Latest news with #Euroscepticism
Euractiv
5 days ago
- Politics
- Euractiv
Czech distrust in EU runs high ahead of October vote
PRAGUE – A large share of Czechs believe the EU may interfere in the country's parliamentary elections in October, despite government reassurances that such fears are 'groundless.' A new survey by the Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO) found that 41% of Czechs believe the EU is likely to interfere in the vote, just behind the 42% who suspect Russia. The findings echo persistent Euroscepticism in the country, with only 29% of Czechs viewing the EU positively – well below the bloc-wide average of 43% – while 27% hold negative views and 44% are neutral, according to a spring Eurobarometer survey. CEDMO's findings suggest said the perception of EU interference reflects longstanding mistrust rather than any recent developments. 'Respondents who view EU interference as likely predominantly supported Eurosceptic parties in previous elections,' he said. European Affairs Minister Martin Dvořák dismissed the claims of EU interference as 'groundless' and driven by 'enemies of democracy.' 'The EU has neither the interest nor the instruments to influence elections in its member states,' he told Euractiv Czechia. Still, disinformation narratives continue to spread on Facebook and encrypted platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, often driven by domestic political actors, according to Cuker. False narratives include claims that the EU plans to introduce a mandatory asset registry or could invalidate the national election results. A previous CEDMO study found that a quarter of Czechs believed the latter claim. Government steps To address these mounting concerns, the interior ministry has launched a cybersecurity task force to monitor the election process. The unit will monitor system logs, test defences against DDoS attacks, and prepare technical and organisational countermeasures. Ministry spokesperson Hana Malá warned that disinformation tactics seen in Romania and Germany, such as the reactivation of 'sleeper' accounts, bot-driven content amplification, and micro-influencer messaging, may also appear in Czechia. 'It can be assumed that similar patterns of influence may be present in the Czech information space,' Malá told Euractiv Czechia. The ministry will also soon launch a voter awareness campaign to explain voting safeguards and new procedures, including digital ID and postal voting. Neighbouring countries have recently shown similar suspicion towards Brussels. In Slovakia, 46% of the CEDMO survey respondents said the EU posed the greatest risk of election interference, ahead of the US (39%) and Russia (38%). In Poland, 47% still view Russia as the biggest threat, but 39% believe the EU is also likely to interfere, more than those who suspect the US (35%). (cs, de)
Euronews
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Do young Europeans believe in democracy?
Although 57% of young Europeans back democracy over any other form of government, 48% believe it is at risk in their country, according to a new survey conducted by YouGov for the TUI Foundation. The research gathered the opinions of 6,703 Europeans aged 16-26 years old living in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland, as well as the United Kingdom. The findings revealed that support for democracy is highest among young Germans — 71% of respondents backed it here — while Poles showed the lowest levels of support, with 48% endorsing this political system. Even though the majority of respondents expressed support for democracy, 21% said that under certain circumstances, they would favour an authoritarian government over a democratic one. Compared to four years ago, a rising number of young people in surveyed countries classified themselves as right of centre, with this figure rising from 14% to 19%. "Among young people who position themselves politically right of centre and feel economically disadvantaged, support for democracy drops to just one-third," said Prof. Dr. Thorsten Faas of the Free University of Berlin, who collaborated on the study. "These figures show that democracy is under pressure – from both outside and within." At the other end of the political spectrum, the proportion of young people who classified themselves as left of centre also rose, particularly in Germany, France and Italy. What do young people make of Europe and the EU? In total, 51% of respondents backed the claim "the EU is a good idea, but it is very poorly implemented", with the most Euroscepticism on this matter stemming from young Greeks, 63% of whom agreed with the statement. Additionally, 40% of respondents said they believed that the way in which the EU is not particularly democratic. In terms of the EU's sphere of action, 53% argued that the EU affords too much effort to trivial matters and that instead it should focus on tackling more important issues. These include tackling the cost of living crisis, expanding defence against external threats and building better conditions for businesses. Despite this debate around the EU's efficiency, respondents overwhelmingly backed EU membership, with 66% agreeing that belonging to the bloc is a good thing. Meanwhile, 73% of young Brits said they backed re-joining the EU. The survey also revealed that with time, young Europeans are becoming more critical of immigration, as 38% backed tougher immigration policies, compared to 26% in 2021.
Telegraph
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The man trying to bring down Ursula von der Leyen
Gheorghe Piperea entered politics only last year, but now he wants to topple the president of the European Commission. The Eurosceptic conservative MEP has forced Ursula von der Leyen into a vote of no confidence because of secret text messages with a pharmaceuticals boss during the pandemic. After securing the necessary 72 signatures from MEPs, Mr Piperea made Mrs von der Leyen the first commission president to face the censure for more than a decade. 'I have succeeded in opening a Pandora's box,' the Romanian lawyer told The Telegraph, predicting that Mrs von der Leyen's days were now numbered. Losing a no-confidence motion would trigger the resignation of the EU executive and begin the complex procedure of appointing 27 new commissioners. Pro-EU parties are circling the wagons to defend Mrs von der Leyen against the coalition of Right-wing Eurosceptics and she is expected to comfortably survive the vote on Thursday. Mr Piperea, 55, has accepted that he won't oust her next week. But he hopes it will be the beginning of the end for the German politician, claiming she could be forced to resign by October amid growing anger from within her own centre-Right European People's Party (EPP). Mrs von der Leyen must first face a European Parliament debate in Strasbourg on Monday in the midst of dissatisfaction with her high-handed, centralised and opaque leadership style. Liberal, socialist and green MEPs have been angry that Mrs von der Leyen redirected funds intended to fight poverty to a rearmament programme, he said. The European Parliament has planned to sue the commission in the EU's top court after being excluded from the decision-making process in the bloc's efforts to ramp up defence spending. Mr Piperea's no-confidence motion centres on secret messages about vaccine supplies between the EU boss and Albert Bourla, the chief executive of Pfizer. In May, EU judges ruled that the commission was wrong to deny a New York Times journalist's request to access the texts, which were sent at the height of the pandemic when Mrs von der Leyen's administration was negotiating vaccine supplies to the bloc. They found that the refusal broke the principles of good administration and transparency after rejecting Brussels' arguments that the messages were too 'ephemeral' to qualify as documents under its transparency rules, as well as claims that they could not be found. 'She is a leader with an obvious tendency towards totalitarianism,' said Mr Piperea, pointing to how Mrs von der Leyen's commission bypassed MEPs when creating a €150 billion loan programme to increase defence spending on the continent. 'The commission has progressively taken powers from the member states but also from the European Parliament itself. 'What I'm doing here is to try to clean up our democracy and consolidate our democracy in the European Union. 'The treaty says that all decisions of the commission should be done in a transparent manner. The commission is breaking the rule of law,' added Mr Piperea, who was elected under Romania's populist AUR party for the first time in 2024's European elections. 'Militant on the barricades' Despite expressing admiration for Britain's political accountability, he said Romania could not afford to copy Brexit and needed to reform the EU from the inside. He has described himself as a 'militant on the barricades'. He admitted he 'doesn't hate' the notoriety gained by AUR, which was founded in 2019 and became Romania's second largest party last year after making a name for itself with anti-vaccination campaigns. Mr Piperea believes Mrs von Der Leyen is living on borrowed time as she has come under fire within her own party for – among other things – her net zero plans. 'She has a majority, but it is a toxic majority for von der Leyen. A lot of criticism comes now from her own party and especially about this madness of the green deal,' he said. 'Maybe because of this hostility in her majority, she will be forced to resign by the end of the year – perhaps in October or November.' Such claims have been given short shrift in Brussels. In the 2024 European Parliament elections, Mrs von der Leyen's commission was approved by a majority of 370 MEPs of 688 votes. Sacking the commission would trigger a period of uncertainty when the EU is facing a possible trade war with the US and Russian aggression in Ukraine. But the motion has drawn support from far-Right MEPs tired of her overreaching. One EPP MEP had supported the motion against Mrs von der Leyen but withdrew after pressure from the party's top brass. Mr Piperea has been a part of the Georgia Meloni-dominated European Conservatives and Reformist Group that was founded by David Cameron's Tories before Brexit. Ms Meloni has worked closely with Mrs von der Leyen on migration. Mr Piperea refused to comment on whether he had come under pressure from his own group to drop the no-confidence motion. Pro-EU conservatives have been furious they will be forced to take part in a debate and an embarrassing vote. 'It's a disgrace for the European people,' said Manfred Weber, the leader of the EPP, which is the parliament's largest group that sits in Brussels and Strasbourg. 'Putin's puppets in the European Parliament are trying to undermine Europe's unity and bring the commission down in times of global turmoil and economic crisis,' he told The Telegraph. Jacques Santer, the former commission president, resigned in 1999 instead of facing a no-confidence vote that was expected to succeed amid accusations of fraud and nepotism. However, Jean-Claude Junker, Mrs von der Leyen's predecessor, easily survived a no-confidence motion in 2014 over allegations that he had struck sweetheart tax deals with multinationals while he was the prime minister of Luxembourg.
The Guardian
02-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The EU gave Romania's migrant workers the chance to build a new life. Why are they turning against it?
It would be reasonable to assume that people who move from one EU country to another in search of work and opportunity are among the union's most reliable supporters. Freedom of movement within the 27-nation bloc is, after all, one of the big advantages of EU citizenship. But Romania's diaspora has recently upended that theory. With about a quarter of its 19 million citizens living abroad, mostly in western Europe, Romania has the largest diaspora in the EU. About two-thirds are economic migrants: picking fruit in Andalusia, caring for elderly people in Vienna, laying bricks in Brussels. In 2023 alone they sent home €6.5bn in remittances, almost 3% of Romania's GDP, sustaining communities across the country. In Romania's tense presidential re-run in May, the pro-Europe candidate, Nicușor Dan, carried the election, seeing off his far-right Eurosceptic challenger, George Simion, in the decisive round. After months of political chaos, the outcome drew sighs of relief across the EU. Complacency would be deeply unwise, however, because among Romanian voters abroad, Simion was the clear winner, scoring nearly 70% of the vote in diaspora-heavy countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain. For years, Romania's diaspora mostly supported centrist, pro-European candidates. So why would nearly 1 million of them embrace a candidate who questions Romania's place in the EU? Simion's inflammatory past statements about the EU include: 'We don't want to be secondhand citizens of this new Soviet Union.' Among Romanians working abroad, such sentiments appear to have struck a chord. The answer, for me, lies in years of political neglect: from Bucharest, host countries and Brussels alike, many Romanians feel invisible and unheard. The pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis deepened their discontent, which the far right has fanned and weaponised through disinformation and emotional manipulation, turning it into a potent political force. 'I know how hard it was for you to leave – your parents, your children, your roots,' Simion said in a campaign video addressed to diaspora voters in April. 'You are our nation's greatest wealth. Without you, we cannot rebuild anything that will endure.' Despite their crucial role in the prosperity of Romania and the EU at large, these migrant workers remain politically marginalised and underrepresented. The Turkish diaspora's support for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan offers a cautionary parallel: alienation abroad can harden into authoritarian sympathy at home. Had the Romanian election been solely an indictment of the country's political establishment, Dan, with a record of fighting corruption as Bucharest's mayor, would surely have won more diaspora votes than Simion. But the opposite happened, because this vote was perceived to be more about dignity, recognition and a deep emotional reckoning than it was about anti-establishment credentials. For decades, the state's message to Romanians abroad has been blunt: send remittances, give us your vote, but don't expect representation. For years, state-funded organisations that supposedly support Romanians abroad have done little to meet the pressing needs of workers in host countries, such as legal aid, or Romanian language classes for children. Governments of the countries Romanians typically move to have not done much better. Despite theoretically enjoying equal treatment with workers in the host countries and protection from discrimination, Romanians in practice often face exploitative conditions, social exclusion and scant access to public services. For many of them, the promise of European opportunity has become a reality of European marginalisation. The pandemic made matters worse, as many, especially those in precarious or seasonal work, were excluded from social protection, healthcare and financial aid in their host countries, while Romanian authorities actively discouraged them from returning home. Rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis led to remittances falling sharply in 2024. This dual alienation created fertile ground for the far right – which Simion has exploited since founding AUR (the Alliance for the Union of Romanians) in 2019. True, by the 2024 presidential race, Simion's outsider appeal had faded, and he finished fourth in the first round of voting. But Simion was eclipsed by another ultra-nationalist, Călin Georgescu, who called the EU a 'pile of shards'. Georgescu also channelled diaspora discontent, but with even more radical language. Rejecting the 'diaspora' label, he called workers abroad 'the other Romania', saying they were the country's biggest investor and urging them to return. On social media, his promises were turbocharged by disinformation. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion It worked: in November 2024, Georgescu unexpectedly won the presidential election's first round. Romania's constitutional court annulled the election, citing foreign interference. Georgescu was consequently barred from entering the rescheduled 2025 race. For many abroad, this felt like yet another elite betrayal, which allowed Simion to inherit his base. With Dan now president, the diaspora's grievances are still simmering. A real shift is required: Romania must treat its diaspora as a political constituency in its own right, with sustained engagement and representation. At the EU level, a similar rethink is needed: diasporas must be recognised not just as economic agents, but as full political actors. Action will certainly be difficult in an era where the far right is advancing not just at home, but in Brussels. The surge in votes for far-right parties in the 2024 European elections made that clear. But the warning signs are flashing red. Leaders from Bucharest to Brussels only have a narrow window to respond. The alternative – continued far-right mobilisation of diaspora communities – threatens not just individual countries, but the European project as a whole. If the EU cannot maintain the loyalty of its own migrant workers, its long-term survival must surely be in doubt. Raluca Besliu is a Romanian journalist based in Brussels
New Statesman
05-06-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
Will we ever be free of Brexit?
Photo by P. Floyd / Daily Express / Hulton Archive / Getty Images On 5 June 1975 – 50 years ago today – voters went to the polls in Britain's first national referendum. Just two years after joining the European Community, they were voting on whether to leave, a decision that would shape the UK's economic, political and diplomatic strategy for decades to come. For the first time in British history, a front-rank political question had been taken out of the hands of Parliament and passed directly to the electorate. The Sun thought this 'a constitutional monstrosity'. The new Conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher, called the referendum 'a device of dictators and demagogues', and refused to confirm that she would accept the result. As the first election of the modern era to be fought outside the established party system, the referendum carried the debate into the most unlikely places. In the churches, bishops preached sermons on the religious arguments for membership. In Northern Ireland, terrorist organisations published earnest articles on the implications for the port of Belfast. Tesco issued carrier bags saying 'Yes to Europe', while campaigners mobilised sports-stars and celebrities ranging from Agatha Christie and Barbara Cartland to Captain Mainwaring and Paul McCartney. Looking back on that referendum after the 2016 vote offers both eerie similarities and clanging dissonances. As in 2016, the vote was triggered by a crisis in the governing party; in this case, a Labour government led by Harold Wilson. Like David Cameron, Wilson was a reluctant European, convinced with his head rather than his heart of the case for membership. Like Cameron, he led a party that was bitterly divided on Europe, with a wafer-thin majority, at a time of growing Euroscepticism in the country. And like Cameron, his solution was to renegotiate the terms of membership and put them to the country in a referendum. If the recipe looks familiar, the ingredients could hardly have been more different. In 1975, the most pro-European party was the Conservatives. Ted Heath, its former leader, blazed across the campaign trail like a meteor, arguing for membership with a drive and charisma that had entirely evaded him in office. His successor, Margaret Thatcher, stumped the country demanding a 'massive Yes' to Europe, resplendent in a jumper knitted from the flags of all the member-states. Labour was more divided, with figures like Tony Benn and Michael Foot excoriating the Community as a capitalist project. Papers like the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph all backed staying in, while only the Spectator and the Communist Morning Star endorsed withdrawal. Opinion in the constituencies was also very different. The young were more Eurosceptic than the old, women more hostile than men, and the most pro-European nation of the United Kingdom was unquestionably England. Places like Essex and Lincolnshire – bastions of the Leave vote in 2016 – registered votes for membership of 68% and 75% respectively. The nightmare for Unionists was that England would vote to stay in, while Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to Leave – a direct reversal of the situation decades later. If voting patterns were very different, so too were the issues on which they were founded. Immigration, which loomed so large in 2016, was barely mentioned. There were only nine member-states in 1975, and no one thought West Germans or Belgians would be hurrying to the United Kingdom in search of work. Food prices, by contrast, were central to the campaign, at a time of serious anxiety about Britain's ability to feed itself. Memories of war hung heavy across the campaign, for 1975 was closer to the end of the First World War than 2016 to the Second. Poppies and doves of peace featured prominently in campaign literature, while posters reminded voters: 'Forty million people died in two European wars this century. Better lose a little national sovereignty than a son or daughter.' Another war – the Cold War – also loomed large. Heath claimed that a vote to withdraw 'could lead to a Soviet invasion of Europe', while Out campaigners warned of Communist influence in France and Italy. In the aftermath of Watergate, Vietnam and the impeachment of Richard Nixon, there were doubts about whether the United States could or would defend Europe. Harold Wilson told the cabinet in 1974 that 'American leadership had gone'; Europe would now have to do more for its own defence. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe If one issue dominated over all others, it was a mood of economic crisis. Inflation was above 20 per cent, unemployment was rising and an oil shock in the Middle East had seen power-cuts and shortages across industry. The Chancellor, Denis Healey, thought the economic situation in 1974 'the worst which had ever been faced in peacetime', while the Industry Secretary, Tony Benn, wrote optimistically that 'the final collapse of capitalism might be a matter of weeks away'. No democracy had ever survived such sustained levels of inflation, fuelling concerns that spiralling prices might destroy democratic institutions in the 1970s as surely as in Germany in the 1930s. Not surprisingly, the 'In' campaign focused heavily on economic risk, warning of total economic collapse if Britain voted to Leave. Yet it paired that message with more positive arguments, centring on peace, prosperity and patriotism. Pamphlets and leaflets were peppered with Saltires, Union Jacks and Welsh dragons, while posters featured the England cricket captain Colin Cowdrey, the racing driver Jackie Stewart, and the heavyweight boxer Henry Cooper. There were pro-European messages from football managers like Sir Matt Busby and Jock Stein, who had won the European Cup with Manchester United and Celtic. Crucially, these were not just celebrities: they were national champions who had competed in Europe and won. By contrast, the 'Out' campaign was underfunded, poorly led and bitterly divided, staffed by people, in the words of one official, 'who would not want to be seen dead in the same coffin'. They included some of the most talented figures in British politics – Tony Benn, Enoch Powell, Ian Paisley and Barbara Castle – but these were all quite polarising figures who found it impossible to work together. Benn had called Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech 'evil, filthy and obscene', accusing him of raising the flag 'that fluttered… over Dachau and Belsen'. Powell labelled Benn 'the enemy within', one of those 'who hate Britain and wish to destroy it'. It was not particularly helpful to the 'Out' campaign that the IRA, the National Front, the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Democratic Unionist Party all backed leaving, in a striking demonstration of the unlikely alliances that emerged across the campaign. With lavish donations from business and finance, the 'In' campaign had more money left over at the end of the referendum than the total spend of 'Get Britain Out'. It used that to build a multi-vocal campaign that targeted different messages to different audiences. There were idealistic messages for the young, commitments to women's rights for feminists, talk of jobs and investment for industrial workers and an emphasis on peace for the wartime generation. Groups like 'Actors for Europe', 'Christians for Europe', 'Lawyers for Europe' – even, for one glorious moment before the leadership intervened, 'Wombles for Europe' – built a kaleidoscopic case for Europe that could speak to different ideologies and interests. The contrast with the mono-vocal campaign of 2016, with its solitary emphasis on risk, is stark. The result was a landslide for the 'In' campaign. At the start of the year, polls had shown strong majorities in favour of withdrawal; yet when the votes were counted, there was a two-to-one majority for staying in. Every part of the UK had voted for membership, with the exception only of Shetland and the Western Isles. On the morning of the result, Harold Wilson told reporters that the European debate was now closed. 'Fourteen years of national argument,' he declared, 'are over.' Like most prophets in the wake of extraordinary political events, Wilson was mistaken. His own party would go to the country in 1983 promising to leave the European Community, without a further referendum. Pro-Europeans like Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams would spin out of the Labour Party and into the SDP, while Margaret Thatcher would take a flame-thrower to the 'Yes to Europe' jumper she had worn in 1975. In 2016, the decision reached four decades earlier would be dramatically reversed, vindicating Powell's prophecy that a judgement to stay in could only be 'provisional'. Yet the 1975 vote mattered. It secured UK membership for more than 40 years, with profound consequences for how Britain's laws were made, who it traded with, what food Britons ate and where they went on holiday. From 1975 to 2016, membership of the European Community/Union was perhaps the most important fact about British history and the central pillar of Britain's economic, diplomatic and geopolitical strategy. As 2016 demonstrates, the results of referendums – like general elections – are not irreversible. Half a century after that first vote, the UK finds itself again in an age when European security is under threat, when the US alliance is in doubt, when the world is fracturing into trade blocs, and amid a pervasive sense of economic decline. In such a context, the arguments of the 1970s seem more relevant today than they did a decade earlier. Where that might lead is impossible to predict. As Harold Wilson knew, and Keir Starmer is surely finding out, the past and the present are full of surprises. [See also: The warning of VE Day] Related
