European Countertrend?

Rau Still Weighing Decision on Immigration Bill

"German President Johannes Rau says he has not yet decided whether to sign legislation designed to become the country's first immigration law even though a member of the governing coalition says he will do so."
On FAZ via News Is Free

Issue turns on arcane debates about whether bill's passage was legal. If Rau signs, it will undoubtedly be challenged in court. According to the "Bild", it now appears that Rau will sign the legislation (June 9).

European Trend I

Refugees face immediate deportation

Staff and agencies
Thursday May 30, 2002

New measures to deport asylum seekers immediately were today announced by the Home Office as figures showed the number of people seeking asylum in Britain fell by 10% on the previous year.

According to David Blunkett, the home secretary:

"We will return these people to their country of origin as soon as we have rejected their claim. "If they choose to appeal, they will have to do so from their home country.

"This decision would be taken literally within a matter of one or two days of any claim made within this country."

European Trend II

Denmark Tightens Immigration Rules
JAN M. OLSEN
Associated Press Writer

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - Parliament voted Friday tighten Denmark's immigration and asylum rules, making it harder for foreigners to seek asylum, get residence permits and welfare benefits.

The legislation, which has been criticized abroad for being too harsh, was presented earlier this year by the Liberal-Conservative minority government. The center-right coalition took office in November on promises to protect the prosperous nation's cradle-to-grave welfare system from being exploited by outsiders.

Migration Information Source

Migration Information Source "The Migration Information Source provides fresh thought, authoritative data, and global analysis of international migration and refugee trends. A unique, online resource, the Source offers useful tools, vital data, and essential facts on the movement of people worldwide."

Site lives up to its hype. Solid, quantitative data on immigrants (and refugees) around the world presented in an artful fashion, with a simple and straight-forward interface. Site has Interesting news items, data on immigration policy both in the United States and the rest of the world, and announcements on upcoming conferences. Recently launched, the site is still a bit rough around the edges, with a search function that has not yet been implemented, Javascript that does not produce graphs from the tables, and uneven, and still limited country portraits. Five stars a must see for academics and anyone concerned with comparative immigration policy. Developed by the Migration Policy Institute

When politics fail, call in the police

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | EU Mulls Immigration, Asylum Rules

"Mulls" is the operative term. While there are some concrete proposals on the table, including a European Union border police and a commitment of the Gallileo satellites (available in 2006) to track immigration flows, there does not seem to be sufficient momentum to opt for great innovations in European immigration or asylum policies. Perhaps because the EU interior ministers are actually meeting in Italy, the news coverage in La Repubblica is far more detailed as to how the police force would be constructed and what its aims are, including the fact that Italy has volunteered to coordinate the process.

"Plus d'un Français sur quatre adhère aux idées de l'extrême droite" (More than one Frenchman in four agrees with the ideas of the far right)

Le Monde interactif : Recherche

The most striking aspect of this is how much the popularity of Le Pen and his ideas has risen since 1998 when little more than 10% of the French agreed with these ideas. The most popular areas for the extreme right are security and justice where over 40% of the population agree.

The class breakdown is as follows (if you want a translation, say so in the comments)

Le profil des personnes qui sont d'accord avec les positions du FN est très typé, et ses caractéristiques se confirment sur toutes les questions posées par la Sofres. Les meilleurs soutiens de M. Le Pen sont les personnes les plus âgées (30 % approuvent ses idées, contre 19 % des 18-24 ans) et les moins diplômées (46 % d'approbation chez les non-diplômés, contre 14 % seulement chez les diplômés de l'enseignement supérieur) ; socialement, deux catégories se distinguent : les ouvriers (35 % d'approbation) et les commerçants, artisans, chefs d'entreprise (34 %), alors que les cadres et professions intellectuelles ne sont que 13 % à approuver les idées d'extrême droite.

What France and Germany can agree on...

Trying to Learn the Right's Lessons Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitschrift, English language edition.
By Michaela Wiegel

Articles suggests that the Le Pen/Fortuyn electoral successes will put more pressure on a Europe-wide solution to immigration issues--or at least the appearance of one. So far all they can do is empower the police:

'The two countries' interior ministers, Otto Schily of Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy of France, on Monday announced an agreement that allows their respective police forces to make arrests in each other's country. So far only the pursuit of lawbreakers across the border was allowed in the EU, with the arrest having to be made by the local police."

Whether more comprehensive plans will emerge is hard to tell, but, as the FAZ insists, nothing serious is going to happen before the German elections in the fall.

Pim Fortuyn's party in government

TIME Europe Magazine: Do The Right Thing -- May. 27, 2002
Article indicates that the Christian Democratic Party (CDA), led by Jan Peter Balkenende, the most likely Prime Minister of the next Dutch government, is willing to invite the late Pim Fortuyn's party (LPF) into government, but at a price:

"He noted pointedly last week that if the LPF is to participate in a coalition, it would have to distance itself from its late leader's comment about Islam being a "backward culture" and moderate its hardline positions against both immigration and the Dutch health disability scheme. Yet the Fortuyn crowd will surely put their own stamp on any coalition agreement."

The articles does not specify would that stamp would be. Is this because the Times Reporter does not know or because the LPF, without its leader and defanged on the immigration issue does not know what it wants?

85% of Financial Times readers polled think "Europe's Right is Clearly on the Rise"

Check out the poll results and join in the Financial Times discussion on the issue. (You have to scroll down to see the results)

You don't need a weatherman to know which ways the political winds are blowing.

EU 'must bring immigration laws into line'
Jon Henley in Paris
Tuesday May 28, 2002
The Guardian

"France and Germany promised last night to make tighter and better coordinated European immigration laws a top priority at next month's EU summit in Seville to prevent the far right hijacking the issue to its electoral advantage."

Clearly, the electoral results in Europe are going to tempt the countries to kick the problem upstairs and hope that the European Community can produce more a more coherent policy. This has been a goal for years, without overwhelming results, but when France and Germany agree....

The joys of The French electoral system, or why we heard so much about Le Pen

"The politics of chaos:
France offers an object lesson in how not to run a political system"
Arnold Kemp Sunday May 26, 2002, The Observer

From the Scottish perspective, the perverse electoral incentives of the French system.

xenophobia

ABCNEWS.com : Europe Swings Right, and World Sits Up

Unusually sustained and comprehensive article, but one which in the end psychologizes the problem, reducing it to xenophobia. The critical observation is under the rubric of:

Daughters, Cousins and Strangers

While the rise of the right can be seen as a reaction to the perceived stodginess of Europe's now crumbling center-left, experts agree that the right's recent robustness has emerged from its ability to touch on the continent's exposed nerve: a fear of the outsider.
It's a craving for familiarity exemplified by an old Le Pen slogan that goes: "I like my daughters better than my cousins, my cousins better than my neighbors, my neighbors better than strangers and strangers better than enemies."

There is a point there, but my understanding was always that one preferred to fight with one's cousins, as more immediate family was too close and everyone else was too distant. What is curious in this context is how the distant has become proximate, without seeming any less strange.

Anthony Giddens on recent electoral results

Daily Yomiuri On-Line Giddens argues that the reasons for the left's decline (and the rise of the far and moderate right) in recent European elections are cyclical and tactical. The political lessons that he suggests are to address both fears about immigration and the political intolerance it has produced and for the new moderate left forces to stay the course..

"The renewed polarization of politics on the left and right plainly is a threat to political stability. However, the cause of the modernizing left is by no means lost. It remains the only feasible way forward for European social democrats. Continuing ideological change will have to be coupled with effective tactical thinking. The left can continue to win if its divisions are less acute than those on the right."

Online community discussion of Jean Marie Le Pen and Pim Fortuyn

For those seeking to debate the populist/far-right issue, there are lively discussion of Le Pen and Fortuyn at Kuro5hin. The organizers of the community describe it as:

Kuro5hin.org is a community of people who like to think. You will not find garbage in the discussions here, because noise is not tolerated. This is a site for people who want to discuss the world they live in. It's a site for people who are on the ground in the modern world, and who sometimes look around and wonder what they have wrought.

Kuro5hin.org has enacted a system where members judge which threads are most prominently listed and which members opinions should be disregarded. As a result, it is possible to have discussions of controversial issues, without having reasonable comments drowned out by flames. While there are concerns as to whether Kuro5hin.org and its more famous cousin, slashdot are creating or merely pantomiming community, it certainly looks like a good place to hang out and talk politics.

Now that the pundits have gone home, can anyone govern the Netherlands?

Sasha Polakow-Suransky, "Going Dutch: Pim Fortuyn's legacy pushed the center-right into power in the Netherlands. Now what?," The American Prospect Online, May 16, 2002.

A useful look, drawing on Dutch academics, at what will happen after the electoral season has come and gone.

It is clear that three basic questions will take a while to answer.
Will Fortuyn's party actually get into government?
Do they have a platform?
Do they have the minimum experience necessary to govern?

The likely answer to all three questions are no, but stranger things have happened.

Morevoer, electoral promises from populist parties are no more likely than those from mainstream parties to be redeemed. The case of the Northern Italian Leagues on immigration policy in their 1994 governmental participation is a case in point. While the Leagues were clearly opposed to immigration, once they came into government, clear splits emerged between those in the party who wanted amnesty and those who wanted to deport all illegal immigrants. While the government did not last long enough for a resolution to emerge, it clearly showed that one should be cautious in predicting policies. Sasha Polakow-Suransky's assumption that it will accelerate the move to the right of policies that have been drifting that way throughout the 1990s is likely to be correct, but any changes or more likely to be result of the message of the election than the election of the messenger.

Pim Fortuyn cartoon

The Guardian's Steve Bell
"The Spirit of Pim Fortuyn lives on"

The style of Pim Fortuyn

"Mourning Pim Fortuyn"
TheGully.com by Jill Cogswell

A thoughtful, witty, sympathetic portrait of what gave Pim Fortuyn popularity. It tries to put his more vituperative anti-Muslim statements in context, arguing essentially that it was intolerance of intolerance. It also captures the flamboyance of his political style, which like Umberto Bossi of the Northern Leagues in Italy, is often more important than the substance of his remarks--and certainly contrasts with the gray style of endless coalition governments where you need a magnifying glass to discern the difference between party vocabularies.

"Out and proud to be gay, the controversial Fortuyn set Dutch politics on its ears with a flamboyant combination of left right punches. While much of the global media cast him as a Jean-Marie Le Pen light, it's difficult to imagine the French extreme-righist declaring, like Fortuyn, that one of the first things he would do if he took office was "borrow that handbag from Margaret Thatcher, bang on the table and say I want my money back," from the European Union (the Netherlands' financial contribution is, proportionately, the largest of any member state.)"

Xenophobia affecting European Expansion

EU enlargement must carry on despite far-right europhobia: EBRD
by Mihaela Rodina
BUCHAREST, May 19 (AFP) (reported in EUbusiness)

European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary affairs Pedro Solbes says that rising xenophobia in Europe should not derail expansion. However, the fact that he feels obligated to make a statement suggests that some concerns are being raised. Article is fairly straightforward, but there is one intriguing argument that is not developed.

"Diplomats from candidate states gathered at the forum said that EU enlargement must be sped up to stave off threats from the rise of the far-right, which wins popular support through its anti-immigration and EU-sceptical policies."

Exactly how expansion will prevent the rise of the far right is a mystery. Anyone care to enlighten me?

A-Pathos in French Election

"The victory of apathy and antipathy"
Expatica,
Marius Benson, Editor, Expatica Germany, 22 April 2002

The wittiest line about the effects of division of the left on Le Pen's success in the French election--thanks to the Guardian

"Le Pen won about 17 per cent of the vote. In the last Presidential polls in 1995 he won 15 per cent, so any swing to the right is marginal rather than revolutionary.

At the recent winter Olympics an Australian skater - who barely knew how to tie his skates - won a gold medal because he was so slow that when the real contenders got into a tangle and fell over near the finish line, he was the last man standing.

Something similar happened in France at the weekend, with the fissiparous left splitting into so many political fragments that finally even the biggest was smaller than the Le Pen faction."

A European Right

Europe 'Is Rubbing Its Eyes' at the Ascent of the Right
By ALAN COWELL, May 17 — 'With the rise of the right in the Netherlands after elections this week, it is more clear than ever that Europe's political landscape is being dramatically redrawn."

While it is difficult to argue with the decline of the left, it is less clear that it represents a substantial move to the right.

Cowell implies that there is a massive voter dissatisfaction. However a quick look at some recent election results calls this into question. Jean Marie Le Pen's second place finish in the first round of the French presidential elections was based on 17% of the vote. His overtaking the Socialist candidate had far more to do with fragmentation on the left than in a great vote swing to the far right. The coming to power of Silvio Berlusconi's center right coalition in Italy was actually based on a lower percentage of the vote than when it had lost in the previous election. What had changed was the coaltional strategy on the right.

Second, it is not clear exactly what right is on the move. While Cowell's analysis suggests a common set of issues (primarily immigration, to a lesser extent Europe and globalization) and parties, the comonality of parties is not as clear. He quotes:

"A startled Europe is rubbing its eyes," the Berlin Tagesspiegel newspaper commented. "Whether Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Portugal, France, Belgium or now Holland, everywhere the right-wing populists are on the march."

This seems to be a popular German line on this issue, as it is also present in the Franfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, ("Rechtrutsch in Westeuropa", May 17, 2002")

These parties, however, are a contentious and variegated lot. Efforts to create a pan-Europe far right have not ventured very far, and their sense of national identity and willingness to focus on particular grievances do not suggest a great capacity for building common platforms. The primary fault line, as I see it, is between the rigid far right parties such as Le Pen's National Front, whose commitments to a strong national identity and a xenophobic policy towards immigrants are undeniable, and their more flexible populist cousins whose focus is on attacking the cozy, corrupt national political elites in Rome, Paris, Berlin, etc. The latter find it far simpler to pick up and abandon themes and policies, as the political winds buffet them. Fortuyn Pim strikes me as decidedly belonging to the latter camp. Umberto Bossi, leader of the Italian Northern Leagues might be one of its charter members.

A European Far Right

"Special report: Europe's far right", The Guardian
Provides useful brief portraits, occasionally linked to longer articles, about the leaders of the far right in Europe, and their positions in national governments. Good as a scorecard, but less compelling as describing who this team actually is. The site picks out the more disturbing policy statements of right wing parties such at the Italian Northern League's "authorising coastguards to shoot human traffickers and the belief that the EU is run by paedophiles" without providing much context or description as to how this rhetoric affects government policy.

A European Far-Right?

"Wrong About the Right Stuff:
Not all Europe's "right-wingers" fit the hackneyed profile the press and pols force on them."
By Anne Applebaum, Slate Magazine, Posted Monday, May 13, 2002, at 11:51 AM PT

It is becoming increasingly clear, as Anne Applebaum argues, that far right is not a good description for the various anti-establishment politicans running around Western Europe.

"Sometimes "far right" is just a simpler phrase to use than "anti-establishment, pro-free-market, anti-immigration, possibly racist right," when you don't feel you have enough space to explain the details of a particular party or politician—but I won't do it again. In the wake of Jean-Marie Le Pen's somewhat freakish success in the first round of the French presidential elections, and the shocking murder of the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn almost immediately afterward, I have concluded that it is now time to call a total moratorium on the use of the phrases "extremism" and "far right" in political debate, since it is becoming clear that nobody has the slightest idea anymore what they mean."

Dutch Elections

BBC News | EUROPE | Q&A: Netherlands election
Excellent BBC coverage. The language of the main article is a bit simplistic, but the main point, that Pim Fortuyn's party was able to make a populist appeal based on anti-immigrant and anti-establishment sentiment, is on target. It would be helpfulif the BBC actually provided the electoral results, but this lacuna is compensated for by the fact that it publishes useful articles explaining the Dutch political system and interpreting the electoral results.

The odd coincidence of the electoral result is that Pim Fortuyn's party received about 17% of the vote, placing it in second place, ahead of the the Social Democratic PvdA, results that are almost identical to the recent French elections. In France, National Front leader Jean Marie Le Pen achieved roughly similar results in the first round of the elections, outpacing the Socialists, and running just behind the main party of the right.

Richard Goldstein, "Being Gay Helped This Murdered Dutch Politician in Many Ways: The Politics of Pim", Village Voice, May 25-21, 2002

What explains, as was the case with Pim Fortuyn, why a gay political leader would be so openly anti-immigrant? The theory being that one excluded minority should take pity on, or at least express some tolerance for, another. The usual explanation of newspaper pundits is that Muslim clerics were so deeply and publicly opposed to homosexuals, and that Pim was just defending his own group interests. Richard Goldstein comes up with a more convincing explanation--that gays, particularly in a "liberated" country like Holland, are no longer on the "outs".

"Homosexuals of the West are in transit from pariahs to parvenus, and the anxiety produced by this uncertain journey can easily express itself in a desire to transfer stigma to someone else. Perhaps this was what gave Fortuyn such a talent for skewering immigrants. Every time he bashed Islam, he "celebrated" his own emancipation."

Humor

Demented public opinion on the "Rise of the Far Right in Europe" from those lively folks at The Onion. My favorite, in a line worthy of Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam: "Darling, I just returned from Fascism Week in Milan, and I dare say floral prints are back with a cold, steel vengeance this year."

Getting into Europe

Fascist Family Feud: Why Europe's xenophobes just can't get along.
By Reihan Salam, Posted to Slate Tuesday, May 14, 2002, at 11:54 AM PT

Clever article noting the different marketing tactics that each of this diffuse "family" of populist and far-right politicians uses to place himself within his own country's and European political space. Salam focuses on the efforts of the Austrian Haider to pull together a Europe-wide alliance (by distancing himself from Le Pen) and its marked failure to go anywhere.

A Dutch Radical's Message to Europe
New York Times, Editorial Page, May 13, 2002. Article by Folkert Jensma, editor in chief of the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, .

Article points out how different Fortuyn, the recently assassinated populist politician, is from Le Pen in France and Haider in Austria. Point well taken, but Jensma seems to round off the rough edges of Fortuyn a bit much for my taste.

COMMENT & ANALYSIS: A new nationalism: Fear of immigration is driving the resurgence of the far-right in Europe. It is time that mainstream politicians were brave enough to tell voters the economic realities, argues Mark Mazower:
Financial Times; May 11, 2002.

Mazower provides a useful contextualization of the Pim Fortuyn pheonomenon. Argues, correctly, that much of the reason for the rise of extreme right and populist political leaders is related to crisis in political parties, and the failure of governments to develop coherent immigration policies or to defend the economic necessity of immigration.

"But if the economic argument has been drowned out by a hubbub of accusations about bogus asylum-seekers, criminals and welfare scroungers, governments have only themselves to blame.... Politically, this has led to a highly undesirable situation. Asylum-seekers are provided with benefits and often prohibited from working while their application is considered. They are thus forced into the very dependence on the welfare state for which rightwing parties criticise them. Yet since a substantial proportion of those whose applications are rejected are never deported, the asylum system is also being used tacitly as a back channel into the black economy. This kind of illegal immigration emphasises the weakness of the state and accentuates popular fears of an erosion of national sovereignty in an era of globalisation. Changes are afoot and Britain, Germany and others are moving quietly towards a US-style visa system to target and encourage economic migrants."

Italy

La Repubblica/politica: Immigrati scontro sulle impronte la schedatura arriva in aula La Repubblica,
Italian government is proposing the fingerprinting of all immigrants. Leader of one of the left opposition parties Rutelli responds that it should be done for everyone. The leader of the CGIL, the most powerful trade union in Italy, objects. The center-right government seems intent on avoiding any compromise. Site offers debate between different politicians

Hungary
Hungary's Odd Affair With the Right
May 12, 2002
Week In Review: By CELESTINE BOHLEN
Maybe Hungary, not France, should be the focus of European experts who look for signs of a resurgence of right-wing nationalism.

"The right's appeal in Hungary in 2002 is a strange combination of old and new — of peculiarly Hungarian themes that play on ethnic rivalry and date to the end of World War I, and of the new Europe-wide angst, brought on by what many perceive as the slow sacrifice of national identity to the gods of the European Union, and by extension globalization."

Appears as though all is not quiet on the Eastern front of EU expansion, as the "blooming countryside", that German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had promised to East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall did not make it very far east.

Pim Fortuyn
I went looking to see if what other blogs are discussing this set of issues, and after searching on "immigration politics Europe right", I discovered that the Pim Fortuyn assassination is the topic of the day. The BBC has an entire set of pages dedicated to the topic. There is an interesting interactive weblog, run by Lance Nobel, that has a useful discussion, including some by the Dutch, on the meaning of Fortuyn's politics. If some of the commentators are to be believed, his views seem not to be associated with those of the traditional right, nor to be particularly consistent. Apparently, his change of directions did not seem to bother his followers. This variety of populist politics seems much more closely linked to that of Umberto Bossi, the leader of the Italian Northern Leagues, than to Le Pen or any of the other leaders mentioned.

"Tutti sono stati clandestini" il manifesto - 10 Maggio 2002 (Everyone has been an illegal immigrant)
Enrico Pugliese
Interesting critique of political figures of the Center-Left, particularly Rutelli and Berlinguer, for trying to outdo the Center-Right in assuming a zero tolerance posture towards illegal immigration. "L'on. Rutelli agita un fantasma e se la prende con il governo in carica per non aver svolto a sufficienza la funzione di ghost-buster, proponendo evidentemente l'attuale opposizione quale candidata al ruolo di acchiappa fantasmi. E questo mi sembra francamente pericoloso." (The honorable Rutelli raises the ghosts and criticizes the government for not having sufficiently played the role of ghost-buster, evidently proposing to the left opposition play the role of ghost chaser. And that seems to me frankly dangerous). Pugliese points out that most of the recent wave of immigrants were originally illegal, and that it was only by the generous amnesty policies of previous Left-Center governments that they regularized their status. He also notes that the new immigration policies contemplated by the Berlusconi do not include such measures, even though there is still a sizable number of undocumented immigrants in Italy. He concludes that illegality, not illegals, should be the target of government policy.

Trade Union Under Fire For Welcoming Illegals, Het Financieele Dagblad, May 6, 2002

The leader of Holland's largest trade union federation stepped into the heated national debate on immigration this week by opening its arms to illegal workers. The move provoked a vigorous reaction in the Dutch press from some of the country's political leaders. Liberal party (VVD) leader Hans Dijkstal called the proposal 'incomprehensible' and 'anti-democratic'. The Christian Democrat (CDA) leader Gerda Verburg said the idea was 'astonishing and thoughtless'. VVD even suggested the FNV's proposal warranted removing the organization from its role as a member of the government's top advisory group SER. Speaking on May 1, FNV chairman Lodewijk de Waal said the union wanted to offer FNV membership cards to illegal migrants even before they hold residency cards. But the union reacted to criticism by saying that the strong reaction to the proposal was inflamed by the political environment around Holland's upcoming May 15 general elections.
(posted on the GCIR List Serve 5-12)

PIM FORTUYN Una meteora politica travolgente, Il Manifesto, May 7, 2002.
This brief article, with a title that roughly translates as a "political shooting star", describes the deceased xenophobic
Dutch political figure, as a sociologist, and former professor, whose politics were at one point Marxist influenced.