‘Extreme resurgence’: Is polarised Europe getting ungovernable as centrist space shrinks?

New Delhi: Nearly two months after the snap parliamentary elections, France is yet to get a government as none of the three major blocs is even near a majority on its own and cannot ally with any other due to their differing ideologies. Now, two German states are set to follow suit as the far-right and the far-left make gains at the expense of centrist parties.

Significantly, women are in prime positions in the parties both at the opposite end of the political spectrum in both key European countries – Marine Le Pen of the National Rally and the leftist New Popular Front’s (NFP) Prime Ministerial pick Lucie Castets in France, and Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Sahra Wagenknecht of the left-wing Sara Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) in Germany.

And both extreme end parties are, worryingly for the European Union, are notably Euro-sceptic, and are not much in favour of confronting Russia.

While populist right-wing parties rule several European countries, including Italy and Hungary, and were in power in Poland, till recently, they are now beginning to flourish in Germany too.

Elections to the eastern states of Thuringia and Saxony on Sunday threw up a fractured mandate, with a major boost for the AfD – the first victory for a far-right party in Germany since the Second World War.

The AfD won the most – 32 of the 88 – seats in the Landtag (parliament) of Thuringia and 40 in the 120-member Landtag of Saxony, just behind the Christian Democrat Union (of former Chancellor Angela Merkel), which won 41.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose own Social Democratic Party (SPD) won just six seats in Thuringia while ‘traffic light’ coalition partners, the Greens and the liberal FDP, drew a blank, has urged mainstream parties to maintain a “firewall” against the AfD.

“All democratic parties are now called upon to form stable governments without right-wing extremists,” he said, terming the results “bitter” and “worrying”.

However, a ‘stable government’ in Thuringia seems difficult given the CDU, which has 23 seats, has ruled out joining hands with the far-right. It had previously eschewed an alliance with the left-wing Die Linke, which has 12 seats, and the only other alternative is the 15 members of the Sara Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), formed this year by former Die Linke members and politically further to the left, though culturally conservative. The CDU is unlikely to be keen on them too.

In Saxony, the situation is not better. The CDU has 41, while Scholz’s SPD has 10, and the Greens seven – tantalisingly close to a majority, should they join hands. On the other hand, apart from the AfD, the BSW won 15, Die Linke six, and the Free Voters (FW) one.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel has said that voters in Thuringia and Saxony had given her party a “very clear mandate to govern” and urged parties to ignore Scholz’s call to build government coalitions without the AfD. Contending “firewalls are undemocratic”, she noted that doing so would “undermine the democratic participation of large sections of the population”.

While both Thuringia and Saxony fall in the bottom half of Germany’s 16 states, both area and population-wise, coming elections in Brandenburg, the fifth-largest German state by area and the tenth-most populous, are due in September and the AfD leads in opinion polls – though the CDU and SPD are not far behind.

However, it remains to be seen whether the electoral outcome in Germany, as well as in France – and to some extent, in the recent UK elections, was based on ideological support for extreme political positions or rather, a fierce rejection of the establishment.

The trouncing of the SPD and its coalition partners in Germany, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance in France, and the long-ruling Conservatives in the UK, lend credence to this contention.

However, in France, where the stasis over government formation continues while an enraged Left promises protests and impeachment of Macron over not inviting them to take over, it was also a political gambit that backfired spectacularly.

First was Macron’s decision to call snap elections after his party’s humiliation in the European Parliament elections. Then, as the National Rally, with its young PM hopeful Jordan Bardella, surged in the first round, he struck up a marriage of convenience with the NFP to deny it the projected majority. Both his Ensemble and the NFP tactically withdrew their weaker candidates to set up a one-to-one contest with Le Pen’s party, stopping it in its tracks and pushing it down to the third position.

It ultimately led to a political deadlock – with the option of fresh elections not yet available.

Polarisation and shrinking of centrists does not augur well for Europe – but only time will tell.

IANS