I N 2017, ALL voters who wanted to follow Britain out of the EU had options. As this spring’s elections approached, Geert Wilders, an oddly-capped “Nexit” lawyer, led the polls in the Netherlands. A few months later, Marine Le Pen reached the second round of the French presidential election on a policy of exiting the country from the euro and the EU himself. In Italy, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Northern League, attacked Mario Draghi, then head of the European Central Bank, as an “accomplice” in the “massacre” of the Italian economy. The party swayed the prospect of Italy’s departure from the euro and even the EU himself.
Go forward four years and the situation is different. Before the Dutch elections next week, there was so little discussion about the EU that academics began to implore politicians to pay some attention to the “EU olifant [elephant]”into the room. After collapsing last time, Mr Wilders now denigrates Islam rather than Brussels. It will do him little good. Polls give Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s party a big lead , who has learned not to worry anymore and (almost, but not quite) to love the EU. After a total defeat at the hands of Emmanuel Macron in 2017, Ms Le Pen and her advisers dropped their calls for Frexit and abandonment of the euro ahead of next year’s elections. In Italy, Mr. Salvini now supports a technocratic government led by Mr. Draghi, his former enemy, who has become Prime Minister. “I am a very pragmatic person,” Salvini said, as the situation unfolded.
Euroscepticism in its harshest form has gone out of fashion for several reasons. Brexit torpedoed the idea of an easy start. Anyway, leaving the EU has never been a particularly popular idea outside of Great Britain. Continental surveys such as the Eurobarometer may generate Panglossian results, but they all indicate that large majorities support EU membership in almost all countries. In France and the Netherlands, 69% would vote to stay, while only 31% would return leaving, according to eupinions, a pollster. Attracting these potential supporters is a reasonable strategy in the Netherlands, where politics are so fragmented that anything above 10% is a good result. But it’s a weak base on which to build for those hoping to win more than half the vote, like Ms Le Pen.
Even in countries where going is apparently popular, the idea of ever doing so is irrelevant. Italian voters are among the most tired of the EU. At the height of the covid-19 crisis last year, nearly half of Italians said they would vote to leave the bloc, if given the choice. At the same time, the main complaint regarding the EU is that there isn’t enough: Italians are among the biggest supporters of deeper integration, demanding everything from common debt to sharing asylum seekers who show up on Italian beaches. When it comes to the EU, Italian voters are like Woody Allen’s joke about two moaning people in a restaurant: the food here is terrible and portions so small. However, over the past year the portions have increased. As a member of EUrecovery fund of 750 billion euros, Italy will receive around 200 billion euros in grants and loans, EU debt. Mr. Salvini’s change of tone comes after a change of circumstances.
Equivocal Eurosceptics like Mr. Salvini increasingly make a different calculation: why try to break the EU when can you help reshape it? The Northern League and Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally have gone from outcasts to potential government parties, said Duncan McDonnell of Griffith University. Mr Salvini has a chance of becoming prime minister, according to polls. A Le Pen presidency is also possible, although this remains unlikely. But the chance to have a seat at the table is there. “It would be ridiculous to leave,” said Philippe Olivier, one of Ms. Le Pen’s advisers (who is also her brother-in-law), summarizing the change in strategy of the French politician. This strategy has worked well in Poland and Hungary, whose governments are enthusiastically attacking EU have no plans to quit yet.
An enemy within
After all, the EU is a tool. Changing who uses it changes what they do. Austerity politics has dominated the past decade because the center-right politicians who controlled its levers of power wanted it. Strict spending rules have been approved by European leaders and can be rejected in the same way. Leaders such as Mr. Rutte tend to feel more comfortable with the EU once they have learned how much control they have. National governments run the show.
There is no constitutional reason for EU to switch to liberalism which so offends its Eurosceptic critics. His treatises were not handed down on stone tablets. If all governments agree, they can be changed, as they may soon be if a conference on the future of Europe scheduled until 2022 turns out to be more than just a discussion workshop.
In all cases, the political orders prevail over the institutional biases that may exist. Prior to the 2015 migration crisis, European Commission officials had a humanitarian bent on the subject, teaching governments about the dangers of building fences as people crossed borders. But when a group of hard-line immigration ministers demanded a much stricter policy from the EUThey got what they wanted.
Yet Euroscepticism is dormant rather than dead. Politics is about results, and these results are increasingly dictated by EU. By taking responsibility for providing the vaccines, the commission also agreed to take the blame if things went wrong. Yes EU citizens still find themselves confined to their homes while Americans and Israelis hit the beach, the group of European Eurosceptics could stir again. Likewise, if the EUThe underpowered fiscal stimulus is leading European economies to fall a little further behind America, as seems likely, so people like Ms Le Pen and Mr Salvini will be the first in line for trying to harness the anger. The EU is responsible, for the first time, for the health of people and more than ever for their wealth. Get it wrong on one or the other, let alone both, and voters won’t forgive. ■
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “If you can’t beat them, join them”