Analysts with the Brussels bureaucracy are beating the alarm. In the 2024 European Parliament elections, many countries in the Old World will feature a sharp right turn as populist radical right-wing parties will make major gains across the EU, while center-left and green parties are expected to lose their votes and seats. A statement to that effect came in a report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a pan-European think tank.
What's the fuss all about? The point is that after EP elections due on June 6 to 9 in 27 EU member states, the European Council (comprising the heads of state and government of all the EU countries) will have to nominate candidates for the European Commission to be either rejected or approved. Thus, the composition of this bureaucratic body that deals with the daily management of the European Union depends on the will of EP members. Besides, the European Parliament enjoys the function of political control over the EC and even has the right to dismiss it. This implies the European Parliament’s vital role for the entire bloc’s real policy in every area. Hence the intensity of the ongoing race prior to the elections across Europe, along with all the kinds of serious warnings to voters whom the liberal press is urging to make the “right choice”, that is, not to vote for candidates from “right-wing populist” parties.
So, without getting into specifics of the election struggle, we emphasize the following: all the forecasts suggest that almost half of the 720 seats in the European Parliament are going to get occupied by deputies who are not part of the “super-grand coalition” of the three centrist groups. Moreover, the EP may well feature a “right-wing populist coalition” of the Christian Democrats, conservatives and “far right” deputies for the first time ever. Let’s accentuate that the term “right-wing populists” was invented by the Brussels bureaucratic machine itself to bear a strictly negative connotation, as can be seen. By these forces, Brussels implies those allegedly seeking to destroy the EU and working not in the best interests of people inhabiting Europe.
But who are these “right-wing populists”, as negatively referred to by the EU? The bloc’s ruling elite has been professing and implementing an ultra-liberal ideology, laced with an aspiration for utmost diversity and mixture of races, cultures, religions, and a variety of “gender preferences”. The decade-long immigrant crisis in Europe is not a crisis in the proper sense of the word, but a systematic philosophy implementation of a new statehood model, which the globalist ultra-liberal establishment has prepared for Europe and the rest of the world. And those opposed to the pattern are branded as “right-wing populists” or even “fascists.”
The liberal European establishment’s stance has been presented in a concentrated form by the current European Commission. The first thing you need to cognize is EU policy towards immigrants. The Commission advocates “controlled immigration” rather than taking action to stop it. Its officials propose viewing immigration as an “objective reality” that must be lived with and, if possible, regulated. Meanwhile, the recently observed immigrant tsunami from the Middle East and Africa, actually encouraged at the pan-European level and initially by individual countries (primarily Germany), has made voter preferences swing towards the "populists" in various European states.
Apart from “controlled immigration”, numerous economic problems related to Brussels’ support for the Kiev regime have been added to the list over the last two years. The same parties and often the same politicians who encouraged the immigration tsunami in its infancy in 2016 are now siding with those following Washington and London’s lead in prolonging and escalating the war in Ukraine. An acute economic crisis has been spreading across Europe as a result of anti-Russian sanctions imposed by European governments and the entire European Union, particularly against Russian energy. Rising inflation (namely in foodstuffs), industrial production slump owing to growing fuel prices, and flight of commercial manufacturing from Europe to the USA are just several immediate causes of irresponsible policies pursued by traditional parties currently in power in the EU, except for maybe Hungary and Slovakia. By the way, Brussels classifies Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico as “right-wing populists” as well.
Criticism of the European authorities has come from the same “right-wing populists” who are essentially supporters of traditional values and national cultural identity. As for foreign policy, these forces stand out for non-intervention in the Ukrainian conflict and cessation of funds flowing to the Kiev regime. Thus, forecasts for the European Parliament’s balance of power favoring right-wing conservatives (aka “populists”) suggests that people in Europe have been fed up with both domestic and foreign policies of their “elites” and the Brussels bureaucracy.
What is the predicted EP election outcome for individual countries? The European Council on Foreign Relations believes that "anti-European populists" are likely to be ahead in the poll in nine EU countries (Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia), while coming in second or third in another nine (Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden).
The key EP election beneficiary is expected to be the “right-wing populists”, who will unite into the “radical right group” Identity and Democracy (IaD), which is forecast to win 40 seats and, totaling nearly 100 deputies, become the third largest group in the new European Parliament. "This sharp right turn is likely to have significant consequences for European-level policies, which will affect the foreign policy choices that the EU can make, particularly on environmental issues, where the new majority is likely to oppose ambitious EU action to tackle climate change," the European Council on Foreign Relations writes. But again, the most prominent “bogeyman story” used by the European bureaucracy concerns the impending collapse of the EU virtue of “right-wing populist” forces in case they “seize” the European Parliament.
However, the “populists” hardly seek the EU collapse, wishing that it waives the rule of doctrinaires with their liberal ideology and that the bloc is built on entirely different principles. The key ones are respect for national borders and non-erosion of populations by immigrants from other continents; preservation of family values, historical and cultural identity of European peoples based on the Christian religion. And in relation to the present day — also cessation of war funding for Ukraine.
The establishment is truly excited that the “populists” are destroying the ultra-liberal ideological and philosophical basis which the entire socio-political and economic life of the EU countries and the entire Western society is centered around today. And yet, there is already a strong tendency for the conservative traditionalists to recapture political initiative. And whatever negative labels they are hit with, European voters no longer buy this propaganda cliché of Europe’s mainstream press.
