreme conservatism and anti-feminism with the conviction that no one should intervene in the market, like VOX in Spain. National and regional specificities create further differences between the parties: while the Polish or Greek far right emphasizes religiosity and the role of Christianity, the French or German populists base their visions of their respective countries on purely secular arguments.
Having said this, I believe it is too early to decide who could be the ultimate leader of the far right block, especially that we are not going to have one unitary block of all parties of that kind. Right now, Giorgia Meloni is perhaps the most influential figure among the far right leaders, being the only extreme right party leader who has actually won an election in a Western (Southern) country, successfully leading a government for a longer period and keeping a high confidence rating. Poland’s Law and Justice leaders, Jarosław Kaczyński and Mateusz Morawiecki, on the other hand, served as role models for a number of far right parties: they, too, took power, kept it for 8 years, and continued their political project despite political pressure from the EU’s side. Of course, none of them is a MEP now, so the action and initiative in the European Parliament would be undertaken by someone else. And, of course, there is the Godfather of the Nations of Europe, or the „Austro-Hungarian” group, Viktor Orban, whose Hungary, in turn, served as inspiration to the Polish sovereignist, and not only.
Looking at the diversity of sovereignist groups and identities in Europe, what can be said about the social and economic base of the different groups? To what extent can we speak of a common profile of the sovereignist voter or common economic interests behind each or most of the sovereignist parties? Are they representatives of the national capital or rather of the workers and employees? Are they defined not in positive terms – by the people who support them – but in negative terms – by their opposition to the technocratic and NGO elites?
As sociologist Raul Gomez put it in an interview with Cross-Border Talks, it is difficult to draw a universal portrait of a far-right voter, except for one characteristic: lower levels of education. In a number of European countries, far-right voters are also more likely to be found in small towns and in the provinces than in cosmopolitan urban centers. In a number of cases, the far right has been particularly successful in regions badly damaged by historical and economic transitions, such as the former East Germany or the post-industrial north of France.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to make a cathegorical claim that the far right is today’s workers’ party or that it represents small and medium-sized businesses. Rather, right-wing populist parties try to attract the votes of both groups and pose as defenders of both, even though their interests in capitalism are inevitably contradictory. If a populist party represents a “national and social” current, such as Poland’s Law and Justice, it is easier for it to get the workers’ vote, especially in the absence of a solid left alternative. If it is more of a pro-capitalist party that emphasizes the role of business, workers, even if they are very disappointed with their lives, are more likely to abstain than to vote for such an alternative.
Opposition to technocracy and corporate/NGO elites could be one of the characteristics of the far right, even if it is often illusory. Is there also a positive program? Again, the answer is that it depends. Some of the far-right parties, such as Portugal’s Chega, but also Konfederacja in Poland, look more like carefully crafted political projects designed to make as much noise as possible, to shock and attract with their supposed audacity, than parties that are programmatically co-created by their voters and supporters.
On the other hand, one cannot deny that there are often authentic emotions behind the populist vote: the voters of Law and Justice in Poland were genuinely angry with the austerity policies of Donald Tusk’s first government, just as many Italians vote for Fratelli d’Italia out of disappointment with the previous ruling “European” and “democratic” parties. Another question is how compatible voters’ expectations (sometimes including a complete reconstruction of a political system and elites) are with the actual plans of the parties. If a party’s main goal is to gain more influence, can this be called a positive program? In my opinion, not really.
What role would the various sovereignist parties and groups in the EP play if Donald Trump becomes the American president for a second time at the 2024 presidential elections? How much would they be just echo chambers for the ultra-conservative American Republican propaganda and how much would they have European domesticated narratives? Would they all be part of a potential American-Russian rapprochement and antagonization of China? Or would they instead go for a more complex foreign policy agenda, different than being proxies of Trump – e.g. promoting the EU strategic autonomy, the affirmation of EU defense industry or establishing ties to countries of the Global South in South America, Africa and Asia?
Don’t forget that some of the European far right parties are much older than Trumpism, and so are their ambitions to take power. Parties like Fratelli d’Italia, which have a genealogy – through individual activists and through ideological self-declarations – dating back to Mussolini times, or National Rally, which has fought for French votes for decades, climbed to the top to have a success of their own and no to echo a populist from America, even if he is a leader of a world superpower. For sure, a president like Trump is good news for them, but does it mean they would mimic him in everything? I don’t think so. As for complex foreign policy agendas, let us remember that these are parties which put their state, their nation in the center of attention.
Therefore, they could open up to the south if they feel that this kind of connection could be profitable for their side. As for the strategic autonomy of the EU, in view of the war in Ukraine I can hardly imagine that anyone will put forward this idea any time soon. Rather, I expect at least some sovereignists to affirm the arms industry and strengthen ties with the US, perhaps even claiming to be an equal partner with Washington (just as Poland’s PiS has played up the slogan of “being the favorite of the US”). On the other hand, if the Ukrainian war turns out to be even more of a stalemate and Trump seriously considers seeking a peace treaty with Putin, the European sovereignists might try to portray themselves as “the party of peace” that cares about its own citizens, protecting them from the warmongers. This is what I expect from the German AfD, for example, and what the Austrians are already doing.
It has been commented that some sovereignists are anti-Ukrainian, while others are pro-Ukrainian regarding the war in Ukraine. What is the different attitude of EU sovereignists to the war in Gaza, to the conflict between Israel and Iran, and to the Muslim world?
I don’t see any sovereignist party in the current PE that is really prepared to stand up for an end to the war in Gaza, or to condemn in any meaningful way the actions of Israel that have led to the deaths of thousands of civilians. And the explanation is clear: the far-right parties are not here to address issues and questions that require courage. They want to accumulate power and influence and not get into too much trouble. None of the European Parliament party factions wanted to have Grzegorz Braun, a Polish MEP (in)famous for extinguishing the menorah candles in the Polish parliament, just because they do not want to be accused of anti-Semitism. And today, to speak out about the suffering of the people of Gaza is to risk such an accusation.
That’s why I don’t expect the sovereignists to have much understanding for Iran’s position in the conflict with Israel, even though a republic that is religious by default might be an interesting, even tempting concept for those far-rightists who include religion in their worldview and program. It is simply too risky to side with Iran or remain neutral in Europe today, and the far right is not a risk-taker in a game that would hardly bring additional votes at home.
How likely is it to expect some kind of synthesis between technocrats and sovereignists on the grounds that they might have a national or regional context in which their interests are converging, as opposed to the interests of other pairs of technocrats and sovereignists in other countries or regions of the EU? We have seen how in some countries – for example in Bulgaria, the Biden period was marked by the emergence of both technopopulists and Russophile populists, with voters flowing between them, as opposed to the old parties of the Bulgarian transition.
I would say that a synthesis is possible even at a higher level. Contrary to the frequent claims of the far right to be something new in politics, anti-systemic, bringing new orders and rules, their innovation is rather limited to rhetoric and the ruthless language they use against the conservative-liberal decorum. In the end, most of the sovereignist parties do not even try to touch the free market mechanisms (which would be the biggest antisystemic move nowadays) and some of them, like the aforementioned Chega, VOX or Konfederacja, are vocal about giving even more freedom to business, cutting taxes and limiting workers’ rights.
Since the EU has always been dominated by the right, and by the right that favors competitiveness over solidarity and state support for business over state action in the economic sphere, the grounds for cooperation between this “extreme free-market” current on the far right and the “good mainstream right” can be surprisingly broad. The situation is paradoxical for the sovereignists, who focus their political argumentation on the issue of refugees and migration. It is easy for the mainstream to criticize them, including by calling them fascists (and rightly so), but then we see the anti-migrant measures put into practice by the same “righteous” and “democratic” parties, or tacitly supported when the sovereignists activate them. Just think how often Poland under PiS was criticized for the ‘counter-reform of justice’, and how the EU quietly accepted the inhuman behavior of Polish border guards and army on the eastern border (which continues under the current democratic government without any concern from other democrats).
Having said that, I expect all the more that the far right and the “classical” or “moderate” right will seek alliances at the national level, wherever the political arithmetic suggests it. We have already seen local coalitions between Spain’s Partido Popular and VOX (although they recently broke up), or a Swedish government that includes both sovereignists and the center-right. And I wouldn’t be too surprised if Poland one day sees a coalition between Tusk and Konfederacja, as there are people in Tusk’s party who talk with fascination about the latter’s extreme free-market program. So far, it has been Konfederacja that has refused to move closer to the mainstream (in order to maintain its image as an anti-systemic force), and not the “moderate” parties that have rejected the idea of working with the “extreme”.
Could it be that in the Trump era, more obscure and frightening sovereignists will emerge, while some of the older types of sovereignists will move towards the European People’s Party, whose nomination for President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will keep her position for another 5 years? In other words, what is your general prognosis for the future of EU populism and sovereignism in the near future?
Definitely. We are already seeing a growing number of cases where the extreme is approaching the mainstream and something even more extreme is growing to the right of it. The extreme right is becoming more aggressive in its language, freely stigmatizing any opponent, including a moderate right-winger, as a “crazy leftist” who must be destroyed.
And this is happening in the context of another process that you suggest in your question – but this is not only about the sovereignists moving towards a safe and respected center-right, but also about the center-right adopting sovereignist discourse in an attempt to retain voters and influence. What Donald Tusk said about migrants and border securitization is no different from what the sovereignists are proposing. Marine Le Pen was very happy with Macron’s anti-migrant legislation. This process of convergence could be even more dangerous for democracy than the rise of some new, as you say, obscure sovereignists. This process means that the political debate will be pushed very much towards xenophobia, authoritarianism and polarization, which damages our very capacity to have a political discussion, which should be a means to find a solution that is best for the maximum number of citizens.
I don’t want to make a prediction about what kind of sovereignism we will see in five years. I am sure, however, that the current will not disappear, even if it takes the form of a few concurrent and even conflicting tendencies. As long as the states and the EU are not able to respond to phenomena such as migration, climate change, inequalities, lack of public services in a way that favors solidarity and the well-being of citizens, there will be discontent and there will be volunteers to channel it. Be it with a belief in a glorious nation, be it with a retrotopia of the “good old conservative times” (which never existed). And there are signs that for the (neo)liberal/conservative mainstream, the existence of such ‘alternatives’, which can be easily dismissed or labeled fascist, is much more convenient than having an actual opponent from the left who could focus on attacking corporate privilege rather than fomenting anger against the Other.
Photo: Malgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat (source: Cross-border Talks)
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