Donald Tusk at last year's December EU summit. "We are being tested on all possible fronts", he said. Image: Flickr/European Parliament. Some rights reserved.With a few exceptions, the success of populist parties in the polls has yet to translate into control of the executive in EU states. But insurgent populist parties have made progress in provoking mainstream parties to ape their political agenda and normalise their message for fear of losing votes. The result is that even where populists don’t win power through the ballot box, they gain it through shaping policy and public debate.
Nowhere is this clearer than on migration. During recent meetings in Brussels, the fear of populism hung like a fog. One official told me that what the EU decides on migration can affect elections in all 28 of its states in explanation for the Union’s major retreat from its values over the past year. In the wake of the Brexit vote, EU Council president Donald Tusk wrote to EU leaders effectively arguing that to preserve the union it had to set aside its values and ensure that “effective control of external borders comes first.”
This position can be expressed simply: keep people away from the EU at all costs even if they need protection as refugees, and make life unpleasant for those who do reach EU territory.
