Is rise of far-right in Europe dangerous for democracy?

Europe is facing one of the worst environmental heatwaves of the decade and so does the political scene. Usually, the coldest of all in Europe — Finland — is the politically hottest after the new coalition government under the Finns Party has opted for Jussi Halla-aho as Speaker of the House who has a track record of race-related court convictions and ‘deeply disturbing’ blog postings. The Finns Party is very vocal about imposing cuts to immigration.

The sturdiest response came from Euronews which recently posted the strongest headline ‘Racism and rape fantasies: The PR headache facing Finland’s new right-wing government’.

Over the last decade, far-right elements are gaining momentum in Europe and protectionism is rising — phenomena that are directly linked to the issue of refugees and migrants who are flooding Europe after the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. I have been indicating for long that immigration rules would sooner or later rule the entire European political horizon. The rise of anti-immigration parties is linked with dislike (if not hatred) for refugees. Now the major issue in European politics is ‘immigrants’.

Why has the European far right been so successful? And how worried should we be about its threat to liberal democracy in Europe since last year (2022)?

After Finish election results, the major question one can find in the European media is: why has the European far right been so successful in so short a time?

Last year, in local elections in Spain and Italy, the right wing got the maximum votes, and far-right parties and liberal and left-wing parties were almost voted out of the political arena.

In Spain, the far-right, ultraconservative, anti-immigrant and nationalist rhetoric party ‘Vox’ became the biggest threat to liberal and left-wingers. In Italy, the far-right ‘Brothers of Italy’ — an anti-immigrant, conservative and nationalist party that is also against the EU and insists on ‘Italy first’ — won a majority of municipal elections.

We also remember that radical right-winger Marine Le Pen lost the presidential election in France but came too close to Emmanuel Macron who had to go through a run-off election.

In 2022, in Sweden, Sweden Democrats became the biggest right-wing party and a crucial support party of the new right-wing coalition.

The EU ‘pushback’ agenda to deal with human trafficking could be directly linked to the overall changing scenario but one must understand that Europe is not eager to take legal immigrants as workforce, let alone illegal ones. In the past immigrants from Africa and Asia were welcomed as cheap labour, and there were even different regimes of work and employment visas, but the situation dramatically changed after 9/11. The wars fought to save humanity were meant to somehow justify the cause and refugees from war zones were taken in. But later, countries starting from Hungry slowly and gradually registered their reservations and then took a firm stance of not accommodating refugees. The separate prison-like facilities were made to keep refugees and asylum seekers and a hard framework of inclusion was implemented. Now we are talking about three types of human influx in EU — legal immigrants, illegal immigrants and refugees/asylum-seekers.

Legal immigrants are providing a massive workforce as they are law-abiding taxpayers. Illegal immigrants have no legal status; they do make for cheap workforce but do not pay taxes nor do they take any benefit from the social welfare systems implemented in Schengen countries. Refugees mainly flee a conflict zone and have legal status and are entitled to free health and education which makes them a huge burden on the economy.

All the three types are socially and politically being treated the same. The economic burden due to asylum seekers has been politically shifted into an anti-immigrants’ stance which is turning into a win-win political narrative.

The two recent boat incidents — in Greece and Spain — resulted in the killing of hundreds of illegal immigrants right in front of coast guards. In the Spain incident, reports say the boat crew begged for 12 hours for rescue; that is the final seal to the deal. Europe does not want any more immigrants, legal or illegal.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 24^th, 2023.

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