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It was a good month for two political outsiders who have been dubbed the werewolf and the vampire. In Argentina, the foul-mouthed, right-wing libertarian Javier Milei won a decisive victory in the country’s presidential election. The former TV pundit with no prior political experience draws obvious comparisons with Donald Trump. However, as Imdat Oner argues for the European Center for Populism Studies, Milei owes his victory to a context of economic chaos and despair, and it would be premature to translate an obvious protest vote into a broad appetite for right-wing populism. Indeed, in the run-up to the election, Open Democracy published an illuminating article on the surprising diversity of Milei’s electorate.
In Europe, it is easier to see Geert Wilders’ electoral victory in the Netherlands as part of a much broader trend. However, Dieuwertje Kuijpers in Vrij Nederland argues that voters have not in fact moved drastically to the right, and that Wilders’ victory emerges instead from specificities of the Netherlands’ party-political landscape as well as electoral fragmentation.
While the PVV win came as a shock to many pundits, political analyst Joost van Spanje from the University of London was, as Kuijpers notes, one of the very few to predict the outcome of the election. "What Mark Rutte always did well is a combination of portraying the PVV on the one hand as a loudmouth on the sidelines and shamelessly adopting its agenda on the other. This way, he retained voters who were concerned about migration," van Spanje says. The dam then broke when Rutte’s successor Dilan Yeşilgöz suggested that a coalition with Wilders might in fact be viable. “More and more voters realized that Wilders was a serious option this time,” writes Kuijpers. “What followed was a snowball effect: a slow buildup in September, acceleration in October, and a steep rise in November. For years, the PVV was isolated on the fringes, and part of its electoral oxygen was taken away as the VVD imitated the migration agenda and rhetoric. With the VVD lifting this isolation, a floodgate opened.”
After the election results were announced, Andreas Kouwenhoven and Thijs Niemantsverdriet took to the streets of Rotterdam and Amsterdam to speak with the Muslim communities that Wilders has made a career out of demonising. Their report, published in the NRC Handelsblad, paints a surprising picture. Yes, there is fear of persecution, but there are also those who trust in the resilience of Dutch institutions and the constitution to protect their rights. They also find Muslims who agree with much of Wilders’ platform, especially when it comes to healthcare, housing and migration. However, the article closes with Sabi El Massaoui, director of a Moroccan youth centre, who worries about the psychological effect of a Wilders victory on young Muslims. "Since election night, I wonder: are we back to square one? Have all those efforts been in vain? Polarization will cause psychological problems. A lost generation is on the horizon."
Perhaps a symptom of the aforementioned lack of substance in the political centre, younger voters were more inclined than the general population to vote for either PVV or the Green Left-Labour alliance. As a graph published by NOS shows, while fewer young people came out to vote (73 percent, as opposed to 80 percent in 2021), those that did were more likely to vote for Wilders’ PVV than the general population. PVV was the first preference of 18-35 year-old voters, while their second preference was the Green Left-Labour alliance led by Frans Timmermans.
When the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) won the Netherlands’ 2023 provincial elections last March, it signalled that serious trouble was brewing for the Dutch government, especially when it came to the implementation of climate policies. The BBB’s victory was a reaction to the deeply unpopular efforts to curb farm emissions. The relatively young agrarian movement had a significantly smaller impact on the parliamentary elections. Nevertheless, as Hans Nauta in Trouw explains, there are reasons to be concerned about the consequences of this election on climate policy and energy transition. Greenpeace responded to Wilders’ election win by raising a banner outside the prime minister’s office (“The Tower”) in The Hague with the words, “No climate denier in the tower”.
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Danish pork firm sued for ‘greenwashing’ in legal first
Daniela De Lorenzo | EUObserver | 24 November | EN
This month Europe witnessed its first law-suit against a European food producer for misleading climate claims. Pork producer Danish Crown claimed that their products were “more climate-friendly than you think”, while allegedly basing this claim on empty promises. Smelling deceit, the Vegetarian Society of Denmark (DVF) and Danish climate movement Klimabevægelsen initiated their case back in 2021.
Given the massive carbon footprint of meat and dairy production, this case is seen as a crucial precedent when it comes to tackling the greenwashing of food. The outcome of this lawsuit could influence the broader food industry, emphasizing the need for companies to substantiate their environmental claims with credible evidence and adhere to stringent regulations. The evolving legal landscape around greenwashing is prompting companies to reevaluate their sustainability practices and marketing strategies to avoid potential legal repercussions.
Cases of foreign interference are increasing in France and Europe
Briefing | Le Grand Continent | 19 November | FR ES
In its annual report published earlier this month, the French Parliamentary Delegation for Intelligence (DPR) declares that “the threat of foreign interference is at a high level in a tense and uncompromising international context”. They identify three broad categories of interference: classic, modern and hybrid, each deployed in characteristic ways by states such as Russia, China, Iran and Turkey.
The delegation consisting of four senators and four parliamentarians express concerns over “a form of naiveté and denial” in the economic, academic and political sectors. They propose 18 recommendations, including systematic training on interference risks during local elections, a legal framework for foreign influence similar to lobbying regulations, and the lowering of the threshold for foreign investment control.
Le Grand Continent contextualizes the report within growing European awareness of the risk of interference, and the steps being taken within the institutions, notably the “defence of democracy” package announced by Ursula von der Leyen in September 2022. As the article explains, aspects of this package concerning foreign funding have been heavily criticised by civil society organisations. As Lukas Harth, Florian Kriener and Jonas Wolff argue, “the EU’s response to what it perceives as a threat to democracy might, inadvertently, pave the way for measures that do more harm than good to democracy in Europe and worldwide.”
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