Full text of DOI:10.1093/pa/53.3.517

European Institutions: The Far-Right and
Illiberal Politics in a Liberal Context
BY CATHERINE FIESCHI
How preoccupied should democrats be concerning far-right representa-
tion in the European Parliament? In the June 1999 elections the French
National Front (Front National) and the Austrian Freedom Party
¨
(Freiheitliche Partei Osterreichs) each acquired five seats, the Italian
National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale) nine seats, the Northern League
(Lega Nord) four seats, the Belgian Flemish Block (Vlaams Blok) two,
and finally the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) a single seat.
Far-right MEPs make up just over 4% of the European Parliament’s
composition. With 26 MEPs in all (out of 626 seats) the far-right is
thus the smallest of ideological clusters represented in the European
Parliament in which even the next smallest cluster (the united left) is
nearly twice as well represented. Such figures seem far from alarming.
Admittedly, for most far-right parties the 1999 European elections
constituted something of a turn for the worse, but why are these parties
with their 4% of seats of interest in the European context?
The historical conditions surrounding the emergence and creation of
a European Community in the aftermath of the Second World War—
and thus mandated in part to secure democratic governments in Europe
and uphold liberal democratic values of freedom, equality and
tolerance—explain in part the European Union’s particular unease with
far-right politics and the public’s corresponding concern when such
institutions are seemingly permeable by the sort of politics they were
explicitly destined to end.
Of more interest in terms of political analysis is that the presence of
the far-right in European Union politics can also be taken to reveal the
dramatic—and often unresolved—tensions introduced by its politics and
politicians in liberal democratic contexts. Thus, the interest lies not in
the number of seats it commands in the European Parliament, but in the
nature of its relationship with European institutions. This stormy rela-
tionship is interesting from the point of view of the parties themselves
and from that of a supra-national institution with liberal democraticaims
and credentials. Further, the presence of such parties in the European
Parliament reveals not only the dilemma of the far-right in its attitude to
democratic institutions, but, also, the dilemma which mainstream right
parties and parliamentary groups in the European Parliament face given
their own attitudes towards the far-right and towards Europe.
Ą Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government 2000
Parliamentary Affairs (2000), 53, 517–531

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Of primary interest are the attitudes of far-right parties to the
European Union and to the European Parliament in particular. The far-
right represented in the latter is not homogenous in its attitude to
Europe. The strident anti-Europeanism of the French National Front
MEPs, for example, contrasts sharply with the pro-European stance of
the MEPs of the Italian National Alliance or the Northern League. The
first set of questions therefore addresses the manner in which these
parties view the European arena and how they interpret their political
role within it given divergent stances on the desirability and value of
the Union’s institutions. It is also important to assess the way these
parties have ‘used’ the European Union as a political arena and platform
for their domestic aims. While there is a broad consensus on the fact
that European elections are still fought with domestic politics in mind,
the case of the far-right is complicated—and simultaneously made more
interesting—by the fact that many parties have used their European
electoral achievements as a way to enhance their domestic fortunes
despite their anti-European attitude. This paradox reflects a heightened
version of the dilemma faced by other, more mainstream, parties.
The second perspective adopted here shall examine the nature of the
relationship between parties of the far-right in the context of European
institutions and their failure to make stable alliances amongst them-
selves. The difficulties encountered in attempts to form parliamentary
groups are indicative of the primacy of nationalisms which undermine
any potential for ideological alliances. In fact, the relationship between
the parties can vary from cordial to hostile, as revealed by the presence
or absence of formal links between the groups. This aspect itself is
interesting because it contextualises the nature of relationships in the
European Parliament. It has been argued that within the European
Parliament national lines are suppressed in favour of ideological cleav-
ages. In the case of far-right parties, while ideological lines are import-
ant, their strident nationalism, often at odds with the dynamics of the
European Parliament which centre around alliances and parliamentary
groups, often blurs these lines and creates new ones. The nature of
alliances between far-right parties and other more mainstream parties,
the fluctuating relationships between them and changing landscape of
the far-right in Europe should not only lead one to question whether
such parties do, in fact, share an ideology; they serve to highlight the
importance of studying these parties as part of democratic contexts.
This is perhaps the best place to address briefly the taxonomic difficulty
of classification. Much has been written on this but for the purposes
here two issues only are relevant. The first is whether there is a broad
ideological family which can still be labelled—with some measure of
analytical purchase—‘far-right’; the second is whether such a grouping
is represented in the European Parliament. On the first question, though
the far-right can refer to different types of parties and movements
(fascist, nazi, neo-nazi, populist or national-populists, to name but a

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few), it can still usefully be argued that they share an ultranationalism
which structures their conception of the nation in racial or, at least
restrictive, terms; that when they are not explicitly anti-democratic they
tend to hold narrow interpretations of representative democracy; and
that, in general, they put a narrowly defined version of the national
interest above the protection of human rights. Identifying parties as far-
right has become increasingly difficult as they have often adopted
populist attitudes and ‘entryist’ strategies which distinguish them from
traditional far-right parties—ones which tended to refuse the rules of
the democratic game; the fact that the parties under scrutiny here can
be labelled far-right and at the same time be studied in the context of
liberal democratic institutions is an illustration of this development. As
regards the second issue, versions and combinations of the characteris-
tics listed above are easily discernible within the European Parliament.
Lastly, we examine the converse issue of the European institutions’
attitude to parties whose ideological illiberal stance implicitly, and often
explicitly, calls into question the aims pursued by the Union and which,
in addition, are sometimes fundamentally hostile to its very existence.
For a variety of reasons (the desire to enhance the Union’s profile as an
international political actor, seeking to strengthen links within and
amongst parliamentary groups, and the wish to preserve the European
Union’s and its Parliament’s role as promoter of liberal democratic
values) the Union has expressed concern about and sometimes (as in
the Austrian case) condemnation of domestic developments perceived
as contrary to its democratic creed. We will thus end with a discussion
of the role of the European Union in these matters.
Anti-Europeans and pro-Europeans
Far-right parties represented in the European Parliament harbour a
range of attitudes towards the European Union, as do the other parties.
While the Danish People’s Party, the French National Front, the Aus-
trian Freedom Party and the Flemish Block are all anti-European, the
Italian National Alliance and the Northern League offer the peculiarity
for nationalist parties of being, cosmetically at least, pro-European. The
anti-European attitudes of the first four are comparable, despite differ-
ing national contexts, indeed they are remarkably similar. Their shared
commitment to an ultra-nationalist doctrine precludes their allegiance
to any institutional arrangement dedicated to furthering supranational
or even international forms of government. Whether they be classified
as fascist, neo-fascist, populist or national populist, each of these parties
shares in the commitment to defend—above all else—a version of the
national interest rooted in the cultural (and often racial) homogeneity
of the nation.
The French National Front, though on the wane after its split in
1998–99, has always rejected the extremist label (much as other far-
right parties have), and has proclaimed its allegiance to the French

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Republic on countless occasions. However, its rejection of human
rights, its racist propaganda and anti-Semitic remarks, its often revision-
ist stance and aggressively populist discourse leave little doubt about its
place on the far-right of the political spectrum. Much the same can be
said for the Flemish Block and the Austrian Freedom Party. Haider
tried recently to endear himself to the Austrian Jewish community as
well as the international one (e.g. his recent attempt to visit the
Holocaust museum in Montreal, which shut the door in his face) and
he has tried to ‘say the right things’ regarding human rights. However,
few forget or forgive his 1991 statement praising the Third Reich’s
employment policy—which led to his having to relinquish temporarily
his post as governor of Carinthia. Despite explanations such as Peter
¨
Sichrovsky’s (widely held as the FPO’s ‘token Jew’) that Haider is not a
neo-Nazi but a member of a generation whose education was ‘not
critical enough toward national socialism,’ his politics, if not neo-nazi,
are firmly on the far-right. The Flemish Block offers the further peculi-
arity of adding separatism to its xenophobic stance. It dismisses Belgian
federalist ideals, let alone European ones, and has concentrated since its
creation in 1978 on securing independence through constitutional
reform. Despite this, its separatism is couched in a language very closely
resembling that of the French National Front. Foreign workers and
immigration have been prominent themes in its European electoral
platforms, pamphlets often depicting the Flemish regions as in danger
of disappearing under a sea of foreigners; its general attitude is closely
linked to previous incarnations of the far-right in Flanders, in particular
to the nationalist parties which collaborated with Nazi Germany.1 The
separatist cause is thus served through nationalist and racist arguments
destined to heighten the sense of cultural and ethnic devaluation
incurred by Flanders allegedly the work of the federal government.
Interestingly, the Flemish Block is reminiscent of Umberto Bossi’s Italian
Northern League, which held six seats in the European Parliament from
1994 to 1999 (four since 1999) and acted as a coalition partner to
Berlusconi in the 1994 Italian government. It also couples xenophobia,
vis-a`-vis ‘foreigners’ including Southern Italians, and separatist ambi-
tions. The difference is that while the Flemish Block is anti-European,
the League strongly favours supra-national European government as a
means of redrawing the Italian map.
The Danish far-right falls squarely in the camp of the anti-Europeans
as the People’s Party can be seen as one of the results of Denmark’s less
than straightforward attitude to European Union membership. It is
worth remembering that between 1972 and 1998 Denmark (which
joined the EC in 1973) undertook five referendums on the European
issue; the last, in May 1998, showed a third of the population hostile
to the Treaty of Amsterdam. The party was founded in 1995 by
moderates who broke away from the hard line, anti-European and
xenophobic Progress Party. Though less radical in its discourse about

Extreme Right in the EU
521
foreigners and seemingly more liberal in its social attitudes than the
Progress Party and other European far-right parties, its programme
revolves around the maintenance of Danish borders (‘Denmark was not
intended to be a land of immigration’ reads their programme), rejection
of the European Union (and of the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties
more specifically) and defence of Danish traditional values. Its single
MEP is affiliated to the Europe of the Nations group.
The Austrian Freedom Party, the Flemish Block, the National Front
and the Danish People’s Party share a very similar stance toward Europe:
Europe is intrusive, it threatens national independence, its bureaucracy
hinders national development, it smacks of a cosmopolitanism (in far-
right vocabulary this is often a euphemism for Jewish) which undermines
national culture, heritage and identity. Looking at European election
material, one is struck by their similarity: calls for a Europe of the
Fatherlands and for the preservation of a unique mosaı¨que of European
identities in the face of a homogenising, soulless Brussels. Such views of
the national interest render any allegiance to the European Union’s supra-
national purpose impossible. Thus the dilemma with which these parties
are faced is not to be underestimated: Europe is an additional electoral
arena where influence is to be sought at all costs; at the same time, it is
an arena to whose values the parties are fundamentally opposed.
Two aspects of European institutions are partly responsible for this
dilemma. The first is that all of the parties perceive Europe as a potential
fortress against immigration. As underscored by others, the far-right’s
attitude to Europe as a cultural entity differs from their attitude to
Europe as a set of institutions. It has always been committed—more or
less explicitly, depending on the party—to a shared European civiliza-
tion. Hence the reconciliation of attitudes through the concept of a
Europe of the Fatherlands. Le Pen’s statements concerning the threats
facing Europe as well as France’s imperative as the leader in a commun-
ity of European nations which share a civilization, shows an attempt to
fuel a European patriotism and link the destiny of the French nation
with that of a Europe of the Fatherlands defined by ethnic and cultural
boundaries. The difficult aim is therefore to preserve diversity within
while fending off diversity from outside. The Austrian Freedom Party’s
programme calling for the protection of the ‘peoples and ethnic minor-
ities of the Union’ in order to maintain its cultural diversity reflects the
same attitude.
The second contributor to the dilemma is that, despite their anti-
Europeanism, these parties have gained enormously from the solemnity,
ritual and political symbolism of the European arena and from the
credibility derived through seats in the European Parliament. Moreover,
the European elections have afforded them a measure of success which
some domestic electoral systems precluded. The French National Front
is a case in point. Its electoral breakthrough can be traced back to 1984
when it gained ten seats in the European Parliament. Despite its hostility

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to Europe, exposure through Europe was not to be scorned. The same
can be said for the German Republikaner, who held no seats in the
European Parliament after 1999 but who benefited in German elections
from their entry into it in 1989. The attitude of the Italian National
Alliance in 1999 made it clear that, aside from the credibility associated
with the Union’s institutions, the elections were—as for many other
parties—taken as a litmus test of national popularity. In the Italian case
this worked in two ways. The poor showing of the D’Alema coalition
in the European election of 1999 allowed both the mainstream right
(Berlusconi) and the National Alliance to question the legitimacy of the
D’Alema government further. Perhaps more important here, the Euro-
pean elections were held as substitutes for national elections in settling
once and for all which party of the right (Berlusconi’s or Fini’s) held
more sway over the Italian electorate. Berlusconi’s victory (with 25%
of the vote) contributed to the National Alliance’s waning popularity.
In this manner in can be said that European elections affect far-right
parties much in the same way that they affect any other party: as a test
for domestic popularity in relation to their adversaries and to their
nearest ideological neighbours.
The Italian case, however, differs from that of the parties previously
examined. The Italian Social Movement (MSI) was a long established
party with direct roots to the old Fascist party (the National Alliance is
an electoral umbrella which incorporates the MSI). As early as 1946 it
was recreated and obtained seats in the Italian Parliament. Though its
fortunes have ebbed and flowed over the years, it has been an actor on
the Italian political scene since the immediate postwar era.2 It began to
reinvent itself in the early 1990s and its ‘entryist’ attitude had already
provoked the desertion of its most radical members, leaving it under
the decidedly genteel, if not entirely trustworthy, Gianfranco Fini. The
party then underwent radical remodelling, making a firm and explicit
commitment to liberal democracy. The explicit acceptance of demo-
cratic rules and democratic goals was rewarded by 12.5% of the vote
and entry into government, in 1944, as a coalition partner of Berlus-
coni’s Forza Italia! The timing of the election (in the aftermath of the
‘Tangentopoli’ corruption scandals) partly explains the party’s success
but its transformation also accounts for the significant increase in its
share of the popular vote.
The second point distinguishing the National Alliance from the other
parties discussed so far is its pro-European stance. This can be explained
in two ways. The first is that it would not have survived as a party at
the national or at the European level if it had adopted an anti-European
position. In a country where support for the European Union is
consistently higher than in most others, anti-Europeanism is not a
tenable stance. Second, its pro-Europeanism partly accords with certain
aspects of the fascist doctrine it once held dear since its pro-European-
ism is of a particular kind: the MSI had been amongst the first to

Extreme Right in the EU
523
attempt to give fascism a European dimension, but this meant dissoci-
ating it from the more liberal values of the Maastricht treaty as well as
from the official liberal spirit of the Common market.3 In some contrast
to the French National Front, but even more so, to the Austrian
Freedom Party, it declares its concern for a social Europe and condemns
the stridently capitalistic aspects of European integration. Finally, its
sophisticated, more muted, racism (a version of the differential racism
espoused by the French Nouvelle Droite which claims concern for
maintaining differences in the name of racial respect) has allowed it to
call for the protection of immigrants already in Italy while aiding those
countries whose population is so keen to leave and migrate to Italy.
The party has therefore been able to distinguish itself from other
versions of the far-right on the subject of racism.
The most important element to retain here is that, regardless of their
attitude toward European institutions, nationalism (or regionalism
couched in nationalist terms) is these parties’ defining aspect. It struc-
tures their relationship to Europe and to the European Parliament in
particular. It is this nationalism which is responsible for the acuteness
of their dilemma with regards to the European Union. Further, their
nationalism governs their behaviour within the European Parliament
and explains in great measure their failure to become a pan-European
force genuinely embodied, for example, in a parliamentary group.
The price of nationalism: an inability to make alliances
Let us now turn, therefore, to an examination of their relationships
within the European Parliament. Immediately after the 1984 elections
to the European Parliament, members of the French National Front, the
Italian MSI and the Greek National Political Union (EPEN) formed an
inter-parliamentary group. By 1989, it attempted to expand (despite the
loss of its Greek MEP) by incorporating the German Republikaner’s six
newly elected MEPs, the Lombard League’s two and the Flemish Block’s
single MEP. Early on in the negotiations which were to lead to the
creation of the Technical Group of the European Right, the Republika-
ners declared that they could not work with the Italian MSI given
hostilities generated by the South Tyrol issue. This led the MSI to leave
the group. The group, in any case, was riddled with conflict and, though
it drafted resolutions and continued to exist more or less until 1994, it
had more conflict between members of the group than concerted action.
(The Republikaner leader for example accused Le Pen as well as
members of his own party of being racist; the MSI accused Le Pen and
Schonhuber of being, respectively, a Fascist and a Nazi.)
In addition to their inability to work together, it must be said that
while in existence (1984 to 1994) the groups were never afforded access
to the normal channels for cooperation between parliamentary groups
nor were they given any committee chairs. From 1994 onwards the
alliances between the groups remained precarious and the MEPs were

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affiliated for the most part to the ‘non-attached’ group. In late 1999,
the French National Front set up a technical group (i.e. without political
affinity) with Emma Bonino and the Italian Radical Party. The fact that
it was a ‘technical’ and not a ‘political’ group, however, posed prob-
lems, and its legitimacy was called into question by other groups since
parliamentary rules now require groups to have political affinities.
The Italian National Alliance was able to join the ‘Europe of Nations’
group with the Irish Fianna Fa´il and Charles Pasqua’s dissident Gaullists
in 1999. This development presents several interesting aspects. Firstly,
it was a clear move yet further away from the National Alliances’s
Fascist roots. The Europe of the Nations group, while on the robust
right, contains parties whose ideological stance is essentially that of soft
nationalism combined with a hard-line defence of the national interest.
The move, therefore, is clearly further to the centre of the political
spectrum, thereby increasing the distance between it and other far-right
parties in the European Parliament. Secondly, its inclusion in the group
also highlights the fact that, while nationalism is largely responsible for
the parties’ failure to cooperate with one another, other issues also
come into play. Chief amongst them the concern of parties such as the
National Alliance (and to some extent the Austrian Freedom Party—
though the latter has not been admitted to any group) for respectability.
The Europe of Nations group is a motley gathering: it includes dissident
French Gaullists such as Pasqua and Fianna Fa´il MEPs, but was co-
founded by the ultra-conservative and ultra-Catholic Philippe de Villiers
who founded the anti-Maastricht Combat pour les valeurs (Combat for
values), then Mouvement pour la France (The Movement for France)
and went on to win 12% of the vote in the 1994 European elections.
De Villiers scored miserably in the 1995 presidential elections and kept
a low-profile until the European elections of 1999 and the creation of
Rassemblement pour la France et l’Inde´pendance de l’Europe with
Pasqua. Nevertheless, the National Alliance’s admission to the group is
clearly a step in the direction of further political acceptability as it
shares power with MEPs from established parties of government
(though the willingness on behalf of such established parties and figures
to work with former Fascists is noteworthy).
The concern for respectability resulted—though not formally—to a
division between the Austrian Freedom Party and the National Alliance
on the one hand and the National Front and Flemish Block on the
other. Refusing to be associated with the latter two, both the former
deliberately avoided any type of cooperation with them—though the
National Alliance also refused to cooperate with the Freedom Party.
For the National Alliance, conscious of the need to maintain its
respectable image congruent with its repudiation of Fascism, any coop-
eration with a Flemish Block bent on amnesty for former Nazi collabo-
rators was unimaginable, and relations with the Freedom Party taken
as a potential liability. The Flemish Block and the National Front on

Extreme Right in the EU
525
the other hand, cooperated on a daily basis, sang one another’s praises
in the European Parliament and shared a secretariat. The Austrian
Freedom party faced complete isolation.
The relationship between far-right parties in the European Parliament
is in great part structured by their ambivalent perceptions of the
European arena and by their nationalism which predisposes them to
quarrels over territorial issues, leadership and compromise. To this, one
must add the quest for respectability, which adds an element of unpre-
dictability to the relationships at work within the European Parliament.
Another factor to be taken into account is the relationship between
parties of the far-right and groups such as Europe of the Nations which
encompass a variety of parties from conservative to post-Fascist whose
attitude toward Europe structures their own strategy vis-a`-vis parties of
the far-right. The Europe of Nations group’s willingness to work with
the Italian National Alliance seems to signal that the Parliament is still
a political arena within which disagreements over the institution’s basic
functions can create the potential for unlikely alliances. These alliances,
in turn, contribute to a blurring of traditional ideological lines. This is
often revealed by the ‘Russian doll’ system operating in some groups.
The Europe of Nations group’s ideological diversity—despite a shared
hostility to European Institutions—leads it to act as the ‘home’ of other
groups with more pronounced ideological identities: it ‘houses’ Europe
of Democracies and Difference, itself the umbrella organisation of five
other groups including the French ‘Chasse, Peˆche, Nature et Tradition’
and some slightly more radical Danish groups.
This takes us to the subject of the attitude of the European Parliament
and European institutions toward parties of the far-right. It can be
argued that the major Parliamentary groups exhibit a form of consocia-
tional politics with respect to far-right parties; that is a capacity to
reach elite level agreements on the issue of far-right politics despite a
diversity of views on a range of other issues. In this respect, the attitude
of the Parliament and the major groups’ successful cooperation in
blocking the far-right’s organisational capacity within it could be
interpreted as a form of consociational politics. On the other hand, it is
arguable that intergovernmental concerns still play a disproportionate
role within European Union institutions, thus limiting severely the
European Union’s scope for intervention as a unified international
political actor.
Far-right politics as international opportunities
In October 1999 Jo¨rg Haider’s Freedom Party came second in the
Austrian national elections (with 27% of the vote) thus becoming a
possible coalition partner for the Social Democrats instead of their
traditional Conservative partners. Despite polls showing that nearly
50% of Austrians were in favour of maintaining the old-style Social
Democratic-Conservative coalition (against only 10% in favour of a

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Social Democratic-Freedom Party coalition), and after a staggering five
month hesitation waltz, the Social Democrat Chancellor Viktor Klima,
deprived of Conservative support, decided against the formation of a
minority government likely to result in new elections and in further
popular frustration vis-a`-vis mainstream parties. The President then
agreed to a Conservative-Freedom Party coalition, led by the smallest
of the three main parties. Much like the National Front in France one
of the staggering aspects of the Freedom Party vote was its success
amongst the working classes, where it supplanted the traditional work-
ing-class party. The National Front, however, despite having MEPs,
holding municipal office and arriving third in presidential elections, has
never joined a national government and has only been represented once
in the National Assembly from 1986 to 1988. (The 1986 legislative
election was the only one held under proportional representation,
allowing the front 35 deputies until 1988.)
For the purposes of this discussion the interesting aspect of Haider’s
domestic success was the condemnation of Austria’s actions by the
European Union. International consternation aside, the European
Union’s vehement objection to Austria’s electoral choice as well as the
warning it issued to Austria, shed much light on its perception of its
international role as well as on the tensions which domestic politics of
the far-right introduce in the European arena.
The condemnation of Austria by the European Parliament and, earlier
even, by Portugal, which held the rotating presidency of the EU, is an
indicator of the way in which the European Union sees itself as an
international actor and in what circumstances it tends to do so. The
statement issued on behalf of its 14 other members on the 31 January
1999, prior to the official announcement of the Freedom Party’s inclu-
sion in government, was a clear, if hurried, declaration that Austria
would face political isolation should it go ahead with such a coalition
government. The European Parliament went on to condemn the
expected inclusion of Haider in the coalition and stated that the EU
could consider the suspension of its membership should Austria find
itself in breach of the European Union’s founding principles and guiding
aims of democracy, freedom and respect for human rights. Its statement
also asserted that inclusion of Haider in government would legitimate
the far-right in Europe and that inaction on the part of the EU would
be taken as a banalisation of the far-right on the international political
stage.
The condemnation of the far-right and its political representatives
can be seen as the endorsement of the notion that the European Union
represents a community of nations. Emphasis on the notion of legitim-
ate community thus allows for the development of a moral persona
entitled, perhaps even required, to express moral judgements in the
name of its members. This is by no means new nor startling. The case
of the EU, however, is particularly interesting because its moral con-

Extreme Right in the EU
527
demnation seems driven more by the opportunity to strengthen percep-
tions of it as a community of nations which can behave as an
international actor rather than by the requirements of the situation.
Moreover, the manoeuvre itself can reveal, and sometimes aggravate,
dangerous fault-lines between members.
European nations have been striving to act as one since 1958 yet,
despite attempts at collective diplomacy, a significant gap remains
between expectations raised (by the Common Foreign and Security
Policy or the Maastricht Treaty, for example) and the actual delivery.4
The Bosnian war, the Kosovan and Iraqi crises, have all highlighted the
limitation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, for example,
and thereby underscore the limitations of the European Union as an
international actor. In many ways, the diplomatic furore caused by the
inclusion of Haider’s party in a coalition government should in part be
read as an attempt by the European Union to act concertedly where it
thinks it can. Such ‘solidarity building’ manoeuvres, however, are not
necessarily to be condemned: as with much that concerns its potential
identity, cause and effect may be difficult to distinguish, and a course
of action that can enhance this embryonic diplomatic identity may fall
in the category of ends justifying means. Such action becomes more
problematic is if is seen not as a concerted seizing of opportunity by a
community of nations to strengthen its profile as an actor on the
international stage but, if it is a response to lobbying by the Austrian
President himself. Despite accounts of an outraged Europe by the
international press, it transpired that the Portuguese statement was a
response to the Austrian President’s pressure on individual heads of
governments to force the EU into taking a negative and public stance
on the expected coalition. This can be taken, on the one hand, to signify
that the European Union’s profile may not need bolstering as much as
is usually thought. If heads of Government appeal to foreign counter-
parts in order to mobilise European Union institutions, then perhaps
the European Union is already (sometimes) perceived as an international
recourse, whose threats of ostracism and sanction are worth wielding.
On the other hand, the lack of initial concerted European Union
reaction seems to indicate the opposite: that there is little sense of the
European Union’s role as a collective international actor with real
power and that whatever action is taken, it still rests with individual
states. Finally, such manoeuvring by member states to bring it into a
matter strengthens the perception of the European Union as a means of
implementing unpopular domestic policies or avoiding difficult political
decisions.
Politically, the case becomes all the more compelling when set in the
context of attitudes towards European integration. One of the conse-
quences of the European Union’s taking a position in the Austrian
matter was to highlight the readiness (or lack thereof) of certain
members to intervene in domestic matters such as the composition of

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national governments. Warning and then threatening Austria was not
endorsed by all members. Enthusiastic sanctioners were France, Ger-
many, Belgium, Italy and Portugal. Britain, Denmark, Sweden were less
keen. Those in favour shared two traits: they all had or had had
national problems with far-right parties, and they were the states
perceived as most committed to further integration. Those less comfort-
able with the European Union’s decision to intervene in what was
considered a domestic matter were countries (Denmark excepted) which
have had fewer problems with the politics of the far-right at home and
also, coincidentally, those for whom the European Union remains
something less of a community of nations, given their countries’ com-
mitment to the safeguarding of national sovereignty and more tradi-
tional conceptions of the national interest. It is no surprise that the
representatives of these nations in the European Parliament were dis-
tinctly uncomfortable, and on occasion explicitly outraged, by the
European Union’s attitude toward Austria.
Dissatisfaction with the Union’s stance was also expressed by Europe
of Nations, who declared that while it was committed to the Union’s
founding principles, Austria was not in breach of any of these principles,
that it had held democratic elections and that the group therefore
refused to condemn Austria’s choice until it had any concrete and
reasonable reason to do so. Also in a difficult position was Austria’s
Social Democratic delegation in the European Parliament who released
a statement condemning the Freedom Party but asking the ‘New
Europe’ to show patience and understanding toward Austria. Both of
these reactions illustrating once again the complexity of the relationship
between national allegiance and ideological lines within European
Union institutions.
An interesting comparison can be made with European Union atti-
tudes when the Berlusconi government included five National Alliance
ministers in 1994. The National Alliance was seen to have undergone
sufficient changes to warrant some measure of trust, though its formal
repudiation of fascism had not yet taken place. While its electoral
success and its participation in the Berlusconi government raised some
diplomatic eyebrows and ruffled a few international feathers, the reac-
tion was muted in comparison to that which later faced Austria.
The European Union’s concern in May 1994 was expressed by a
single declaration by the European Parliament (adopted in the midst of
a broader discussion on the forthcoming Corfu` summit) warning the
Italian President that it wished for his government to ‘remain faithful to
the Community’s fundamental values’. A rather tame reminder com-
pared to the threats hanging over Austria when it was told that there
was no possibility of ‘business as usual in bilateral relations with a
government integrating the Freedom Party’. The Portuguese Prime
Minister declared that ‘naturally we will not be able to continue the
same relations as in the past, however much we regret it. Nothing will

Extreme Right in the EU
529
be as before.’ Austria was also told that European Union members
would not back any Austrian candidates for international posts and
that its ambassadors would be received at ‘working’ level only. Though
Austria would not be excluded from multilateral European Union
meetings, the option to exclude would be considered depending on how
the situation evolved.
Strikingly, and contrary to the Austrian President’s appeal in 2000,
the then Italian Prime Minister, took issue with what he believed to be
the European Parliament’s self-righteous attitude. He publicly declared
that Italy believed in the principles of liberal democracy and needed no
reminders. Leaders of both Italian Chambers of Parliament published a
declaration condemning the ‘inadmissible meddling in domestic affairs’
and stating that Italy was ‘a mature democracy which did not need the
tutelage of its European partners’. Italy’s long-standing commitment to
Europe might in part have justified a lower-key reaction by the Euro-
pean Parliament and MEPs were it not for the fact that the Austrian
endorsement of the Maastricht Treaty in 1995 signalled significant
support for Europe. Both countries can be thought of as pro-European.
Further, the far-right voice was generally stronger in European domestic
politics in 1994 then in 2000. This might have led one to expect more,
and not less, concern then. Could the difference of reactions be
explained by Haider’s altogether more radical persona and the Freedom
Party’s radical programme? Unlike the National Alliance, which explic-
itly renounced fascism and labelled itself ‘post-fascist’, the Freedom
Party has remained much more committed to hard line far-right princi-
ples, not always shying away from references to Austria’s nazi past. To
some extent this may play a role—though the post-fascism of the
National Alliance is recent; as late as 1991 Fini had no qualms about
declaring ‘there is no need to embark on a relaunch of the MSI based
on a new ideological definition. We can say we are fascists, the heirs of
fascism, post-fascists or the fascists of the twenty-first century’.5 The
difference between the parties was perhaps not as pronounced as it
appeared.
Two factors explain the difference in the scale of the reactions more
convincingly: the first is an unease with what is often perceived to be
the unresolved issue of Austria’s past. The second is the self-assurance
which the European Union and Parliament have gained in since the
mid-1990s. In some respects, the crisis which faced Austria in the early
months of 2000 was the political result of its immobilism. The corpor-
atist structures in place since immediately after the war not only affected
the conduct of day-to-day politics, the management of the economy,
the relations between business, trade unions and government; it was
also largely responsible for the collective failure to address Austria’s
role in the nazi period. The damage caused by this silence and collective
form of political and historical denial was partly responsible both for
the squabbling between the parties of the previous coalition and thus

530
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partly responsible for the emergence of a figure like Haider: younger,
more dynamic and thoroughly unashamed of his or his family’s alle-
giances. The combination of all of these helps explain the consternation
of the European Union faced with a committed partner in the throes of
such domestic crisis. Nevertheless, the changed perception of the Euro-
pean Union as a community of nations and as an international actor
does more to explain the European Union’s public outrage.
The growing pains of an international diplomatic actor
Some authors, largely those in the realists or intergovernmentalist camp,
have argued that the European Union should simply be ignored as an
international player because it does not exhibit the characteristics of a
state: it is a forum in which governments meet periodically in order to
facilitate relations and exchanges.6 Others agree that supranational
bodies enhance the potential for cooperation, even if the will to
cooperate rests ultimately with individual states. The European Union’s
position in relation to Austria’s Freedom Party is a clear demonstration
that, as a set of political institutions, it feels increasingly justified in
behaving as an international actor. Haider’s resignation from govern-
ment (though largely a cosmetic measure) also indicates that member
states can no longer afford to ignore the views expressed by the
European Union. On this issue therefore, it is tempting to conclude,
that while the reasons behind its mobilisation may not have been
entirely motivated by moral outrage but rather by the opportunities the
situation afforded, the result is probably a heightening of the perception
of the European Union as a legitimate international actor.
Two other conclusions are of significance. The first is that while
domestic politics still dominate the conduct and content of much of
what is thought of as European politics, institutions such as the
European Parliament generate their own sets of values, accepted modes
of conduct and behaviour, thereby imparting a distinctive quality (and
perhaps distinct outcomes) to the politics that are conducted through
them. Secondly, far-right ideological forms may be resilient over time
but, the three parties which experienced the most electoral success in
the late 1980s and early 1990s did not do well in the 1999 elections:
the French National Front and the Italian National Alliance lost more
than half of their seats in the Parliament and the Italian Northern
League lost half of its seats. It is interesting to speculate on the reasons
accounting for this decline. Those elections in which the parties did
very well (such as those of 1994) may exhibit particularities: It can be
argued that the 1994 election was likely to be particularly propitious
for all anti-European parties—such the French National Front—in the
immediate aftermath of the ratification of the Treaty of Maastricht. In
the case of the Italian National Alliance, the 1994 elections occurred in
the wake of corruption scandals and can be thought of as understand-
ably clement to parties that could be seen to have ‘kept their hands

Extreme Right in the EU
531
clean’, such as the National Alliance and Northern League. However,
the internal and domestic situations for these parties in 1999 might just
as aptly explain a poor showing in the 1999 election: the National
Front’s decline in the European arena is a direct consequence of its
internal strife and the toll taken by French political institutions on
parties on either extreme of the political spectrum.7
This takes us back to our first conclusion: though the fortunes of far-
right parties in the European Parliament are in part dependent on how
they fare domestically, their decline in the European Parliament should
also, perhaps, be understood as the result of the organisational pressures
exerted by parliamentary politics which prompts these parties to adapt,
seek alliance partners (as exemplified by the National Alliance) or face
decline and sometimes extinction. The latter might only be avoided at
the cost of transformations which may profoundly affect the party’s
ideological identity. On the other hand, rather than a constraint, the
European Parliament can also be seen as an opportunity to initiate
transformations within a political arena whose ideological boundaries
are more fluid than domestic ones.
1
C. Husbands, ‘Belgium: Flemish Legions on the March’ in P. Hainsworth (ed), The Extreme Right in
Europe and the USA, St Martin’s, 1992. See also M. Swingedouw, ‘The Extreme Right in Belgium’ in
H.G. Betz and S. Immerfall (eds), The New Politics of the Far-Right, Macmillan, 1998.
See F. Ferraresi, ‘The Radical Right in Post-War Italy’, Politics and Society, 16, 1988; P. Ignazi, Post-
Fascisti? Il Mulino, 1994.
R. Griffin, ‘The Post-Fascism of the Alleanza Nazionale: A Case Study in Ideological Morphology’,
Journal of Political Ideologies, June 1996.
R. Ginsberg, ‘Conceptualising the European Union as an International Actor’, Journal of Common
Market Studies, September 1999.
2
3
4
5
6
Quoted in Griffin, loc. cit.
See L. Miles, ‘Integration Theory and Enlargement of the European Union’ in C. Rhodes and S. Mazey
(eds), The State of the European Union, Lynne Rienner, 1995, vol. 3; A. Pijpers, ‘European Political
Cooperation and the Realist Paradigm’ in M. Holland (ed), The Future of European Political Coopera-
tion: Essays on Theory and Practice, St Martin’s, 1991.
7
C. Fieschi, ‘Rally Politics and Political Organisation: An Institutional Perspective on the French Far-
Right,’ Modern and Contemporary France, February 2000.