Chancellor Angela Merkel and PM Orbán in economic press conference. Demotix/Goncalo Silva. All rights reserved.The European Union is bleeding from a thousand wounds.
Despite some optimistic forecasts, its crisis is not over; its economies are fragile with very modest, if any, promises of better future, with significant unemployment, particularly among the young, soaring inequality, social exclusion and poverty. In the east, an increasingly aggressive Russia has been rewriting the continent’s borders, in almost total impunity: in the west, David Cameron has won elections on an agenda that openly questions the European construction.
In the heart of Europe, in Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz government has systematically dismantled the democratic political system and openly mocks fundamental European values. All over the continent, increasingly anti-European, radical right-wing nationalist parties, some with bluntly racist, xenophobe ideology keep gaining ground and imposing their demands and rhetoric on mainstream politics. In several countries they have already entered into Parliament; they threaten to become a decisive political power in France, come back reinforced in Austria and have just formed a bloc inside the European Parliament that will give them increased resources and public space.
