If you missed it live, watch the full footage of our event here:
The many variables surrounding the rise of European populism and how it may affect the balance of power within EU institutions were discussed at length on Wednesday, March 20th, at a well-attended panel discussion hosted by The European Conservative in Brussels as experts and political insiders debated whether the bloc was finally veering rightwards.
Hosted by the publication’s managing editor, Ellen Kryger Fantini, the panel included the CEO and founder of the polling company eumatrix, Doru P. Frantescu, director of MCC Brussels Frank Füredi, political consultant and former Tory Party aide James Holland, as well as editor of the pro-market Brussels Report Pieter Cleppe.
Occurring less than three months before June’s European election, where national-conservative and populist parties are expected to get record results, topics discussed varied from the future of the EU’s already moribund Green Deal to the makeup of parliamentary groups and whether the liberal-left consensus that defined the previous five years would drag on.
Frantescu was pessimistic about the ability of Eurosceptic parties to live up to high expectations of achieving breakthroughs but was still certain that “everything to the right of the EPP” would do well as the era of complete liberal-left hegemony is coming to an end. He also remarked that the European Greens had achieved more legislative victories than even the centrist and far larger EPP group.
Commenting how increasingly the EU went from crisis to crisis rather than having a fixed plan, Holland broached the possibility of more parliamentary factions after June, including one for softer centre-right parties such as the Netherlands’ New Social Contract.
Holland also explained how energised populist factions both on the Right and Left could use committees of inquiry to better probe EU institutions.
One of the more optimistic voices regarding June’s predicted results, the MCC’s Füredi, stated that the elections will be the perfect opportunity to “embrace populism,” adding that farmers’ protests should lead populists to champion the abolition of the Green Deal rather than its further reform.
Füredi also praised the rise of France’s national-conservative Rassemblement National and the youthful energy of rising stars Jordan Bardella However, he said, turbulent geopolitical times means that the EU now has to focus on defence as the war in Ukraine challenges Brussels’ very legitimacy as a guarantor of peace on the European continent.
As to the makeup of the next European Commission, the EU’s executive wing, Holland reminded the audience that the centrist EPP is currently in control of just one large state in Europe (Poland) and that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will face a protracted period after June before she can secure a second term.
From the audience, VOX MEP Hermann Tertsch said June will be a “historic occasion” to bring the EPP to the right.
Migration, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a swelling of agrarian anger at the EU’s Green Deal are setting the tempo for June’s democratic vote, as parties on the Right strategically eye an alliance with the centre to end five years of unparalleled leftist dominance in the halls of power in Brussels.
