AfD’s New Deal for Europe

Germany’s rightist party, Alternative für Deutschland, is poised to mount a campaign against the European Union. The party’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, will demand a de facto downsizing of the superstate, shifting more decision-making back to the capitals of EU member nations. This has the makings of a promising step toward reform of the continental behemoth, even if it falls short of AfD’s earlier calls to quit the EU. Will Europe’s other conservative blocs follow suit? Ms. Weidel, Politico reports, will on Wednesday present what AfD calls a “new deal for Europe.” The rightist party, which has roots as a Euroskeptic bloc, eyes “slashing and capping the EU budget, freezing staffing numbers and abolishing agencies,” per Politico. In AfD’s vision, elected EU parliament members would be replaced with appointees of member state legislatures and the executive European Commission would be assigned an administrative role.Such reforms could help to scale back the EU, which has roots as an association of sovereign states but has swelled to a centralized leviathan subsuming the national identities of its member-states. AfD anticipates that if it gains power, Berlin could gain leverage by suspending German budgetary contributions to the EU. The rightist party, too, could force the EU to downsize by wielding Germany’s veto power within the superstate’s governance scheme. “If Brussels refuses the path of reform, this veto will be used to block future EU financing legislation” and slash German payments, Ms. Weidel’s plan avers. The AfD plans could appear ambitious. Yet the reform proposals represent a step back from the party’s earlier vow to bring Germany out of the Eurozone and restore a national currency, the Deutsch mark. AfD, by trimming its sails on the EU, could be positioning itself for a role governing Germany.It’s not our intention here to suggest that AfD is on the verge of a breakthrough that would enable the rightist party to begin implementing any reform agenda of the EU. AfD is today reeling from the release of apparently hacked e-mails that could shine an unwelcome spotlight on the party’s failure to purge its extremist elements. For AfD to emerge as a responsible governing party in Germany, more progress would be needed on that head.Even so, AfD’s tilt toward accommodation with the EU echoes the trajectory of other rightists who have made a kind of peace with the superstate. The leader of France’s National Rally, Marine Le Pen, in 2017 disavowed the idea of a “Frexit” referendum over whether to restore her nation’s independence. Yet Madame Le Pen seeks EU reforms akin to those proposed by Ms. Weidel and denounces the superstate for causing the “dilution of national sovereignty.”Italy’s rightist prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has moderated toward Brussels, too. Signora Meloni “started her career on the fringes of the Right but is now a stalwart of continental conservatism,” UnHerd’s Peter Franklin asserts. Any antipathy on Italy’s right toward the EU has been tempered, at least in part, by the superstate’s largesse. Rome has received some $200 billion under Brussels’ post-Covid National Recovery and Resilience Plan.Would Spain’s rightist party, Vox, if it fares well in upcoming elections, hold the line on national sovereignty? Vox is framing the November 29 vote as “Spain’s last chance to be Spain again.” The party has in the past decried “European institutions,” dominated by “radical environmentalist and ideological lobbies.” In words that resonate at Berlin, Paris, and Rome as much as Madrid, Vox vowed to “to defend the primacy of the Constitution over European law.”

AfD’s New Deal for Europe

AfD’s New Deal for Europe

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