Coronavirus Shapes Belgium’s Government and Populist Opposition

Josh Allen on 30th March 2020

Schuman Metro station in Brussels, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a board telling the security measures.

By Judith Sijstermans (PiAP Belgium focused Research Fellow) – this piece originally appeared on EA Worldview

Amid the Coronavirus pandemic, acting Belgian Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès has formed an emergency government with full powers, including further authority in the emergency.

The minority government received support from nine out of twelve Belgian parties in the federal Chamber of Representatives on Tuesday. Only Flemish nationalist party the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA), left wing party the Partij van de Arbeid (PVDA), and the right-wing populist party Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest, VB) objected.

On the surface, this is a show of unity in the Belgian Government. But a deeper look at the state of play and the VB’s opposition uncovers shaky political ground.

Maneuvers over a Government

Belgium has been without a fully-empowered administration since the May 2019 elections, given their mixed results. These not only exacerbated the difference between the Flemish and Walloon regions of the country, but also repudiated the sitting government and punished its parties, Mouvement Reformateur (MR), Open VLD, and Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams (CD&V). The vote share of the N-VA, which left the government over disputes about the UN Migration Pact, was significantly reduced.

During negotiations, the outgoing government remained as a caretaker administration. Over the weekend of March 14, with the outbreak of Coronavirus and the need for urgent measures, chatter began about an emergency government. All party leaders, except those of the Vlaams Belang, discussed the possibility.

Until that weekend, government “formateurs”, responsible for negotiating a coalition, were still considering many coalition options. The leading option on the table at the time was a “Vivaldi” administration (because its four components represent the composer’s Four Seasons): Francophone socialists, liberals, and Greens and Flemish socialists, liberals, Greens, and Christian Democrats. However, after a long series of attempted negotiations, the only possible arrangement was to further empower the caretaker government.

Coronavirus and Competence

While the news cycle and politics are consumed with Covid-19, time has not stopped. N-VA leader Bart de Wever forecast, “There won’t be much to argue over the next few months. The question is: how do you prepare for peace?”

Flanders’ populist radical right party Vlaams Belang is not waiting for the end of the crisis to push against the government. And it has backing: in a poll commissioned by Belgian news outlets and released on 14 March, the VB is the clear Flemish winner with 28% of the vote. The N-VA suffers the biggest losses, polling 5% below their May 2019 electoral results.

Because of a cordon sanitaire upheld by all other Belgian parties since 1989, the negotiations to organize an emergency government did not include VB. But in May 2019, the party came the closest in its history to governing at the highest level. There were discussions to form a government with N-VA leader de Wever, and VB leader Tom van Grieken met the Belgian King.

Since autumn 2019, the VB has used the rhetoric of “Mission 2024”, seeking to become the largest Flemish party at the next elections, which would give them the right to be the first party to begin negotiations in Flanders. In their push against the cordon sanitaire and their opposition to the emergency government, Van Grieken wrote an open letter to Wilmès this weekend:

I do not agree with the fact that you, even today, divide citizens into first and second class citizens just because they voted for the “wrong” party. I hope that you withdraw your heartless decision and that the next meeting does involve the country’s second largest party.

Coronavirus provides an opportunity for the Vlaams Belang to project its ability to make policy, to argue that it is ready for the transition from an opposition to a governing party. This is the theme of leader Van Grieken’s new book, released on March 11th, En nu is het aan ons (“And now it is up to us”).

Since the 2019 elections the party has slowly been building up its staff resources. These have focused on policy experts, reflected in a new structure linking staff across the party and Belgium’s different legislative bodies.

In the case of Covid-19, the party has sought best practice and pointed at South Korea and Singapore as examples of good governance. It has criticized Belgium’s acting government and urged more radical measures more quickly. The party proposed a committee to scrutinize the government’s actions to ensure that the “coronavirus does not become a corona-coup”.

Gerolf Annemans, VB MEP and former leader, explained on Twitter:

This is a glorified coup by Magnette [leader of the Parti Socialiste] to push through his Vivaldi construction. Abusing the Corona crisis to try to silence the opposition. One of the most outrageous manoeuvres ever seen. Why, N-VA?

“I Told You So”

Vlaams Belang has used the virus to validate many of its key ideological stances: anti-immigration, law and order policies, and sub-state nationalism. Closing the borders has been celebrated and the party has urged further action, such as placing soldiers at the border. Long-time VB figurehead Filip Dewinter tweeted, when a terror suspect was arrested by border control:

Apparently it takes a Corona crisis to make clear that controlled borders are necessary and useful: we keep out intruders (corona, illegal immigrants, drug dealers…) and the bad guys (terrorists, criminals …) in — behind bars!

The party’s representatives have pointed to the perceived unfair distribution of health care resources between Flanders and Wallonia, criticized China for “causing” the Coronavirus crisis, and pinned unrest on the streets and in stores on young migrants.

The Covid-19 crisis, alongside long-term government deadlock and recent polls, provides a window of opportunity for the VB. The party’s framing of the crisis reflects both long-term policy goals and an accelerating push towards breaking Belgium’s cordon sanitaire.

In the time of Coronavirus, governments around the world have sought to suspend political conflict in the name of unity. But for the VB, pressure on the government remains crucial.

The Swiss People’s Party Looks for a New Leader

Josh Allen on 17th March 2020

Picture of Swiss right-wing politician Albert Rosti. He is a middle aged white man, clean shaaven with glasses. He wears a black suit and tie with a white shirt

A note from Dr Daniele Albertazzi the Populism in Action Project’s Principal Investigator: “Our team is now working remotely in the current situation with Coronavirus. In the meantime, we feature Adrian Favero’s analysis of political developments concerning the Swiss People’s Party in Switzerland.”

With the resignation of Albert Rösti, the Swiss People’s Party is looking for a new president. It is proving an arduous process, as the selection committee is struggling to find a viable candidate.

So what are the issues and what is the desired profile for a leader? For the Populism in Action Project, I conducted interviews with party reps in Zurich, Bern, and Geneva. Their thoughts on the party’s stability and coherence point to three central considerations.

1. Organisational and Ideological Factionalism

Part of the base longs for the “good old times” and wants to see a hardliner at the top. The other side wants an opening, thematically and personally, for a change in direction.

There are also significant ideological cleavages between cantons. The SVP branches in Bern, Zurich, and Geneva have historically different political priorities, styles of communication, and cultural views.

So the new president needs to increase collaboration and information exchange between cantonal branches. He or she has to unite the party and to maintain a clear ideological orientation across all cantons.

The new leader has to communicate the SVP’s core issues, but needs to avoid an overly aggressive “anti-foreigners and anti-EU” rhetoric. The SVP must demonstrate that it cares not only about its key topics but also about a broader variety of issues that affect party members in different parts of Switzerland.

This will require a certain level of language skills, with the ability to speak German, French, and English as the minimum requirement for the new leader.

2. Organisational Intensity

The party operates with and depends upon a ramified network of activists and local units for the pursuit of political interests.

The SVP is an “instrument of agitation” with the linkage between party membership, discipline, and solidarity. Continuous party growth in local branches is needed to keep the advantage of a wide network from which to recruit activists.

However, party leadership is often perceived as a distant self-serving circle, and differences emerge between the visions of the local base and the leadership. So the new president must be present at the grassroots level and must visit local sections across Switzerland regularly. The new president has to sense what concerns the base and has to create a feeling of inclusiveness among members and activists. Party members are only willing to volunteer if they feel welcomed and involved.

3. Centralised Agenda Setting

The previous strong performance and success in national elections is often related to Christoph Blocher, who is described as a strong leader of a weak organisation that opposed the establishment. He personifies the rise and political change of the SVP and “achieved a sort of ‘godfather’ status” within his party.

Several interviewees referred to this importance but emphasized that the SVP needs to emancipate itself from the image as “Blocher’s party”. To achieve the transition, the new president has to develop the appropriate party profile and must be coherent in processing and preparing important political issues. He or she must anticipate topics and oversee a centralization of agenda-setting processes within the party leadership. As one representative said: “The larger a party is, the more tightly it must be led.”

However, this grasp of power should not ignore the existing decentralization of the Swiss political landscape. It should not exclude participation of members in the deliberations on the SVP’s official positions and on the regional autonomy of cantonal branches.

Nevertheless, to strengthen the post-Blocher profile of the SVP, the new leader needs to improve the party’s ability to foresee issues and to ensure their importance within the public agenda. This will boost the general image of the SVP as a solution-oriented player within Swiss politics.

To attract potential candidates, the SVP also needs to think about compensation. The job of party leader is traditionally not remunerated, which may prevent certain aspirants from showing interest. As one representative said. “In my opinion, if you want good people, you have to pay something.”

SVP members and representatives expect the new party leader to unite the party, to engage more with members, to discipline the cantons that lost most percentage points in the federal elections, to stick to the party line while focusing on a variety of topics instead of just the core issues, and to speak at least two official languages. Balancing these factors pertaining to ideological factionalism, organisational intensiveness, and centralized agenda-setting will make it difficult for the selection committee to present viable candidates.

Why Europe’s Populist Radical Right Parties Are Not Eager to Leave the EU

Josh Allen on 6th March 2020

Nigel Fararge depicted outside the gates of the Houses of Parliament in January 2019. He wears a green overcoat with a brown collar as well as a pink shirt and a dark blue tie with white dots. Part of a unon jack is in the foreground of the shot, a protest placard can be seen behind him and there is a cluster of midde aged to elderly people, mostly male stood behind him. Nigel Farage has his mouth open as if he is talking to someone who is out of shot

By Stijn van Kessel (PiAP Co-Investigator) – Originally published by The UK in a Changing Europe and drawn from the article “Eager to leave? Populist radical right parties’ responses to the UK’s Brexit vote” in The British Journal of Politics and International Relations:

After the UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016, eurosceptics across Europe cheered. The most fervent saw the imminent departure of Britain as an example to be followed, while others considered the vote as a sign that the European Union was in need of fundamental reform. There were voices, also beyond eurosceptic circles, that spoke of a domino effect with other countries departing the EU.

But now that the UK has finally left, few countries seem to have been inspired by the British example. If anything, the trend across member states has been an increase in public support for EU membership.

The findings in our article suggest that early predictions of an imminent domino effect were always questionable. We focused on parties of the populist radical right (PRR), considered to be the most likely instigators of departure, yet even the most passionately eurosceptic politicians were reluctant to campaign for their countries’ exit from the EU.

Studying Populism and Euroscepticism

Parties of the PRR — characterized by anti-immigration positions, opposition to cultural change, and populist anti-establishment discourse — criticize the EU for a variety of reasons.

They lament the loss of national sovereignty which they associate with deeper European integration. They dislike the opening of borders, as well as the EU’s supposed undemocratic and elite-centered nature.

In our study, we focused on PRR parties in four founding EU member states: Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) in the Netherlands; Front National (FN; now re-named Rassemblement National) in France; Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany, and Lega Nord (LN; later known as Lega) in Italy.

We asked whether these parties were inspired by the Brexit vote in their national election campaigns, which in all cases took place within two years of the British referendum.

Did they draw attention to Brexit, and increase their general emphasis on the topic of European integration? Did they bolster their euroscepticism and demand a similar EU membership referendum in their own country, or even a unilateral withdrawal from the bloc?

Caution Rather Than Demands for Exit

PRR parties initially reacted with some gusto to the Brexit vote. PVV leader Geert Wilders congratulated the British on their “Independence Day”, and argued that the Dutch deserved their own referendum. Italy’s LN declared that the British had “taught us a lesson in democracy”, whilE FN’s leader Marine Le Pen was similarly unequivocal in her praise for Brexit and her demand for a referendum in France. Alice Weidel of Germany’s AfD floated the idea of holding similar membership referendA across Europe.

Yet the Brexit vote failed to leave a more lasting mark on the strategies of PRR parties. European integration, in general, did not feature prominently in most of their election campaigns.

The case of Marine Le Pen, for whom “returning France’s sovereignty” was a key campaign pledge, was possibly the exception. Before the second round of the Presidential elections, however, she placed less emphasis on the EU, and her position — not least pertaining to the common currency — became more ambiguous.

The Dutch PVV already favored a “Nexit” well before the British referendum. In the 2017 Parliamentary election campaign, however, party leader Wilders preferred to prioritize his central theme of “Islamization”.

Apart from the PVV, the PRR parties ultimately shied away from advocating their countries’ unilateral withdrawal from the EU. Expressions of support for revoking membership or a referendum were voiced in a careful and non-committal manner: “ending EU membership may be necessary only if the EU fails to reform”.

The muted responses of PRR parties to Brexit can be explained in part by the relatively small appetite among European citizens for leaving the EU, but also by the comparatively low salience of the issue of European integration.

As long as PRR parties are successful by focusing on issues that are considered more important by their voters – not least those related to immigration and cultural change – their leaderships have little reason to take a risk and focus on themes that potentially divide their electorates or membershiips.

This is even the case in countries, like France and Italy, with considerable euroscepticism has reached considerable levels. As Duncan McDonnell and Anika Werner have argued, PRR parties “enjoy flexibility on European integration and can shift positions” precisely because of the issue’s limited salience among supporters and the public at large.

The uncertainty of the outcome of protracted Brexit negotiations, as a well as political instability in the UK, have further induced a cautious wait-and-see approach among PRR parties.

In the longer run, when there is clarity about the UK’s fate, there may well be renewed calls for leaving the EU. Yet this probably requires an increase in salience of EU-related issues and a concomitant rise in “exit scepticism” among European citizens.

The article “Eager to leave? Populist radical right parties’ responses to the UK’s Brexit vote” is in the latest issue of The British Journal of Politics and International Relations. It is co-authored by Stijn van Kessel, Nicola Chelotti, Helen Drake, Juan Roch, and Patricia Rodi. The research is part of the ESRC-funded project “28+ Perspectives on Brexit: a guide to the multi-stakeholder negotiations”, led by Prof. Helen Drake.