At a party meeting in Madrid,
E.U. on February 8, 2025, the Patriots for Europe party sent out the message of
wanting to be the new normal in the E.U., as against the default of the “mainstream”
parties, which include the Renew Europe party and the European People’s Party—the
president of the E.U. being in the latter party. The Patriots party’s banner, “Make
Europe Great Again,” shows a kinship to U.S. President Trump’s MAGA movement,
but the E.U.-specific planks are significant and thus should not be dismissed.
As is the case with any large political party, the planks can be a bit like a
tossed salad, with even disparate ingredients being in the mix. I contend that
this makes it difficult to discern the will of the voters who vote for a party
in terms of how much support there is for a particular policy. As a result, if
a party is like a grab-bag of various policies, one such policy could be
enacted without much of a democratic will behind it.
The Patriots for Europe party’s officials had high hopes for their party at the party meeting. At the time, the only sitting governor at the state level was Viktor Orban of Hungary. In the E.U.’s parliament, the party held only 89 seats, but this was enough to make the party third after the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Socialists and Democrats party (S&D). The Renew Europe had slipped in the last federal election. To gain more seats, and more governorships at the state level, the Patriots for Europe party had taken positions on a variety of issues, so as to attract more single-issue voters.
André Ventura, the leader of a political group in the E.U. state of Portugal, said at the Patriots’ meeting, “We have to reconquer a Europe that is ours and that belongs to us. A Christian Europe.”[1] That E.U. society had long before become secular was not the point; rather, the party was against the contentiousness of anti-assimilation Muslim immigrants from Africa, and especially their refusal to accept free-speech even on matters of religion. Therefore, this plank should not be confused with the revivalism of evangelical Christianity in the 1740s, wherein a conversion experience was newly stressed as part of the litmus test for whether a person is or is not a Christian. In 2025, calls for a Christian Europe were really about going back to the days of a relatively homogeneous E.U. culture. By relatively, I mean to account for the expected cultural differences that exist from state to state in any empire-scale federal system.
Indeed, one of the main benefits of federalism is that the system is able to deal with those differences without the polity being rent asunder by political conflicts between individual states. In calling for the return of governmental sovereignty to the states, which means even doing away with qualified majority voting at the federal level, even cultural differences within a more narrow Christian European society could throw a confederated (rather than dual-sovereignty-based federated) E.U. against the rocks within a decade. At least some governmental sovereignty must be delegated by the states to a federal government (rather than a confederated council) for conflicts between states to be resolved before they become insurmountable.
Diluting its anti-federalist, states-rights political ideology, the Patriots for Europe party was also against federal regulations because they stifle business, the Green Deal for the same reason, and LGBT rights because they are progressive. For example, Andrej Babis criticized the parties in power then in the E.U. for imposing “regulations that strangle businesses and [E.U.] citizens.[2] A pro-business voter could thus vote for the PfE party in the European Parliament and a social conservative could vote for the party so transgender men would not be allowed to be on women’s sports teams and use women bathrooms in the E.U., while still believing that returning the delegated federal sovereignty to the states would destroy the union. Yet because the party contains that plank, voting on business-interests or social ethical interests would make it more likely that the E.U. could be vitiated. Put another way, being pro-business or anti-trans does not mean that someone is a Euroskeptic to the point that the E.U.’s governmental sovereignty should be vitiated.
Therefore, with regard to whether the E.U.
should continue to have a federal system characterized as “modern federalism,”
with dual sovereignty being its basis, or become a confederal
inter-governmental council wherein governmental sovereignty is fully vested in
the state governments, something more than merely voting for an variegated party
is necessary. A referendum on the question could be put to the E.U. citizens,
for example. Just because pro-business voters would be inclined to vote for the
Patriots for Europe party to see a drawback in federal regulations does not
mean that they reject the E.U. having some delegated governmental sovereignty.
This argument can be interpreted as claiming that direct democracy can be applied
to significant political issues where it cannot be assumed that the voters of a
major party agree with every plank. For it is one thing to contravene specific
federal policies and even laws, and quite another to fundamentally change the
type of an extant federal system.
1. Paula Solder, “’Your
Time Is Over:’ Far-Right Leaders Take on the E.U.’s Mainstream Parties,”
Euronews.com, February 8, 2025.
2. Ibid.
2. Ibid.
