Page 62 - bne IntelliNews magazine February 2025

62 Opinion
bne February 2025
COMMENT
Europe needs to start the fightback against Trump now
Robert Anderson in Prague
Even before Donald Trump re-entered the White House in triumph, Europe’s right wing was already adjusting their sails to the new prevailing wind.
Europe’s resurgent far right has long hailed the coming of the king across the water. Some, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, have been longing for this moment for years. The Hungarian premier crowed, “So the great attack can start. Hereby I launch the second phase of the offensive that aims
to occupy Brussels.”
But now the centre-right (and some liberals and social democrats) are also making their obeisances to the American populist strongman. European politicians are rushing to assure the new president that they will jump at his command – their only question is how high – in a clear sign of the rottenness of the European centre at a time when it should be steeling itself to protect liberal democracy against its modern day enemies.
Trump’s outriders such as Elon Musk have been threatening Europe even before his motorcade arrived, and have
met little if no resistance. Even when Trump himself
made extraordinary and outrageous territorial claims on Greenland, Danish and EU leaders hardly made a peep.
“There is the danger of bilateral responses, what we have to offer to the new king of America. Everyone is looking how we can please this guy,” Ursula Plassnik, former Austrian foreign minister, warned a seminar at the Czech Institute for International Relations in November.
A weakened Europe – with traditional motors France and Germany consumed by domestic political woes – appears ready to give way to Trump on key parts of the bloc’s policy framework. Already political leaders are rushing to promise to buy more American LNG and hike defence spending (typically by buying more from US arms companies).
On Ukraine, doomsayers and Kremlin apologists are sensing growing support for their false counsel that Europe should cut and run. The EU has even postponed discussion of Russian sanctions until after his inauguration.
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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has become a totemic figure for the US far right.
On the Green Deal, there also appears to be mounting pressure to ratchet back. On social media regulation that infuriates US tech giants, the EU has signalled that it will have a rethink. Only significantly on Trump’s threat to impose tariffs are there signs that Europe is prepared to push back.
Trump’s election has also helped to normalise illiberal politicians, Ruth Deyermond, a senior lecturer at King’s College London, told a UCL webinar in November.
“‘We’re not marginal, we’re really moving with the tide of history’,” she said the far right were now saying, predicting that “they will walk taller, play a bigger role, be more difficult and play hardball ... The awkward squad will get more awkward”.
But she argued the mainstream right are really the ones to watch. “We can see figures in these conservative parties who say ‘we need to reassess, to take Trump seriously’,” she said. “They want to do a double take, to get behind a winner.”
The truth is that the rise of Europe’s far-right has long
been facilitated by the weakness and lack of scruples of the continent’s traditional centre-right. Time and time again the centre-right has both formed governments with the far right and adopted its illiberal ideas in an attempt to stay relevant, thereby normalising politicians and ideas that are opposed to everything a liberal and democratic Europe stands for.
Currently the radical or far right is in government or has a share of power in nine governments out of 27 in the European Union, with a commanding position in Hungary and Italy. Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico also arguably should be added to that number, though his party is ostensibly leftwing.
The far right is also likely to add to its tally this year following the elections in Austria, while Calin Georgescu looks likely to become Romanian president at the second attempt in May, after the 2024 election was cancelled because of suspected Russian interference.
Also in May, Poland’s radical rightwing Law and Justice party will hope Trump’s victory helps it retain the presidency,