Donald Trump’s challenge to the European Union

There is a wind of change blowing through the West. It emanates from Washington DC, where Donald Trump continues to dash off executive orders; more than fifty by the end of last week, the highest number in a president’s first 100 days in four decades.

The liberal mainstream media is rattled. The New York Times magazine ran a piece at the weekend in which it described Trump as ‘the leading light of a spate of illiberal leaders and parties flourishing in democracies around the world’. The paper name-checked some of them: Poland, Holland, India, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Hungary and Russia.

What unites and motivates these ‘illiberal’ parties is their opposition to what the NYT called ‘liberal creep’, which they regard as a civilizational threat. ‘For them, new social mores, which they regard as having been set by the mainstream media, Hollywood and the so-called administrative state, have upended supposedly time-tested values.’

Many of these parties met in Madrid at the weekend at a Patriots for Europe (PfE) summit. Among those present under the banner of ‘Make Europe Great Again’ were Marine Le Pen’s National Rally from France, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz from Hungary, Matteo Salvini’s Lega from Italy, Geert Wilders’s PVV from the Netherlands and representatives from the Chega party in Portugal, Motorists for Themselves in the Czech Republic and Spain’s Vox.

Bellicosity and optimism were in equal measure among the leaders who addressed the 2,000 strong audience. Wilders declared: ‘We are living in an historic age, and my message to all the old leaders from Macron to Scholz, to your own Pedro Sanchez: It’s your time. It’s over now. They are history.’

Orbán said that ‘the Trump tornado has changed the world in just a few weeks…yesterday we were heretics, today we’re mainstream’.

Le Pen claimed that the West is ‘facing a truly global turning point…Meanwhile, the European Union seems to be in a state of shock.’

It’s hard to counter Le Pen’s claim. This has not been a good year so far for the EU. Trump’s election and his ‘war on woke’ has befuddled Europe’s Progressive elite. Wilders namechecked all the right people – Macron, Scholz and Sanchez – although he forgot to mention Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commissioner.

If Trump’s reappearance wasn’t bad enough for the EU, another scandal has swept through Brussels in recent weeks, nearly three years after Qatargate – where suspects linked to the European Parliament were accepted of accepting cash for doing the bidding of Qatar – which is still being investigated by the Belgian authorities.

The latest scandal involved allegations – denied by the organizations – that Brussels-based environmental NGOs are being paid by the European Commission to influence EU Green Deal policies.

The EU’s obsession with its Green Deal was one of the items on the agenda at the Patriots for Europe summit, as was mass immigration and the gender wars. André Ventura, leader of Chega party in Portugal, thundered: ‘We have to reconquer a Europe that is ours and that belongs to us. A Christian Europe’

The ‘Clash of the Civilizations’ theory makes Le Pen uneasy. The subject was broached in an interview a fortnight ago and she rejected the idea that one civilization is superior to another.

Another subject on which Le Pen is out of step with most other parties in Patriots for Europe is the economy. ‘We need a return to realistic policies based on a free market,’ said Petr Macinka, chair of the Czech Motorists for Themselves.

Le Pen is more of a statist than a free marketer. It’s her niece, Marion Marechal, who would be the more natural fit in the Patriots for Europe party. A practicing Catholic and economic liberal, Marechal speaks often of the ‘Clash of the Civilizations’ that she believes is underway in Europe. But she has her own European group, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which boasts among its members Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Poland’s former PM Mateusz Morawiecki. The ECR has 80 of the 720 seats in the European parliament, while the Patriots has 84 and a third right-wing group, the Europe of Sovereign Nations has 25, of which 15 are held by Germany’s AfD.

The ECR’s Mission Statement is also to ‘Make Europe Great Again’ and they held a conference of that name at the end of January. In an interview, Marechal, who was elected to the European parliament last June, acknowledged the differences that exist between Europe’s right-wing/conservative parties. But she expressed confidence they can be overcome because in her view Trump is an inspiring figure behind whom they can rally. ‘Europe must not and cannot lag behind this great current,’ she said.

Making Europe Great Again will not be straightforward. The power lies in Brussels, where centrists dominate with the centre-right European People’s Party (to which von der Leyen belongs) and the centre-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats holding between them 324 seats.

Thanks to the progressive policies they’ve implemented this century, the centrist elite believe that Europe is great as it is; in their view, Trump isn’t an inspiring figure but an antagonizing one. Time will tell whether they have the strength to resist the Trump tornado when it hits Europe.