“We are not going to cooperate with that party, neither in the European Parliament, nor in the federal Parliament, nor in regional governments,” the leader of the German conservatives emphasized on Friday, Friedrich Mertzdefender of a much more right-wing line than the centrism that he represented at the head of that political family Angela Merkel. By “that party” Merz understands, like his Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Alternative for Germany (AfD). In other words, the only party from the far-right spectrum present in the Bundestag (Federal Parliament) and, according to polls, the second formation in voting intention after the conservatives of Merz and its sister Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU).
It is not the first time that Merz has launched that proclamation. But it is notorious that he does so when the AfD has skyrocketed in the polls and would be his potential ally to reaffirm himself in the east of the country, where the radicals are even the first force according to current polls. It is also true that this happens when Germany is left alone in the defense of the sanitary cord at all levels, including regional governments. In Merkel’s time at the head of the CDU, successive resolutions were approved rejecting all cooperation with the AfD; With her withdrawal from her power, in 2021, it began to be considered that it was a matter of time before the cordon would crack.
Finland He took another step this Friday in the opposite direction to the German. Not only because of the change in power of his government, which goes from the social democrat sanna marin to the conservative Petteri Orpo, winner of the legislative elections held last April. Also because he will do so at the head of a coalition whose four parties include the extreme right-wing True Finns. A party that was already, albeit briefly, a partner of a previous Finnish government, between 2015 and 2017, and that ended up leaving the coalition due to its radicalism.
political island
The chancellor’s tripartite between social democrats, greens and liberals Olaf Schölz It is beginning to be a political island among the governments of Europe. Just a year ago, the social democracy led the Danish, Swedish and Finnish executives – in addition to the Norwegian, outside the European Union (EU), but in NATO -. At the end of last year Sweden passed to the center-right coalition led by Ulf Kristersson, with the extreme right as an “external” ally, but setting its agenda. Now Finland joined him, with the radicals within the executive. And in SpainIt remains to be seen if the result of the general elections on July 23 revalidates the coalition government between PSOE and Podemos or gives birth to a conservative executive.
It rounds out an increasingly right-wing NATO eastern flank –with the Norwegian exception–, from the Baltic to Poland, where the ultra-nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party of the prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki He aspires to re-election in the national elections that will presumably be held in October. From the PiS ventures with the call for a referendum coinciding with the electoral date, which has not yet been set, to submit to the citizen vote the plan of the European Commission (EC) for the relocation between the member states of the asylum seekers or the obligation to pay 20,000 euros for each rejected application. Morawiecki assures daily that Poland he will not accept impositions regarding refugees, he remembers that he has more than two million Ukrainians in his territory and he seems willing to turn these arguments into his workhorse for re-election.
Morawiecki’s party, whose leader is the country’s hawk par excellence, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, already represented the hard wing of the Atlantic Alliance and submission to the United States. With the start of the invasion of Ukraine, he became the banner of maximum solidarity towards kyiv, in addition to seeing all his warnings regarding Moscow endorsed. Together with the three Baltic former Soviet republics – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – he forms the block of almost unconditional solidarity with kyiv.
NATO membership
Finland’s political turnaround coincided with the formalization of its entry into NATO, also in April, precipitated by the start of the Russian invasion and waiting for Sweden to get the green light from Turkey to become a full member of the Alliance . NATO insists that this must materialize at the summit next July, in Lithuania. Ankara, for the moment, does not give in.
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The new right-wing government in Stockholm has already hardened its immigration laws, in part to be able to comply with the requirements that Ankara demands in exchange for withdrawing its objections to entry – the extradition of Kurdish opponents whom Turkey calls terrorists. But also because that is the mandate of Kristersson’s electorate and his associates.
This Friday, when presenting the main lines of the coalition pact with the ultra-right and other partners, the Finnish Orpo elaborated on the terms of budget containment and reduction of public spending with which he won the elections. The leader of True Finns, Riikka Purra, announced for her part “a paradigm shift” in immigration matters. The portfolio distribution of the new Helsinki government is not yet known, but the radicals are already setting their agenda. They announce a tightening of the immigration and asylum policy, similar to that already applied by Sweden, a reduction in the reception quotas for asylum seekers and cuts in social subsidies.