This episode explores the recent European elections and the EU’s political drift to the right. What were the major issues, campaign themes and decisive factors which led to the results? And does the political center still hold if many right-wing positions have already been mainstreamed? Listen to hear about the new dynamics that will affect the future direction of the EU and the geopolitical challenges Europe will face during the upcoming U.S. elections.
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Glossary
Great Replacement Theory
(24:45 or p.7 in the transcript)
Replacement theory (in the United States and certain other Western countries whose populations are mostly white) is a far-right conspiracy theory alleging, in one of its versions, that left-leaning domestic or international elites, on their own initiative or under the direction of Jewish co-conspirators, are attempting to replace white citizens with nonwhite (i.e., Black, Hispanic, Asian, or Arab) immigrants. The immigrants’ increased presence in white countries, as the theory goes, in combination with their higher birth rates as compared with those of whites, will enable new nonwhite majorities in those countries to take control of national political and economic institutions, to dilute or destroy their host countries’ distinctive cultures and societies, and eventually to eliminate the host countries’ white populations. Some adherents of replacement theory have characterized these predicted changes as “white genocide.” The claim that national governments or unspecified elites are secretly directing the replacement and eventual elimination of whites has circulated among fringe groups of white supremacists, anti-Semites, and other right-wing extremists since at least the late 19th century. It received much wider attention in the early 21st century with the publication of Le Grand Remplacement (2011), by the French writer and activist Renaud Camus. He argued that since the 1970s, Muslim immigrants in France have shown disdain for French society and have been intent on destroying the country’s cultural identity and ultimately replacing its white Christian population in retaliation for France’s earlier colonization of their countries of origin. He also asserted that the immigrant conquest of France was being covertly abetted by elite figures within the French government. source
Shalini Randeria (SR) Welcome to Democracy in Question, the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world. I am Shalini Randeria, Rector and President of Central European University in Vienna, and Senior Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
This is the first episode of season nine of Democracy in Question. I'm very pleased to welcome today an old friend and my former colleague, Ivan Krastev, who is a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia. Ivan is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, as well as a board member of the Open Society Foundation and of the International Crisis Group.
Previously, he served as Executive Director of the International Commission on the Balkans. In 2020, he was awarded the Jean-Marie Prize for European Essay Writing. He's been a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and he publishes regularly in the Financial Times. Trained as a political scientist, Ivan Krastev is the author of widely acclaimed books such as “Democracy Disrupted: The Global Politics on Protest”[i], “In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders”[ii], “After Europe”[iii], and most recently, the award winning “The Light That Failed”[iv], co-authored with Stephen Holmes. Ivan has long been an astute commentator on European politics, whose masterful analyses produce refreshing insights and debunk deeply entrenched misconceptions. This spring, he and Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, published an excellent report on the issues that would determine the EU elections on the ninth of June.
I'll take my cue from their title, “A New Political Map: Getting the European Parliament Election Right”[v]. I explore with Ivan this new map of European politics, starting with the continent-wide drift to the right, which he had already predicted. We discuss the major issues, the campaign themes, some rhetorical frameworks, and decisive factors which influenced the election results.
Both of Ivan's predictions came out to be true. Parties to the right of the Christian Democrats in the European People's Party made serious headway, and liberals, greens and the left lost a lot of seats, leading to a reconfiguration of the balance of forces in the European Parliament. With the far right increasing its influence, the European Parliament is now more polarized and more fragmented than ever.
Though the worst-case scenario of a decisive breakthrough for the far right has been averted, do the results ring alarm bells, I ask Ivan. Does the political center still hold if many right-wing positions, especially on migration, have already been successfully mainstreamed? What are the new dynamics that will affect the future direction of the EU, threatened by nationalist sovereigntist agendas of Euro-sceptics and Euro-pessimists?
I'll also ask Ivan to reflect on the significance of these elections for the strong blows to two national governments in Germany and France. And finally, to assess the geopolitical challenges that Europe will face due to the upcoming U.S. elections, which may well return Trump to the White House. Ivan, welcome to the podcast.
It's a real treat to have you back. And thanks so much for joining me today.
Ivan Krastev (IK): Thank you very much.
My previous guest on the podcast is, I'm sure someone you know, Catherine Fieschi, and she argued that the recent surge of ethno-nationalist populist forces in Europe may have been catalyzed by what she calls the phantom political center, that is the traditional center right as well as the center left parties, their avoidance of strong positions, especially on potentially divisive or explosive issues, and therefore they've become almost indistinguishable, ultimately, and with that, less appealing to large parts of their own electorates. You use a very interesting term in your article, which I want you to talk about and you refer to as the rise of suspicious majorities in all European societies that no longer trust mainstream parties.
What do you mean by this intriguing phase? Where has all the trust evaporated, and why do these majorities then begin to trust the extreme right especially.
IK: The center was very important in European politics after World War II. The center left and the center right have been the moderate wing of the right and the moderate wing of the left. There was a strong, much more radical leftist version devoted to the idea of the revolution, and on the right, there was the legacy of the parties that supported the fascists in the interwar period. So, with the passing of time, the center right and the center left start to totally dominate European politics, and you have this consensual politics on which the European Union was based, which means that they differ, but they differ very much within a frame of rules and the of attitudes that were accepted by everybody.
Catherine is right, the problem is that they became moderates, but moderates of what? In a certain way, both the center right was cut from the traditional right, and the center left was cut from the left. And as a result, they create one majority, where the major idea was to keep outside the radical factions of yesterday. And it worked for a very long time, and European politics were at their most consensual on the level of European Parliament. What was happening, and it started almost a decade ago, is radicalization both on the left and on the right. It started on the left with the global financial crisis, but it was the radical right, particularly as a result of the immigration crisis of 2015-16 that became predominant. And they defined the moderates as the status quo. To vote for the center right or to vote for the center left meant to vote for the world in the way it is. And people have started to be quite unhappy with the world as it is. And also a series of crises, economic crisis, climate, COVID, migration (lead to a question) – should people trust their leaders? One of the things that in my view this election showed, and which is totally underestimated, was the long impact of COVID on the political process.
Some of the voters, particularly of the far right, but also the far left have been very unhappy with the the government during the COVID period. Anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown movements were very strong. And this is particularly strong among the young voters. One of the things that happened during these elections was that, particularly in Western Europe, the young vote moved to the far right. Almost one third of the young voters in France went there. You have seen it also in Germany.
You are going to mainstream certain options like the Greens which in the beginning were perceived as more radical. There was a very important border between this kind of big middle and both the radical neighborhoods on the left and on the right. This is not true anymore. And this is particularly seen in Germany, because in Germany, you have a political party with a very strong anti-systemic flavor. (With) Meloni in Italy, you can claim that the far right was mainstream, so when people are voting for them, they don't have the feeling that they're voting for a radical party.
This was not the case with AfD (Alternative for Germany). Both the state institutions, including the prosecutor's office, the mainstream media, and others, made it very clear that the vote for AfD is a kind of an anti-system vote. And regardless of it, 16 percent of the Germans voted for it, and not simply 16 percent of the Germans, but almost 700,000 who before (had) voted for the CDU/ CSU, and half a million who voted (earlier) for the Social Democrats, and even 50,000 who (had in the past) voted for the Greens.
What we are seeing is a major rearrangement of the political system. This is not exactly who is going to get how many seats today. The problem is, what is the trend? And the trend, as I claimed in this piece in the Financial Times, you have much more polarization. But on the other level, you still have a lot of fragmentation because you do not have a hegemonic party of the left or the right. You have a lot of small parties, particularly in some of the parliamentary systems. Places like Netherlands where you're going to see how the political system can look with eight or nine small parties around: one slightly bigger party on the far right, slightly bigger liberal party, slightly bigger left green coalition… But also small parties which are not easy to be identified, with any clear political position, but which are very much marked (by) this level of mistrust of institutions, mistrust of the political process. We're going to have a constant burst of new protest parties. Funnily enough, at the moment in which there are not many babies in Europe, the new political projects and new political parties are really booming.
SR: I'm going to take up a few of the points that you just made. First, let's talk about this large vote by young voters. We are talking about 16- to 24-year-olds who have voted for the extreme right. What explains in your view the affinity of this age group towards more nationalist, authoritarian politics, although many of them have been, when you think of the Green voters, extremely strong on questions of climate change, for example, on which the extreme right are all (climate change) deniers.
IK: This is a good question. I'm going to focus on three characteristics of this youngest vote. Already in 2021, the Cambridge Center for the Study of Democracy figured out that the younger generation is the one that is mostly dissatisfied with democracy as a political system. Not only compared to the previous generations, but also to previous generations at their age. So in a very important way, this is not simply a vote against certain political parties, but these young people, who have been socialized after the global economic crisis, who have been socialized in the fear of climate change, they're not sure that democracy works. Second and very important is also the data (that) shows that particularly in Western Europe, this is a generation that is the most divided when it comes to the political choices (of) young men and young women.
Particularly young men go and vote for the far right. And this is very much part of the cultural war and how it was experienced by this younger generation. And keep in mind that this is probably the first generation that experienced politics almost primarily through social media. The far-right parties in the case of France, (are) totally dominating when it comes to TikTok, when it comes to this new social media. And certainly, and this is very important, at least for me, is that this generation is a small cohort of people. They never get enough votes to push major parties to focus on that. This is particularly strong in some of the small East European states where you can win the elections without getting a single vote from this group. So this group feels very disadvantaged in a democratic game as a generation.
Size matters in politics. And people don't like to play a game in which they cannot win. So, from this point of view, this generation and these young voters are much more ready for change, they don't have the feeling that they have much to lose. And they're trying different options, radical options. They can change their vote. The very fact that people can move from the Green Party to the AfD is telling you that they're looking for something. They have an option. And this also has something to do with the changing culture of consumption for this generation.
I have always believed that one of the most understudied cultural practices that probably affects the way people are voting is the practice of the big supermarkets. And I mean, all these clothes shops, which allow you to buy something and two or three days later to return it in order to buy something else. So, from this point of view, this generation fits the Hirschmanian term “zero loyalty”; they can live with the fact that they're going to be disappointed, but they're never going to allow one party to disappoint them twice. And also, this generation is much more open to the strong influence of personal charisma. This is a generation that is very much shaped by different influencers. This is not a generation that is going to read political platforms. And this is not a generation that is going to decide how to vote based on the tax calculator. This kind of a predisposition of the young voters explains the fact that they have been running out of the center for a long time.
Even on the previous parliamentary elections in Germany, you can see that the young voters were overrepresented in the Green party. It was very overrepresented by the liberals. And now they're basically moving to the far left and far right because they're looking for radical change. And the only thing that you cannot find at the center is this kind of demand for change.
SR: Ivan, coming back to your comment earlier about what defines the political mainstream, let me ask you if it makes sense to even talk about the political mainstream in a static sense, the way we were defining it about a decade ago. Does the drift to the right, for example, on the issue of immigration, does that already signal the new normal? The center left Danish social democrats have adopted a harsh zero asylum immigration policy in the last five years. I'm thinking now not of your Financial Times article, but of your very influential report written with Mark Leonard for the European Council on Foreign Relations this spring, where you pointed out that many mainstream conservative parties are emulating the far right, especially the tough rhetoric against immigration.
And interestingly, you argued in the report that this was counterproductive. As in most of Western Europe in your view the fear of migration was no longer a top concern for most voters. So, your suggestion to the mainstream parties was to build a different political platform, maybe a more liberal, tolerant one. Do you think the election results now show that there will be a greater consensus around limiting immigration? Because the conservatives and the far right can very easily cooperate on this issue, which is no longer divisive.
IK: I do believe that there was a new consensus on migration, which was born even before the elections. And if you see in 2015-16, migration was perceived very much as a moral and political issue. The idea was, do we have the right to close our borders to others? There was an argument that all these people coming is going to be beneficial not only in economic terms, but also this cultural and political diversity, is going to help Europe. If you go and look for the last five years, you're going to see that there is not a single party now that is advocating for opening the borders. The problem now is much more to decide how to regulate it. Strengthening the external borders of the European Union is endorsed not simply by the center right, but also the major center left, and I'm not talking about Denmark only.
The biggest question now is also how and whom we want. And under what kind of conditions. This was the major difference between these elections and the previous elections. In 2019, migration was the major dividing line, while climate policies were perceived as consensual, as if all the parties, including the center right, were very much open to active pro-climate policies.
What we saw in these elections is, of course, rhetoric is different, and the history of the parties are different, but at the end of the day, we're seeing two things that are common. First, when the far right comes to power, the number of migrants is not reduced. This is the data from Italy.
European societies are shrinking and aging. So obviously the pressure for new labor migrants is very strong. When Mrs. Meloni came to power, she came with a very strong anti-immigration message. But in the year and a half she has been in power, the number of migrants went up. And even more, she was talking about the need for at least half a million labor migrants in order for the Italian economy to function.
So the paradox of the far right coming to power is that the number of migrants are not going to decline, but the anxiety about migration is going to decline. This is the data which we have. The difference between left and right is not that the right is going to stop migration; they're going to probably have the same number of migrants, but they're not going to pretend that they like it.
And the second question is also, what kind of migrants do we want? During 2015-16, the major story was that we're open to refugees, but we're not open to economic migrants. And we try to distinguish between (the) one and the other. As a result of it, we basically forced every migrant to pretend that they're refugees. The truth is just the opposite. Europe is quite open for economic migrants and not particularly excited about refugees. The country which in 2018 had the highest number of work permits given for non-European workers was Hungary, a country which was perceived as being very strongly anti-immigrant. But of course, they needed these people because this was the demand of the industry. What is the difference between the refugees and the immigrants. First, you don't feel moral obligations. You have the feeling that they should be dealt with (through) the market and the state has nothing to do there.
But secondly, and in my view, this is the most important, that you have the right to choose. And one of the biggest troubles in European policy now is capacity. This is legitimately a big issue because the capacity of social system turned (out) to not be able to integrate. And in the case of Germany this is very much seen. But you want certain migrants. You want highly educated people coming with a certain degree, even preferably from certain places. And this kind of a change in the European debate is something that had taken place.
It's different on what happens with the Green Deal. While the Green Deal was very much at the center of the consensus in 2019 and van der Leyen was kind of a very green president of the Commission, it became clear at the end of her term that center right is moving much more away from this type of policies. And also, some of the voters of traditional social democratic parties, for example, in Germany and others, which are aging people or coming from not necessarily green-friendly industries are much less enthusiastic about the Green Deal.
Europe in 2024 is very different than Europe in 2019. Some of the dividing lines are different, but also some of the consensuses that are emerging are very different than the consensuses that have been before.
SR: Ivan, let me pick up on two points which you just made. If we look at the alternative for Germany, the AfD, they have been on the question of migration, not only extremely hostile to taking in foreigners, but they are advocating re-immigration. They want to send back the foreigners. So, a vote for the AfD is certainly outside of the migration consensus, which you describe, although the demographic problem and especially the labor market shortages in Germany are as evident as they are in many other countries.
I think you are right that people think that, like in the U.S., the question of how to deal with immigrants is that the market should absorb them rather than the state paying for them through the welfare system. But the question for democratic politics is: What kind of political rights is one willing to concede to the immigrants? And this is where Europe has been extremely restrictive in terms of voting rights, citizenship rights. What do you think is the future of the political rights in a democratic system where large parts of those who are living in Europe, paying taxes, are kept out of political representation?
IK: This is a great question and this is part of the paradox of the European Union. Because the European Union is also a collection of national democracies, we have this strange situation in which people quite often have political rights, but they cannot exercise them in the places in which they're paying taxes and in which they work. So as a result of it, in certain parts of Europe, with demographic changes and immigration changes, you can end up with electoral bodies in which 40 percent of the people have the right to vote, for example, (in) some of the small East European states are going to be retirement age.
15-20 percent of the people who are on the market are not going to have the possibility to vote. And then 15 percent of those who are going to vote are not living in the country. They're going to vote, but they're not going to pay taxes. So a connection between taxpaying and citizenship, in my view, is totally broken.
And if in a classical kind of a history of rights, democratic rights comes first and the social rights come later, the famous Marshall story, this is not going to be the case anymore. People are going to have social rights before they're going to have effective political rights.
I'm a Bulgarian citizen. I can vote, but I'm going to vote in Bulgaria while I'm living in Austria. I'm paying taxes in Austria. So as a result of it, on what I'm voting is going to be quite interesting. If before, particularly East European diasporas used to vote much more liberal than the country as a whole, we also start to see a tendency in which the diaspora is going to vote even more nationalistic than the country as a whole. Because, in a certain way, belonging to a certain political community is becoming much more symbolic politics than anything else. And I do believe these kinds of changes we're going to see here, different countries will go for different models. For example, Germany now decided much more to speed up, trying to integrate and giving citizenship and so on.
In Eastern Europe, political rights are perceived as ethnic privilege. We're ready to open our markets for foreigners and these people are going to have also some social rights but we're really afraid to allow them to vote because of the trajectory of the idea of sovereignty and making of East European nation states. They were post-imperial on the day of their birth and for them, minorities were perceived as a major threat. And particularly minorities that can become majorities. So demographical changes and the arrival of all these people, if they're going to have voting rights, starts to challenge the historical majority in different nation states.
In some places, like in Vienna, around 40 percent of the taxpayers cannot vote in the Austrian and national elections. And this is a real issue. And so, when we talk about migration, in my view, there are several things that are really mixed and people have the feeling that they talk about the same things, but they do not. You have the fear of immigrants, which is very strong on the far right, all these “Great Replacement” fears, but you have the fear of emigration, which is strong, not only in the East, but also in countries like Italy, where one million have left after the financial crisis.
And you have the fear of an aging population and a shrinking population. The fertility rates in Europe are very low. And also, in a place where you cannot explain it easily, (in an) egalitarian society with generous social policies, for example, like Finland. So, I do believe that we're entering a period of great demographic anxiety, which is starting to change European politics.
SR: But it's interesting, Ivan, in a sense, it's also a paradox, don't you think, of the European achievements and successes post Second World War. The major achievement is the welfare state, but the welfare state makes it difficult to integrate those coming from outside the national borders, because the argument is that these are the people who have not contributed earlier to the system. For the Social Democrats, the fear is that these migrants will depress wages. So, in a sense, what was such a backbone of democracy in Western Europe seems to have become a problem.
IK: Totally, democracies did very well when we had a relatively stable population. And also, don't forget the countries that have the highest percent of immigrants and foreigners among them are not democratic countries, the Gulf States, Singapore and so on. Because the other story about democracy and when you start really integrating people is that you're also bringing new voters and the question for whom they're going to vote is becoming a major issue.
So the fear (is) that the government is going to elect its own people, That certain people are going to be brought into the political sphere simply to vote in a particular way is one of the major fears because democracy is about counting votes. And I do believe this is really changing the way democracy functions. And this is why we're not going to understand what is happening neither in these elections nor the next if we're not seeing the very deep transformative change that is going on and which cannot be captured simply from which political party people went to vote. And if we go to the Trump effect, most probably if Donald Trump is elected, he's going to try to do deportation of migrants. This is important symbolic politics for him. And by the way, there is majority support in the United States, according to the opinion polls for this, including the majority support among the black minorities and Latino minorities. And then the problem is how the far right in Europe is going to resist to try to do it here now.
Most probably, in the beginning, the talk is going to be about foreigners who had criminal offenses. Most probably, there are going to be other criteria. But this is a different politics, because it's one thing to stop somebody on the border and not allow her or him to come. It's totally different, to expel somebody who has a daughter or a son in the school of your son and daughter. And this kind of a threat for the social cohesion of societies. This fragmentation which we're talking about is not simply fragmentation of the vote. What is questioned now is, what is the meaning of the word society? How can we use it? With respect to what? This is very much the reality that Europe is facing.
And don't forget democracy was based on the assumptions that we know the borders of democratic community. There is no democracy that can create its own political community. You're also starting from the idea of the political community that is perceived as self-obvious. And as a result of it, in my view, we're facing a much deeper crisis than the fact of how many exactly seats the parties on the right of the Christian Democrats are going to get.
SR: Ivan, let me ask you something completely different, and which is the question of how the far right has managed to, in a sense, consciously de-radicalize its image through the rhetoric that it's been using. For example, many of them have toned down their anti-EU rhetoric. They are opting for a more restrained Euroscepticism. I'm thinking of Marine Le Pen in France, of Meloni in Italy, who are now trying to forge - with a much more moderate rhetoric - ties to the conservative parties. So how do you think this new partnership could work out between the Conservatives and the Eurosceptics, Europessimists of the far right, because the traditional opponents of the European People's Party, the Conservatives, were the Greens and the Social Democrats. And this seems to be changing as a result of this new election result.
IK: The far right is not the same party. It's not a unified front. all these parties, they have a very much national trajectory. It's based on what happened in their national politics for the last two decades.
This is a post-utopian, post-revolutionary course. They don't have the idea of the New Man. In the 1930s, the fascists, like the communists back then, they had the idea of the New Man. They were very much preoccupied with the future.
This is strong nostalgic movement which believes that as a result of globalization, their own societies have been transformed beyond recognition. And what they're really nostalgic for is a certain ethnic composition of society. And as a result of it, they're much more on (the) defensive. And this is why some of them not self-confident enough, to be honest, to challenge much more the political status quo as the way you see it.
So in many places, this party has endorsed Europe because they don't trust their nation states anymore. And this is the difference from a decade ago. A decade ago, for example. Marine Le Pen believed that Europe did not work, but France worked. She does not believe this anymore. She believes that the European Union does not work, but France does not work either.
All of these people are frustrated with the way Europe and the world is changing and how the role of Europe in the world has been marginalized. We are probably still the wealthiest province of the world, but we're not the center anymore. And certainly, what is very important for the far right is that like the left and particularly the radical left, they're basically departing from the Cold War narrative (of) democracy versus autocracy.
And they very much endorsed the post-colonial discourse. The difference is that the post-colonial discourse on the left, we Europeans are colonizers, but in the post-colonial discourse of the right, we are the natives, and we are resisting a colonial invasion. And they are going to adopt a language which is not going to be very different to the language of some of the anti-colonial movement from the 1960s and 1970s. The idea of this is the right to preserve your national identity, the right of being culturally different. So this is also going to be an interesting change, because while they have totally different positions, these far left and far right, they speak the same language, having two totally different judgments of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in all this, while the center right party still stay with the Cold War narrative. And this Cold War narrative has been marginalized both internationally, but also within the younger generation.
SR: You've talked about the long life of the “skeptics’ resentment”. And here I'd like to ask you to talk a little bit about polarizing issues in Europe, the polarizing response to the war in Ukraine, the Green Deal. But do you think issues like high energy prices, inflation, public debt, farmers protests, what kind of a role did these strong economic issues play in European politics?
IR: They play a very important role, but they go beyond lack of a good price or simply lack of a good house.
All of this crisis challenges the major assumptions on which the European dream was based. The global financial crisis came and suddenly we cannot take for granted that children are going to have a life better than their parents. Just the opposite. And then when it comes to immigration, the self-obviousness of your national culture is becoming highly problematic. It's not about the mortality of individual, it's about the mortality of the nations. Who is going to speak the small languages of the small EU member states in 100 years?
If you're coming from Pakistan, do you really believe that you are going to learn Bulgarian and to integrate when you probably in two or three years decide to move to work and to live in some of the other EU member states because it's easier?
And the story with COVID was also interesting because first you have this kind of great pandemic, you don't know what to do, and some people became extremely scared that the next pandemic is going to come, we're not going to be prepared. But interestingly enough, part of this youth revolt was very much also rooted in the fact that they have been the generation that was imprisoned during the lockdowns. They had the feeling that they were not important and while in the beginning this generation was very much in solidarity with the most vulnerable groups - the older people that have a higher risk to die - suddenly they had the feeling that their youth is taken from them, that they are not important anymore, that their life is disrupted. And I'm saying this because they see everything around them just as a signal of the world that has betrayed them. And this is why I don't believe that simply by reducing this price or that price, you're going to regain the loyalty of these people.
And this explains the fact that some of the governments decided to invest, in classical social democratic policies of the previous period, (but) it didn't pay back in the way they expected; by the way, Biden being the great example of this. And as a result of it, we have both left and right, far left and far right, without clear idea what is the economic policy.
And we're moving in a world, and I found this very important, that one thing that is disappearing, and here the far right touched on something important, is that the very idea of home is disappearing.
When it comes to the immigrants, we come to a new place, and it's not going to be called home. But also, people who never moved, but the world around them changed dramatically. And don't forget, being at home was basically the way you felt free. This sense of living in a homeless world was something that was caught by the far right, totally radicalized and weaponized, turned against the elites, which according to them evicted people from their national homes. And this was part of the cultural appeal (of) political parties in which you cannot say that there was new ideas or much more new talent. So it's not that on the far right you're seeing some an incredible intellectual and other political energy. They're also quite mediocre political leaders talking triviality all day. So this is a change of sensibilities and not simply of policies, which is, defining the moment in which we are, and, and this is not an easy moment.
SR: Ivan, I'm going to turn back to one point you made earlier, which I think is an important one. Right at the beginning you were saying, don't forget the national context. This is not like the U.S., you know, a federation of states, the member states and their national politics matter. So, what we saw was Macron's immediate gamble, if I may call it that, to call for national elections in France, because he wants to prevent the crushing defeat his party suffered at the hands of the right-wing National Rally in the European elections. Do you think this is going to succeed in the French case? In the German case, of course, ruling coalition has been weakened after the blow to the Greens. And how do you think that's going to play out in Germany? After all, France and Germany are two key member states in the European Union.
IK: This is the major thing that is happening. These two countries are in a deep crisis. The French presidency is an interesting institution. It's a legitimate son of monarchy and revolution. So, from this point of view, you have quite a lot of monarchical power, but also the instinct for radical change.
President Macron, there is one thing that he fears most, and this is irrelevance, being buried alive. And this was going to happen to him if he was going to do nothing after this political defeat, because losing the initiative, he was losing also his position to shape not only France, but Europe. I don't know how well the elections will go, but I know one thing, do not polarize if you're not sure that majority is on your side, because then you can unleash a process, which is out of control. And for the European union, this can have very far-reaching consequences.
SR: This is what we saw with Brexit, Ivan.
IK: Absolutely. European politics on the level of the EU never was a poker with a real money. It was always a poker with jetons, and now he put the real money there. On the German case, the situation is also quite dramatic because you cannot understand what the solution looks like. The major opposition parties, CDU/CSU. didn't do badly, but they didn't do particularly well, keeping in mind how unpopular the government is. And now we know one thing, the next government of Germany, obviously it's not going to be this government. And perhaps Germany now has been also very much changed on the level of territorial politics because it is quite clear that AfD can become the government in some of the eastern states, which is going to challenge the federal nature of the German system, which is based on a quite high consensual policy.
So, in a similar way, both France and Germany, what we see is not the crisis of government, but the crisis of political system. This is why in order to understand European elections, you should go on the national level. And the stories are different. By the way, East European countries this time did much better than West European countries. For example, Poland, but also Czech Republic. In the case of Hungary, you can see that probably, Mr. Orban is weaker than many people expected. But now we're in a different game. Because all these national politics are so much interconnected as a result of European Union and the crisis that it faces.
SR: One other interconnection I want to ask you about, and that is the transatlantic one. Your worry is, as you wrote once, that you don't rule out the possibility that Europe could sleepwalk into a much darker scenario, not only as a result of its own electoral choices, but because of the U.S. elections where it'll prove decisive what happens there for the shape and character of Europe. So, could you say something about what you see as the main geopolitical dilemmas for the European Union, given that there's a likelihood of Trump returning to the White House?
IK: Absolutely. And keep in mind, there is a major difference between Trump one and Trump two. During Trump one, people were very much worried that he's unpredictable. Now people believe that if he's unpredictable, probably this is our major hope. So from this point of view, Mr. Trump is going to be much more radical than European far right for many reasons: the different nature of the American politics, his obsession with the deep state, but also because of the fact that in the United States, he believes that he has much more power to change the world in the way he wants, which many of the far right parties in much smaller (European) states do not have.
What is going to happen is that many of these parties are going to radicalize too, because regardless of what their leaders believe, there are going to be a question if he (Trump) is deporting migrants, why we're not doing this. And I don't believe that European Union is going to have the capacity to have a common policy and resist the United States. Not because many of these parties are particularly pro-American, but because Europe is too fragmented. And in a certain way, we have also lost the capacity to cooperate, which was so important for the European project. For example, Mrs. Meloni under Trump and Mrs, Meloni under Biden is not the same prime minister. And this is how the American elections are going to affect Europe, not because of the way the United States are going to treat Europe and what kind of a trade or security policy is going to happen But because of the fact that we're living in such a interconnected world that everybody tried to imitate everything and as a result of it, many of these parties can decide to radicalize in order to imitate what they were going to see as Trump's success.
And don't forget if Trump is going to be elected in the way some of the polls predicted, he's going to have a totally different legitimacy than the first time. First, they're going to have probably his own majority. They're going to have his own party. He's going to enter a government with people that he has selected and not people that he inherited from the previous Republican party. And, paradoxically enough, probably, regardless of his very strong anti-immigrant or anti minority rhetoric, he's going to be elected with a much higher percent of support among the minority groups than, for example, the previous Republican candidates after Reagan.
So, this is a different world. And in my view, the most important, we reflect on what is happening, be it Europe, America, the world. We should not be interested so much how different it is from yesterday. Obviously, it is different, but try to understand what is at the heart of this new world that is arriving.
SR: Thanks, Ivan, for this incisive and insightful analysis of the recent European parliamentary elections and also going much beyond it to look into what could be the future of European politics in the light of U. S. election results. As always, it's been a pleasure to host you on the podcast. Thank you very much.
Let me summarize some of the main takeaways from my conversation with Ivan Krastev. We heard why the conservative political mainstream in Europe can breathe a temporary sigh of relief, and it may even have reason for some celebration, as far right parties were denied an overwhelming victory. However, whether the newly defined mainstream center can hold also depends on the outcome of national politics that are equally decisive, if not more so in Europe. In France and Germany, there is a deeper crisis of the political system, which is much more than a crisis of government in Ivan's view. The French elections to be held very soon are a gamble, and the future of the tripartite German coalition hangs in balance. We have narrowly escaped a seismic ideological shift in the European political landscape, but the mainstreaming of some far-right agendas will be consequential. These are post utopian parties that are nostalgically backward looking in their vision of an earlier ethnically homogeneous nation. Their voters have a sense of feeling homeless in their national homes due to the sweeping cultural and societal changes of the past decades. But it's not only some of the older voters, but the younger ones, especially young men who have voted in large numbers for extreme right parties. They're dissatisfied with the political system in general and also feel neglected due to their relatively small numbers. But also, this is a young generation attracted to charisma, not only in politics, but also on social media, where influencers are able to hold the sway. And it is this new political media which far right parties have used widely and also very well.
Democracies, Ivan told us, cannot create the composition of their own demos. Democracies flourished in Europe under conditions of stable national populations. So, demographic anxiety in Eastern and in Western Europe must be taken seriously for the destabilizing effects it has on democratic politics. For migration has led to an uncoupling of economic and political rights. And interestingly, it's the far-right governments which find it easier to increase rates of immigration into their countries as citizens trust them much more to defend national borders. Given the broad consensus across all parties against asylum and uncontrolled migration, nut in favor of some regulated migration, polarizing issue in this European parliamentary election was not migration. The polarizing issues that came to the fore were those with economic ramifications for the life of ordinary citizens. Costs of the green transition and of the unified EU support for the war effort in Ukraine proved to be divisive issues, but they were also thus decisive ones for voters. We are seeing a change of voter sensibilities and not a change in their preference for policies according to Ivan Krastev. Should Trump win the American elections, he will pursue more radical policies this time around. Policies on immigration are sure to have an effect on far-right agendas in Europe. If Trump makes good on his stated threat to deport migrants, this may radicalize many a far-right leader in Europe to imitate him.
This was the first episode of Season 9 of Democracy in Question. Thank you very much for listening. Join me again in two weeks when my guest will be Adam Habib, Director of the School of African and Oriental Studies in London, with whom I discuss the political changes in South Africa after the recent elections, which saw the ANC lose its majority for the very first time.
Please go back and listen to any episode that you might have missed. And of course, let your friends know about this podcast if you're enjoying it. You can stay in touch with the work of the Central European University at www.ceu.edu and the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch\democracy.
[i] Krastev, I. (2014). Democracy disrupted: The global politics of protest. University of Pennsylvania Press.
[ii] Krastev, I. (2013b). In mistrust we trust: Can democracy survive when we don’t trust our leaders? TED Conferences.
[iii] Krastev, I. (2020). After Europe. University of Pennsylvania Press.
[iv] Krastev, I., & Holmes, S. (2020). The light that failed: A reckoning. Penguin Books.
[v] Leonard, M., & Krastev, I. (2024, March 21). A new political map: Getting the European parliament election right. ECFR. https://ecfr.eu/publication/getting-the-european-parliament-election-right/