The people of the European Union, representing the last standing big chunk of democracy that fully deserves the name (demos = common people, kratos = power/strength), have once more cast their vote. And sent a brown wave across the continent into their common parliament. Are we tired of common wealth and freedom? Some more than others. A quick overview.
The European elections are over, and the parties and electoral coalitions have, to the largest part, sorted themselves into factions (‘parliamentary groups’, some long-existing.
- The Left [homepage/Wikipedia] (coloured pink) collecting the parties of the traditional and modern left. They are mostly critical of the EU as it currently is, two of its three main institutions being not elected by the European people at all, and according to them, busy in passing legislation for big money, but not working really for its people. As a European, I know what they mean: European Not-Really-A-Union #1: getting my fourth social security number, #2: A Game of Cards).
- the Greens/EFA [Hp/Wp] (green) collecting green (environmentalist) parties, regionalists and federalists. They are mostly socially (very) liberal, distinctly pro-European and centre-left. One should stress that neoliberal and conservative, and naturally far-right, politicians like to call them #ldquo;eco-fascists#rdquo; and authoritarian, trying to educate Europe's people against their will and restricting their freedom.
- the Socialists & Democrats [Hp/Wp] (red) composed mainly of good ole' socialdemocratic parties or what is left of them/ could be revived in the East. Often forming the political centre in their countries (economically not right, not or a tinsy bit left, usually more authoritatian than liberal but socially progressive or moderate-conservative), they are traditionally viewed as centre-left, too.
- the “liberals”, running again under the name invented by the king-elect of France, Emanuel Jupiter I., Renew Europe [Hp/Wp] (yellow), traditionally viewed as centrists (a few still are) and most pro-EU together with the Greens/EFA. I'll dedicate another post shedding some light on this pretty diverse group.
- the European People's Party EPP [Hp/Wp] (blue), composed of increasingly few centre-right christ-democratic parties (that still deserve the label) and increasingly dominated by market-liberal (i.e. neoliberal), socially conservative, staunchly right elitist parties, which, nonetheless (still) claim (like their liberal friends) to represent the “centre” of our societies (German post: Lernen mit Lindner – die Geometrie der Mitte). They are the largest group in the European parliament again, but, much more importantly, have been dominating a majority of the EU's national governments since the 90s, hence, have decided and keep on deciding much more often what EU politics really will be. Noting how many seats they still get, a good number of the voters seem to be very happy with how the EU works. Typically, their members support the EU prior to EU elections, and blame it for their own governments' failures when regional and national elections are on the table. A classic example is the Bavarian CSU [GE-Wp]. But this ambiguity is shared by their supporters. Not a few of the (typically elderly) voters and adherents of the EPP are quick to criticise EPP-passed or EPP-triggered EU policies and the EPP-run bureaucracy at the Stammtisch , other likeminded private circles and in talk shows. But when it comes to vote, they, of course, re-elect those who are responsible for the mess! Because “the other's (Greens, social-democrats, truly left) wouldn't do any better either”
Or worse. Further right of the EPP (where, according to a former leader of the CSU, Franz-Josef Strauss, no-one should be), comes, as always, a caleidoscope of factions: the fluctuating to ephemeral parliamentary groups comprising all those parties that always shared only a single common narrative/promise appealing to an increasing amount of our electorates: Vote for us, if you are against the European Union or just loath your own government and want to make that point. We will go to Bruxelles for you, won't do shit aside from putting sand in the wheels of the European idea and unification, while trying to cash in and rob as much money from the European funds and institutions as possible. They have repeatedly demonstrated their gross inability to do anything but that is exactly why people voted for them! Since Silvio Berlusconi first took office in Italy. Except maybe for a minority, who is stupid enough to actually dream of living under a fascist dictatorship. But sending them four years to Bruxelles always shows, it's just promises, they only took the job to make a quick buck for themselves, their relative and their buddies. No matter which country they hail from and are so proud of. You really have to be either a fraudster or stupid to vote for them. Stupid and ignorant are all those who actually believe their promises, fighting for the “little men against the elites”. There is not a single case that any right-wing to far-right “anti-establishment” party passed legislation to just take a cent away from the elites. And their MEPs aren't any exception. The names and composition of the far right factions change from legislature to legislature. This time, they banded together in three factions:
- One already established one, the European Conservatives and Reformists [Hp/Wp] (ECR; light brown), originally founded by the British Tories [Wp] and the Polish ultra-conservative PiS [Wp] to block any advancement towards a European Union, while keeping to get the most out-of-it (the Iron Lady would be so proud). The Tories have, quite accidently, sailed (Brittania sail away!), and the ECR group is now controlled by parties that fancy themselves as “post-” or former fascists such as Giorgia Meloni's Fratteli d'Italia (FdI; [Wp])—still amuses me that Mussolini-admiring "brothers" follow so willingly a man-less sister—and the "Swedish democrats", the Sverigedemokraterna (SD; [Wp]).
- A (partly) new Franco-Hungarian-led block of declared anti-Europeans and anti-liberal nationalists: the Patriots for[sic!] Europe (PfE; brown) [Hp/Wp]. They are dominated by Marine Le Pen's and Victor Orban's local election and enrichment clubs, the RN [Wp] and FIDESZ [Wp]. Poor Victor had to build a new home for himself having been, finally, suspended as a member of the EPP after only just two decades of thwarting everything the EPP claims to stand for (check out their homepage and compare that to any speech the Great Maygar ever held on Europe and the EU). However, Orban's FIDESZ is still a member of christ-democratic internationals. Being unbearable for the EPP, the christ-democratic EU group, still qualifies you as a good Christian politician. Pity, we can't have Jesus' opinion on that. Orban, envisaging a Putinesque illiberal pseudo-democracy for Hungarians only (unless you're jewish, though), always has been a natural partner for fifille Le Pen's RN, which started as a gathering point for (actual, not neo-) Nazis and likeminded folk born a bit too late (see also What do party genealogies tell us about France and Germany). Hail the fascist international of the 21st century. The PfE's motto is, real-life satire par excellence, “Make Europe Great Again” Let alone that it's painfully embarrasing for proud patriots from Old Europe to steal the worn-out, eight year-old slogan of a ridiculous orange fraud-utan from across the Big Pond...how can you make something great again being driven by the will to fight and destory everything it stands for? Well, I guess that is something only they and the former Grand Old Party of the U.S. of A. will know.
- Last, and least(!), an openly anti-EU faction called “Europe of Sovereign Nations##rdquo; [Wp; no homepage yet, may be a Telegram channel or X account?!] (ESN; walnutty) stitched together last-minute by the "Alternative for Germany" AfD [Wp] collecting parties of the far right that are just too openly pro-Russian and neo-Nazi to be admitted to the EKR or PfE. In German, we have a fitting word for that: Schmuddelkinder, the filthy kids you don't won't to touch to avoid having too much brown mud on your white shirt (or bleached shirt, in the case of Meloni's FdI, Le Pen's RN or the Swedish SD). While the other factions already have little common interests—that's the problem with nationalism, only one can come first—it's safe to say that these political Schmuddelkinder have only one: cashing in the extra money, the EU grants to parliamentary groups [PDF provided by the EU, p.5ff].
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| “Make Europe great again” by putting one's own nation above all. How realistic! Also, sovereignism and (mindless) patriotism has been the reason for nearly every war we fought in the modern times on our continent, including two pretty nasty ones and till the very day. |
And then there are the few, who didn't join any (yet). Including the party I (still) would vote for, if my birthland (Germany) would provide me the same easy access to the EU election than Sweden (Auslandsdeutscher and utlandssvensk – election day), the satire party Die PARTEI (literally ‘The party’[GE-Hp/Wp]; for those who understand German: don't miss Sonneborn's Bericht aus Brüssel; for all others: we all will die, but some more stupid than others).
But also parties so obscure or fundamentalist in their political programmes that even the ESN couldn't convince them (ultra-orthodox and -nationalist Greek NIKI [Wp], Spanish SALF [Wp], Romanian russophil S.O.S. [Wp]) or just don't fit in any of the other factions being somewhat special.- Yesterday's communists of the Greek KKE [Wp] and the Czech KSČM [Wp]. I do get why Stalinists survived and get elected in Greece but in the country of the Prague Spring?!
- Economically left but conservative parties (i.e. left-populist) such as the Greek PE [Wp], the German BSW (our newest political add-on [Wp]) and the Slovakian SMER [formerly social-democratic, now the electoral club of Robert Fico, Orban's political twin [Wp]) and HLAS (a SMER spin-off [Wp]). Parties running on left promises without all that progressive stuff, the Boomers and more ancient don't (want to) understand.
- Puigdemont's Junts per Catalunya [Wp]; he seems to enjoy the lone wolf/rebel act, not only in Catalonia but also in Bruxelles.
There have been plenty of graphics summarising the election result across countries sorted by the factions (e.g. Le Monde's Les décodeurs, Wikipedia, official page of the EU election board; note the different colouring schemes). Here, I'll use something similar: pie charts giving the proportional distribution of seats per faction (parliamentary group) per country.
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| Who Europeans elected to represent them in our shared parliaments, roughly sorted along a social (progressive vs conservative) and economic axis (left vs right; see The Political Compass for the original concept). ±Progressive-left: pink = The Left; green = Greens/EFA; red = S&D; ±progressive-right: yellow = Renew; conservative-right: blue = EPP; light brown = EKR; brown = PfE; walnutty = ESN. Grey = non-inscrits. |
Overall, all Europeans prefer the right over the left indicating a majority is economically well-off and most electorates are attracted a bit more by conservative than by progressive parties and programmes. Which is not surprising, we all live in over-aging societies including the most-progressive and left that exist on earth. And there are not a few pensionists in the old-EU states who have higher yearly incomes than their working grand-children. And wonder why Generation Z, who for sure won't have the same benefits, mainly because of how their grand-parents vote but also a growing minority among them, is not so work-eager.
Three of the four largest countries (Germany, Italy, Spain) are quite balanced, with only France being a bit different. France is special because the Le Pen's RN, who won a plurality of seats, does appeal to both catho-fascho (French ultra-conservative) and old-left (communist-socialist) electorates by promising to bring back the good old France. Glorious France with the best social benefits of Europe, but only for French, of course! How she's going to do that, not even she knows. She made that much clear in every debate when running for president, every time. But the memory is strong!
In six medium-size countries (Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Portugal, Finland, Ireland) the electorate still has a knack for going ahead not back. Already our ancestors went forth, first from East to West, later from the Dark Ages into the Age of Enlightment, over the seven seas, from absolutism to democracy, and from fascism and stalinism to tolerant liberalism (i.e. free people, not just free markets). Their voters seems to have kept a bit of this very European drive; 5/10 million inhabitants
And far, far away from the EU consensus are three of the ‘Visegrad’ countries' people; countries admitted to the EU after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact that quickly turned sour (in so many ways). Two of them, Hungary and Poland, are or have been on the way to a Putinesque pseudo-democracy. But as easy as it was in the 90s and zeroes to get into the EU, there's no way out unless your people want it. Like the English (but not the Welsh, Scots and northern Irish, Farage's slogan worked: Make Britain Small Again...)
Instead of mapping them on a map of Europe, we will sort them by parametres that may tell us a bit about the country and their people. At least those (often a small majority or minority) that make use of what is, still and in each country of the European Union (even Hungary), a free-to-exercise right: to vote our political representatives. In the EU, we have the governments, we deserve as a people. Because we freely and willingly elected them.
A tiny stinch of green remaining on the horizon
The most imminent danger the EU and its people face is (still, surprise, surprise) the climate change, human-made global warming. We run from one heat-record to the next across all countries, some being hit more severe than others. The central part of Spain, for instance, will become a true desert in my lifetime. The vines along the Loire are now as strong a those of the Provence used to be when I was a child (which, on the other hand, struggle hard to still get wine with "only" 14.5% alcohol, if the grapes don't burn on the stocks already!) We experience increased phases of drought and increased frequency of extreme weather phenomena causing damages going into the billions (worldwide trillions at least). Which is bad for our economic standing, as it not only effects infrastructure and personal homes getting washed away by one “centennial” flood after the other but also poses serious problems for our much-supported by the EU agro-industry. Compared to most (by far) other parts of the world, Europeans had and still have a good life, and quality of life ameliorated for generation after generation. Our children and grandchildren won't.
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| Summer heat anomalies in 2023. Spain lies under the bloody red blob in the upper-middle. Only the poles are more off the average. Source: NASA |
In contrast to, for example, the Anglo-Saxon demo- (Australia, Canada, UK) and monetocraties (US), we have a significant political movement on the continent that popularises and addresses this and related problems since now over 40 years, the green parties.
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| Our representatives, sorted by the fraction of seats for (red-)green parties (The Left + Greens/EFA). Note the split into the founder states + Skandinavians and the central/eastern European newcomers. |
Even though a majority of Europeans is cognitive of the climate change issue (much in contrast to Anglo-Saxons)—Fridays For Future was the last huge thing before the virus killed most public mass movements; climate change deniers are rare in our countries and play politically only a role in small and very brown ones such as Orban's Hungary—and even though it is a complex problem that no nation alone will be able to tackle (we are beyond solving it), in most countries the electorate sees no point in having an according political representation in our shared parliament to express their worries. In contrast, the ±anti-green parties (yellow, blue, brown), have a majority across Europe. The business-as-usual, industrial lobby-prone parties are in the majority just after we experienced hottest summers, winters, and weird, weird springs, and the global carbondioxid imprint has reached a new high.
There is, however, a clear north-south and west-east gradient. In the founder states of the EU, the electorate is much more concerned with the future of the next generations than in those countries that joined later. Another trend seems to be: the more populous a country is, the larger, the higher is the proportion of voters that prioritise a liveable future over a free-to-grow economy. The largest of the newcomers, Spain, and, of course, the Skandinavian countries with their well-developed sense of communalism, (still) share what has been a fundamental value and promise of the EU: a better and not worse future for the next generations of Europeans. Well, I guess it paid of that we spend some money on education, and if only to keep the hope alive.
Who the hell needs a welfare state?
Every kid in Europe can go to a (free-of-charge) school (some better than others, but still) and every European, who really wishes so, has access to drinking water and a roof over their heads (but not necessarily in the town, they work and want to live!) It has become harder to meet a month's ends for many Europeans, as well; for instance, housing prices are skyrocking in the metropolitan areas across the EU, but even the poorest EU citizens have more Euros per day to live on than most people in the ‘Global South’. We owe that to socialist (I'm sorry, but it's true, check out the history books), social-democratic, gaullist (in France), and christ-democratic (in the literal, original sense; see e.g. the philosophy of the Kolpingwerk) politics. Erecting and maintaining a welfare state has been a political consensus that ensured that, after Europe's recovery from the great wars, Europe's riches (a good deal of which were stolen from other places in the world during the 500 years before), did not remain entirely in the hands of very few but were distributed (some more, some less) among our people to the benefit of our societies. Like in the rest of the world, the income and wealth gap between the upper-10% and lower-90%, worse, the lower-50% or lower-25% (one million children in Germany are threatened by poverty, and one out of five kids in the EU) has been increasing since the late 80s, early 90s. A developement that, in the past, would have drawn voters to the parties of the left, who maintain at least the idea of common wealth and that the rich can give more and have to give (much) more to the state and society than the poor. That those at the bottom of our societies need to be helped by the state, not (only) those at the top (economic policy of all right-wing parties, just read their manifestos). That the quality of a human society cannot be scaled by how it richest live, in modern times, a countries BIP per capita, but how the poorest do, the median(!) and 25-percentile yearly income. An economy that thrives, making bigger profits by the minute—and, in case it fucks up, Leman Bros crash, or crumbles, Covid19 pandemy, is rescued by the public hand with billions—has to permanently rain something down on the big masses sustaining that economy, and the big profits, by their work (in contrast to their money's work as in case of the upper-10%), but more importantly their consumption, and, ultimately, their taxes. The parties of the political left carry this idea still in their programmes, and many Europeans are worried about maintaining the social standards.
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| Europe's choice sorted by the proportion of (economically) left(-ish) vs right parties. Fun-fact, the EU countries with the happiest populations (DK=Danmark, FI=Finland, SE-Sweden) are also the ones with the most communalistic, left-leaning electorates. A strange idea in (and for) the 21st; century, sharing one's wealth can make happy...who could have guessed that? |
Obviously, the electorate isn't very worried and still pretty well-off across Europe. Why else would so many vote for the (neo)liberals and conservatives, who always promise to reduce taxes (a bit for the middle-class, those who still own a flat, a house, two cars, and a lot for the upper-class) and only agree to make debts, when their companies and (former or to be) employers want to expand. Or billions to support the Ukraine, because, except for the usual spoil by corruption, it all goes back into the pocket of the European and American war industry. But have to firmly say no (in German, we have a beautiful word for it: Finanzierungsvorbehalt), when we need money for the inevitable ecological transition, education and social services. You know the stuff that will effect future generations of Europeans but has no direct benefit for private companies and their shareholders.
Not to mention the many that vote for the self-declared nationalists and right-wing populists comprising the EKR, the PfE and the ESN. Parties and politicians that like to invoke the little man's (it's mostly men who fall for it) fight against the elites, while quickly building their own as soon as they are in power, e.g. Orban's Hungary-made-great-again, or even close to any pot of gold, just take any village or town run in France by a RN maire, in Germany by an AfD politician, or in Italy by one of Meloni's "brothers" and Salvini's "Padanians". Re-using the classic trick of the original fascists such as Mussolini, Franco and Hitler: using the paroles and promises of the left to lure the common people, the little men, while doing politics for the old, right elites and the new ultra-right ones. Yes, everyone got a job building up Hitler's war industry, even non-Germans (although forcibly), but it was not the workers, the lower class neither the thinkers and tinkers, the middle class, who got rich. It was the conservative, monarchistic and neo-nobility elites of the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic like the von Siemens, the Neckermanns and new darlings of the NSDAP like Hugo Boss. The elites also didn't suffer the total loss of property during the war fought by the proud-again little men. Time for a little personal anecdote: Both my father and my mother, like most of her cousins, were raised by their mothers alone, who started at zero after the war. While the FDP(EU: 'centrist' Renew)-admiring boss of a new winery near my home, same age than I, dropped out of school (being a dick, obviously) but still could launch a new business he had no idea about (with money, you just hire people working for you; he hires a new winery chef every year). Why, well because his Prussian land-lordy father's family had to flee from the Russians and became a main shareholder of Bitburger Pils, now one of Germany's largest breweries. Directly after the war with the little they could save from the evil communists. He didn't tell how much it was they saved, but I'm sure it was more than a life earnings of my grandmothers combined. And he's proud of this achievement (his family's and his) and warns one about the left-fascists (EU-The Left and Greens) that try to undermine our democracy by taking away what people like him never earned, when giving a tour in "his" winery. While he, the good employer he is, went himself to IKEA to buy beds for his Romanian seasonal workers. Why Romanian? His answer: You can't find a German that would actually work for so little money. And then you hear a far right demagoge telling us, Romanians take away our jobs and they will fight these elites. They live off them!
If history has told us something, then it is that any (today usually right-)populist, fascistoid movement has only made the life of those little men better, and richer, that the faithful masses have called their “leaders” All the others of the lower-90% paid a high price for it, while the upper-10% did lose little to nothing. A constant across time, for over 100 years now: no matter whether they styled themselves Duce (Mussolini, son of a smith and a elementary school teacher), Führer (Hitler, father small Beamter), or Cavaliere (Berlusconi, son of a banker). The same applies to Le Pen le père (founder of the RN, son of a humble fisher & sewer, political activist, now millionaire), Putin (factory workers, agent, billionaire), Orban (supreme master of FIDESZ, son of an engineer & teacher, never had a real job, at least millionaire), Trump (already his father was just a wealthy widow's son, never had to work either, billionaire for real now thanks to Truth Social going stock market, at least for the moment) or Bolsonaro (military turned politician and, subsequently, millionaire) All got rich(er) by their own hands hard work, right? In contrast to the elites, they fight against, only for us, the common people? Sure!
And it won't be different for the new ones, all the Åkessons, Melonis, Mileis or Wilders'. There is no friendly way to put it: any "common" person, any "little man", anyone who depends on the social network or their own work to make a living who votes for the right-wingers is either really stupid or utterly ignorant. They literally cut the branch they are sitting on to break their own necks because they noticed it's getting weak. The renewed preference for the right-wing is a clear case of what I call "herd stupidity".
Sheepish are you, fearing the black man? Vote the brown wolf!
Another pressing issue of our societies is that they are over-aging (see e.g. Demografischer Wandel und Migration in Europa by the bpb, the German Federal Agency for Education). There can be no doubt: We produce too few kids to maintain our standard of living and a stable, let alone, growing economy.
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| Europe's population in the year 2050, not very promising for a thriving and growing market and keeping up high social standards. Unless we all work until we drop dead, of course. Source: UN's World Population Prospects |
And a growing economy is what a great majority of Europeans still finds more important than ensuring a good life for our grand- and grandgrandchildren (see green-ordered pies above). The world's population is steadily growing, so the simple solution to the European problem would be immigration from less fortunate parts of the world (e.g. those we plundered for five centuries). The only thing, the far-right parties colluding in the EKR, the PfE and the Schmuddelkinder-faction have in common is that they want stop illegal or any (especially "non-European") immigration; a policy that most of the EPP parties and an increasing number of the S&D parties, those more democratic than social such as the Danish or German social-democrats, share to some degree (following their over-aging base and national electorate). Supressing immigration has become the main selling point for blue and brown, and red, if they want to stay in power.
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| Not R.I.P. but D.O.I.P. EU voters prefer to die out in peace, rather than to fill the increasing space with aliens who just want to come here for a better life. Historical fun-fact 1: Hellenic, Celtic, Italic, Germanic and Slavic peoples came to Europe for exactly the same reason. Fun-fact 2: by far the most European colonists didn't emigrate for the sake of adventure but, guess what, a better life (the French even carved in their present to the US) Or just to stay alive! Like Grandpa Trump. Off to America to escape being drafted into the Bavarian army in those nation-proud times. |
Ironic, isn't it? Immigration appears particularly unpopular in those nations of the former East that will anyway die out in the not so far future and whose economies are already suffering from the fact that their own people have to emigrate. But of course that's Bruxelles fault, or the Germans, not the devastating politics of their freely elected (ultra-)right governments. Better to be replaced by the void than by non-Europeans. Make Europe Empty Again! Go back to the good old times. Don't stop in 1950! Let's go back to the year 7000 B.C.
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| Good old times: 7000 BC, Europe was free from any progressive Oriental immigrants that used farming instead of hunting & gathering to sustain their living. RGZM map for the expansion of Neolithic farming communities across Europe starting 6500 BC in northern Greece. |
Stopping illegal and semi-legal immigration into the EU would possibly not have the same severe result than in the U.S. We don't need so many extra-EU immigrants because we have a lot intra-EU immigrants; probably a major reason why Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania were admitted so quickly to the EU despite being post-communistic cleptocracies (the other was that IKEA and the mass-CO2 emitters needed unbureaucratic access to the then unspoiled Carpathian forests: Nature Crime Files – Romania; Arte documentary [GE/FR, English subtitles available]). Economy would not necessarily break down immediately, but it would take a blow. As in the case of the Prussian elite's vineyards, low-qualified, cheap labour is done by immigrants, especially illegal ones. All (rich) EU countries have a minimum wage, any legally hired person needs to be paid a certain salary; but illegals have no rights (and the fines are not worth mentioning, nor are the amount of controls, a nice side-effect of "centre-"right politics promoting a "lean state").
We just travelled through Meloni's soon-to-be-rid-of-immigrants (haha!) Italy, we passed not a single (road) construction site without a ‘person-of-colour’. Africans and South Americans mostly. Also in the non-seen service. And, very odd for me: In the heart of anti-immigration Salvini's "Pandania" gas stations with a bunch of them washing cars supervised by an Italian. I first wondered how many of the fine Italian males have their beloved car washed by Africans voted for Meloni's "brothers" and her precursors and coalition partners, Salvini's ultra-nationalist Lega and the originally cleptocratic Forza Italia, founded for only one reason: that the late Berlusconi could evade prosecution for his many fiscal crimes. But what kept me wondering is that hiring three non-EU immigrants is cheaper than maintaining an automatic washing station in the most-properous region of a G7 country in the 21st century.
In France, they bring the food you ordered via the app on your phone to your home and drive that brown van with the white arrow that ships your Chinese super-cheap cloth. No minimum-wage problem here (France has one of the highest in Europe), they are all microentrepreneurs, one-man companies. Or, illegally, work for one. Immigrants also do jobs, no “native” (West-)Europeans can be tempted with, like being a night security guard or for the Olympic Games in Paris. The French government actually tried to hire workless French, but they declined.
There are thousand more of such anecdotes, and you need to be blind not to notice when travelling the EU. We need immigrants, no matter where they come from.
PS No immigrant ever took away a native's job. But natives may have lost their job, because their companies found cheaper workers elsewhere to maximise their profits. But in contrast to their ancestors more than 100 years ago, few emigrate. Why, because even without a job a common European has a better life within the EU than with a job outside of it. Because of left politics, not right ones.
The mid- and longterm consequence of curbing immigration could be lethal for more than one EU nation. As Orban, the Great Maygar (by the way, one of the last people migrating into Europe), could and will see for himself. Even his proud Hungarians don't get more children just because you promise them money that you got from the otherwise so-evil EU.
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| Expected population decrease in Hungary till the year 2100 (solid red line, median). During Orban's reign, assuming he will stay in office until he dies as all fascist leaders, Hungary may have lost about 1 Mio. of its people, 10% of its population. Source: UN's World Population Prospects |
And legal immigration is only possible in those countries of the EU, where the right and far-right parties (who do like to mingle a lot at the national and local level) are in the opposition. But a majority of Europe's voters want to remain trapped between a rock and a hard place.
Where do we go from here?
There's only one word for the electorates' decisions made in this EU election and its trend: heading full speed into the abyss. We know things are going wrong, and we have elected, with a majority in all EU countries, representatives running for parties and political movements that either partook directly in why it went wrong or will it make it even worse, if only a few of their "patriotic", entirely anti-realistic but very populistic ideas would be put in place.
Like the climate change challenges, the demographic challenges Europe faces in course of this century cannot be solved individually, country by country. Immigration at the scale that Europe needs has not only to be controlled, here the “centre”-something parties are quick to agree, but planned, organised, and facilitated! Only for Germany, demographs calculated (nearly 10 years ago!) that we need 276000–491000 immigrants per year until 2050 (Fuchs et al., 2015, for the Bertelsmann-Stiftung [GE-PDF, p. 75]). We would desperately need a common EU framework, a European union, to organise and manage this challenge.
But that's not the path we've chosen. Not only that too many of our people elect parties that will cost us our good future into their national governments. The fear of losing voters to the insane-right has led moderate governments to prioritise industrial growth and increasing greenhouse-gas emissions over our very situation of living. We give majorities to parties that promise to prioritise the freedom to escape taxes over financing social infrastructure and institutions. A majority of us support parties that tell us everything will be good, if only more refugees and immigrants drown in the Mediterranean. A good example is current Germany, where two ecologically and socially ±conscious parties, the social-democratic SPD and the Grüne (Greens) cannot never really do what they want (and promised to their well-meaning or -minded voters) because their neoliberal, smallest but vital coalition partner, the FDP (Renew) , refuses to close tax evasion loopholes for the (super-)rich and the global players. This so-called "centre-left" government plans to curb immigration and copy the right-wing and now de-elected British Tories: move asylum seekers to Ruanda. Not because they believe it, but because our "social-democratic" chancellor (SPD, S&D) wants to get the upper hand against his "christ-democratic" likely successor from the CDU (EPP) and decrease the number of stupid/ignorant people voting for Germany's political Schmuddelkinder (ESN's AfD). A far right party that, by the way, economically is exactly on the same page than the "centrist" FDP in our government. The very same party that, in bed with the CDU/CSU, has been responsible for making the live of a whole generation of Germans worse, especially in eastern Germany, where the AfD has the largest share. It's not a foxhole, but an abyss of voting lunacy.
Finally, we, the souvereigns, find it increasingly a good idea to be represented by egomaniac nationalists in our very own and shared parliament to ensure Europe remains Not-A-Union. Ensure not missing the abyss by choosing and elect people with a mindset that brought us just a century ago to the brink of annihilation.
We, the sheeple, have spoken. We want to be guarded by hungry, bloodthirsty wolves, not by benevolent sheperds anymore. Especially those living in the Balkans. And other areas, where the very same people who vote for the right (and not a few, who consider themselves left) call for shooting more wolves because of what they do with sheep, goats and calves. I wonder if they would vote for a wolf as their leader, if they would be intelligent beings, intelligent enough to read and vote. Or choose the human hanging around with the wolves as their representative, not the one with the shepard dog. Individually intelligent, humans may be, as a flock they tend to be stupid. Herd stupidity.
An old song line popping to my mind, again and again, getting louder every EU or national and regional election in the founding-EU country I was born and the founding EU-country I live in: When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn... I have a bit of hope (again) for my third country, which naturalised me (and any other immigrant) after five years: Sweden. Like their fellow Skandinavians they are prone to herd stupidity as well (see their recently elected governments), but it's so far only temporary not permanent.
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