
The weeks of negotiations have produced a 185 page agreement, which was signed earlier this week by the heads of all three parties: Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union and the Social Democrats. But while the party bigwigs have been arguing over such pressing issues as autobahn tolls for foreigners and retirement age exemptions, Germany’s European affairs have been handled by — as Timothy Garton Ash points out in the Guardian — a sub-group of the working group on finance called ‘Bank regulation, Europe, Euro’. For Germany’s political elite, it’s domestic issues that seem to matter, not the imminent threat to Europe.
In case they haven’t noticed, the 2014 European Parliamentary election campaign has already begun, and it looks set to be a disaster for the established parties. Marine Le Pen of the French Front National and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom party have formed a sort-of-alliance of the discontented. At their recent press conference in The Hague, Wilders announced, ‘Today is the beginning of the liberation from the European elite, the monster in Brussels’. Le Pen chopped in, ‘Patriotic parties…want to give freedom back to our people.’ A few days later other ‘populist’ parties — among them Austria’s Freedom party, Sweden’s Democrats and Italy’s Northern League — pledged to join the fun — with the not-so-secret objective of disembowelling the EU.

‘I will be amazed if these parties do not do well in the European elections,’ writes Garton Ash. ‘I see nothing at all coming from the current leadership in Berlin, Paris or Brussels (forget London) that is likely to reverse an electoral grande cascade.’ He goes on, ‘Partly as a result, this will be the most interesting European election campaign since direct elections to the European parliament began in 1979 – for all across Europe there is the most amazing array of national protest parties.’
Garton Ash points out that the one thing most of these parties share is their nationalism hence — once in the European Parliament — they may have difficulty in agreeing on much beyond their mutual dislike of the EU. ‘If they are strongly represented in the European parliament, the immediate effect will be to drive the mainstream socialist, conservative and liberal groupings closer together.’ That in turn could motivate a younger generation of Europeans to defend the achievements that too many of us take for granted.
As the ‘populist’ parties look set to win between 10% and 25% of the vote, Berlin should now focus on matters more important than whether 40% or 45% of Germany’s electricity should come from renewable sources by 2025. With the new government finally agreed (subject to approval by SPD members next month), let the work begin on addressing popular discontent in Europe, before it’s too late.
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