CHALLENGING EXTREMISM IN THE EU

Radical populist discourses undermine the quality of the public debate by proposing poor reasoning and black-and white arguments to the disillusioned electorate. Using their charisma, their rhetorical skills and new social media, they have oversimplified complex societal issues, divided social groups and propose complete demagogical solutions.

Defenders of democracy have a great role to play here to keep on educating and warning citizens on damages caused by radical populist movements, especially the simplification of complex issues into 'us' vs. 'them'.

If right-wing populist parties have benefited from the recent economic and financial crisis, their support is unlikely to lower in a significant way with the recovery of the European economy. They are not just one policy parties as some would suggest. Instead, they are now fully fledged political movements with particularly strong support from the disillusioned young. Strategies to pull them off the political life whether by isolating them or including them in government coalitions have mostly failed. 

Populism is here to stay and the risk is high to see a reinforcement of these far-right parties, which will make any future action towards resolving issues in Europe very difficult. This is all the more concerning that the EU has been more and more perceived as inefficient to solve EU citizens' daily problems, wheras populist parties have been proposing short term and easy demagogical solutions. So far, the response of the EU towards the rise and deep-rootedness of populist ideas have been rather limited, partly because of the limits of existing EU mechanisms and partly because of a lack of political will from Member States. Most of the time, EU reactions to populist driftings came through calls for vigilance and moderation. Alongside this reality, which clearly gives room for raical populism to develop, other European measures have contributed to the empowerment of these movements e.g. the regular EU grants given to European alliances of right-wing parties to help them funding their meetings, campaigns and publications even though the main political groups in the EP requested this funding to stop.

Recommendations

Extremism needs to be challenged to protect citizens' fundamental rights and European democracies. But it needs to be done in a democratic way. Simply refusing to give these parties a platform would be both undemocratic and inefficient. It is a fine line to walk between preventing the damages radical populism may cause and the maintenance of the democratic principle. There is neither 'magical' solution, nor definitive one but this issue needs to be deeply thought at all levels of powers, in a transversal and exhaustive way. What is sure is that hateful speeches, populist discourses, xenophopic violence and authoritarian drifting should be addressed collectively at the European level, by all institutions and actors. Europe cannot do everything but has surely a role to play to protect democracy on its soil.

All European Union institutions should:

• Undertake an in-depth analysis of the causes of populism in Europe, evaluate the existing EU actions and build a comprehensive strategy to tackle populism;
• Monitor whether or not EU Member States continue to respect European values and principles (Article 2 TEU)
• As requested by the European Parliament and legal experts, the EU should create a new mechanism analogous to the Council of Europe's Venice Commission to monitor the respect of the rule of law and fundamental rights by all EU Member States. Following this body's advice, the European Commission should implement 'smart sanctions' so as to force the concerned Member States to respect these criteria without disadvantaging the country population;
• Improve coordination with the Council of Europe to strengthen the political pressure on Member States damaging human rights and the rule of law;
• Complete the accession of the EU to the European Convention on Human Rights to strengthen the European system of fundamental rights protection.

Council of the EU and Member States should:

• Effectively implement Article 7 TEU when there is a clear risk of a serious breach and/or a serious and persistent breach by a Member State of the values referred to in Article 2 TEU. This would increase the pressure on the Member State drifting away from democracy and send a strong political signal making the EU more credible in its role of defender of democracy;
• Extend Article 7 so as to allow the expulsion of a Member State which dismantles its democratic institutions;
• Approve without further delay the Directive on Equal treatment between persons irrespective of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation, whose adoption has been blocked at the Council since 2008. This Dierctive would offer EU citizens a minimum standard level of protection against discrimination on all grounds in their access to services (e.g. healthcare, social protection and education) and would complement EU's anti-discrimination legislation; 
• Strenthen the fight against hate crime, racist and xenophobic crime and discriminatory attitudes.

The European Commission should:

• Take fully on its responsibility of Guardian of the Treaties and suggest the Council to implement Article 7 TEU when appropriate;
• Adopt a decision to establish the new rule of law mechanism described above;
• Ensure that the transposition of European law related to fundamental rights and non-discrimination is effective and correct in all Member States;
• Reinforce the coordination of national policies which fight extremist violence and radicalisation;
• Strengthen its efforts on education and training policies, especially on programmes which allow citizens' voluntary mobility (e.g. Erasmus, Leonardo, European civil service) and formation of adults (e.g. Grundtvig);
• Support pedagogical and consciousness-raising programmes and actions aimed at explaining populism to citizens and means to contain it. Proposal for a Council Directive on implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons.

The European Parliament should:

• Regularly monitor, expose and challenge discriminatory speeches held by MEPs. In order to protect democracy within the European Parliament, a clear line should be drawn between populist discourses which are controversial but legitimate and rhetoric which is discriminatory;
• Abstain from funding European parties holding xenophobic and hateful statements going against the values on which the EU is founded, especially the protection of the rights of the minorities.