On that election result in Finland: Unless you are one of the minute demographic that closely follows Finnish affairs, you first heard about this from Radio Derb last week:
The re-nationalization of Europe. Here’s Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi speaking last weekend: “Either Europe is something that’s real and concrete or it isn’t. And in that case, it’s better to go back to each going our own way and letting everyone follow his own policies and egotism.”
Strong words there from the Prime Minister. He’s suggesting, at least rhetorically, that if Europe can’t act together, it would be better to go back to just being a bunch of independent countries, each managing its own affairs.
But what got Berlusconi into such a negative frame of mind about the European project? The bailout of Portugal? Failure to agree on Turkish membership? Global warming? Nope, none of the above. Berlusconi was on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, coming face to face with the floods of African refugees trying to get across the Mediterranean into Europe.
And this might in fact be the issue that finally kills off European unity. Of the major European nations, Berlusconi’s Italy is the one most affected by the refugee tsunami. Since the North African troubles started in January, 23,000 Africans have arrived on Italian soil.
Italy’s been issuing temporary residence permits to the refugees. Under the rules of the European Union, though, a legal resident of one European country can legally travel to others without any hindrance at national borders. Italy’s asking France and Germany to honor those rules. France and Germany are saying they won’t.
France is turning back African refugees at the Italian border, and France’s interior minister has announced an increase in border patrols. Germany’s saying they won’t let them in either, and criticizing Italy for giving the refugees legal residence. Lesser European nations are taking the same line. Hence Berlusconi’s remarks.
The first wave of refugees was North African Arabs and Berbers. The later batches, however, include a lot of sub-Saharan Africans from Libya. Gaddafy liked to pose as a leader of all the African peoples, and recruited a lot of mercenaries from further south into his security forces. Now the anti-Gaddafy rebels are chasing them out.
Furthermore, while Gaddafy was playing nicely with the rest of the world, one of the things he was doing for the Europeans was to block sub-Saharan Africans from heading north into Europe. Chances are he won’t be doing that any more. In fact he’s already threatened to let loose new floods of Africans on the European countries that, as he sees it, have betrayed him. He knows that’s what the Europeans fear above everything else.
Euro-skeptic, immigration-restrictionist parties are polling well in Europe. In France, Marine Le Pen’s Front National got 40 percent of the vote last month in those precincts where it reached the runoffs. Mlle Le Pen is now more popular than French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and there’s a presidential election next year. Italy’s Northern league is actually part of the government, and in the Netherlands Geert Wilders’ Party of Freedom is propping up a coalition government there, as is the People’s Party in Denmark. In Germany, Thilo Sarrazin’s nationalist manifesto Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab (“Germany Abolishes Itself”) is still at the top of the best-seller lists and is the most popular book on politics published in Germany for twenty years. Finland goes to the polls on Sunday and even up there in the frozen wastes, nationalism is selling well: the euro-skeptic True Finns party is expected to win a lot of votes, and may end up in government.
Between the refugee crisis and the financial crises, we may be looking at the re-nationalization of Europe. It couldn’t happen to a nicer continent.