The extreme right has become the protagonist of these European elections. He has done it on his own merits, but also because his rivals do not stop giving him prominence. The headliners of the rest of the groups have not hesitated to place it at the center of the debate that they held this Thursday in the European Parliament despite the fact that they were not represented at the meeting. From the conservative Ursula von der Leyen, of the European People’s Party (EPP), to the Austrian Walter Baier, of The Left, everyone has dedicated their attention to him: to ask that no agreement be made with them, to regret that their opinions set the agenda or to defend that agreements can be reached with a part of the right-wing populists, as Von der Leyen has done.
The ultra absence is explained because the s have attended the debatepitzenkandidaten, that is, candidates to preside over the European Commission after the elections of June 6 to 9. But European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR, where Vox or Brothers of Italy, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, sit) and Identity and Democracy (which welcomes the most ultra groups from the Alternative for Germany to the National Regrouping of Marine le Pen) do not believe in the formula of an electoral headliner for the European call to the polls and, therefore, they do not appoint one. This has meant that they have been formally disqualified.
Their absence, however, has not prevented others from giving them the prominence that, in theory, did not belong to them. The socialist candidate, the Luxembourger Nicholas Schmit, has opened the fire, who has given the EPP the red line of not agreeing with the extreme right if it wants to reissue the historic centrist coalition that has built the European Union project since its inception. He did it at the moment of production when the debate stopped to do a short interview – everyone had their space in the almost two hours that the program lasted – and he maintained it until the end: “Our red lines are clear: no alliance or agreement with the extreme right, in this we need clarity, not ambiguity.” And he has been specific by including Meloni in his veto.
The German conservative, current president of the European Commission and great favorite to repeat after the June elections, has taken up the gauntlet, but she has not done so to agree with him, on the contrary. First, she has not included it in her list of ultra groups with which she would not agree (Marine le Pen’s National Rally, Alternative for Germany, AfD, or Konfederacja, the Polish extremist formation that is even further to the right than Ley and Justice). Afterwards she has even openly stated that she has a good relationship with the Italian. “She is clearly pro-European, she is against Putin, she has been very clear about that, and she is in favor of the rule of law,” she summarized, personifying in the transalpina the three conditions that the EPP sets for considering agreeing with a political formation.
Liberal Sandro Gozi, an Italian who lives in France and is running to be an MEP for this country, where the extreme right threatens to be the first force voted in June, has also not been spared from attacks for approaching the extreme right. In this case, Baier, from The Left, has attacked him for the pacts that the Dutch liberals of VVD (formation of still Prime Minister Mark Rutte) have reached with the ultra formation of Geert Wilders to set up a government in The Hague with an agenda very close to this formation and with clear Eurosceptic positions. The liberal has defended himself by attacking his right: “I do not understand why the EPP and Von der Leyen are willing to open themselves to ECR (European Conservatives and Reformists), to [el ultra francés Eric] Zemmour, to Meloni… They are absolutely anti-Europe, they want to destroy Europe from within, you cannot open yourself to them, you have to fight them.”
The representative of the Greens, Terry Reintke, has also resorted to fear of the ultras as a mobilization tool: “I come from a country that underestimated the threat of the extreme right,” the German recalled, adding: “We cannot afford to have Putin’s outstretched arm in the European Parliament. We have to stop the extreme right.”
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During the almost two-hour meeting, which took place in the Chamber in Brussels, there was little room for specific proposals. Neither the format of very short interventions allowed us to go into much detail nor have the candidates responded to several of the questions posed by the moderators, the public present in the chamber, converted into a television set for the occasion, and citizens who entered the broadcast live from their countries.
Still, something could be heard. For example, Von der Leyen has proposed using European taxes – “own resources”, in Brussels jargon – to finance the development of the defense industry. The socialist Schmit, now Commissioner for Employment, has tried to defend his management this term, in which the directive that establishes criteria for establishing the minimum wage in the EU has been approved and to argue that we must fight against poverty. Bauer, the Left candidate, has called for a directive imposing caps on home rentals across the EU. Reintke, from the Greens, has stated that now is not the time to slow down in the energy and climate transition.
Little confrontation of proposals and positions has been seen on these key issues. It has been the Middle East and the humanitarian drama that is being experienced in Gaza, with Israel’s threat to invade the southern city of Rafah, which has caused a new clash between the candidates. This time Von der Leyen has avoided being harsh with Israel as she was in the first debate there was. She recalled that the beginning of the tragedy lies in the Hamas attacks of last October 7. Even so, she has emphasized that Israel has the right to defend itself “according to international norms,” without clarifying whether it now acts within them or not. This same week, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, has requested that an arrest warrant be issued against the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu for indications of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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