The scary EU elections result and the delayed Council’s repentance

The European elections on 25 May revealed the rise of extremist parties in Europe. 12 countries out of 28 will send ultranationalists deputies to the new European Parliament. France chose the radical Front National (French Nationalist Party) to represent its citizens at the European Parliament. Around 25% of the French votes were in favour of the Front National; it means that this party will send 24 deputies to the European parliament. It’s an unprecedented victory for this extremist party which was never strongly represented in Europe. In Greece, the party Golden Dawn collected almost 10% of the votes and consequently 3 members of the party will be representing some of the most horrible neonazi and racist beliefs in the European Parliament. Also In Germany, for the first time, the neo-Nazi party will take 1 seat at the parliament. This is rather shameful for a country that has been trying hard to push back in its memories and the memories of the world the atrocities of the past and fight legally and fiercely any neonazi expression. Further, in Austria, the FPO (Freedom Party of Austria) extremist party collected around 20% of the total votes and was at the 3^rd position in the ranking of the elections. This means actually another 4 extremist seats in the European Parliament. In addition, in Hungary, the Jobbik, the Hungarian radical nationalist party, came second and won 3 seats at the European parliament. Last, in Italy, Lega Nord, the federalist and regionalist political party, won another 5 European extremist seats. Even if all extremist European parties suggest the demolition of the European Union and have the same anti-immigration policy, we can notice there are still some differences. Particularly there are differences on the economic policy agenda; for example there is substantial difference between Finnish liberals from the “Vrai Finnois” (Extremist Finnish party) to those who belong to the Dutch PVV (Partij voor de Vrijheid), which is the right-wing political party. On societal issues, we notice that liberals from PVV and conservatives (French FN and Austrian FPO) disagree too. The French extremist right party from Marine Le Pen has been criticised by the Danish nationalist party (DF) and by the United Kingdom Independence party (UKIP) which denounces it as a party too much “anti-Semitic”. Le Pen, the president of the FN, denied the alliance with the Greek neo-Nazi party (Golden Dawn) and the Hungarian radical nationalist party (Jobbik). In addition, she didn’t want to meet Udo Voigt who is the first neonazi deputy at the European parliament. At this time, the Front National allegedly is not exactly the same with those racist parties even if we can find some similar directives in their programs on anti immigration policy and the the fall of the EU. The Council’s repentance came too late At the beginning of this week, the European Council finally accepted the program of stability of the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls. According to Brussels’ sources the possibility to impose sanctions against France as part of the failure of budget discipline procedure launched in 2009, for the ineffective economic policies followed, was still present around Place Schuman this week. I believe that the European Council, possibly influenced by the recent worrying results of the EU elections, understood finally that excessive austerity in Europe leads to a horrible economic situation which resulted to the unprecedented rise of the Extremists nationalists parties in the Old Continent and poses a threat to the mere existence of the biggest political project in the world.