Reform fatigue energises far-right parties

For the second time in two months, a newly elected prime minister in a member state which joined the EU in 2004 has brought openly nationalist and xenophobic parties into the government.

In Slovakia, the decision of election winner Robert Fico to form a government with the extreme nationalist SNS and the HDZS party of autocratic former prime minister Vladimir Meciar has earned the threat of suspension from the Party of European Socialists. The centre-right EPP-ED group has also announced it will monitor the new government's respect for human and minority rights.

The European Parliament has raised the alarm about what it sees as the "general rise in racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and homophobic intolerance in Poland" following an attack on the Chief Rabbi in Warsaw and comments by members of the League of Polish Families (LPF) inciting violence against gays and lesbians. The uproar was further fuelled last week when Polish LPF MEP Maciej Marian Giertych praised Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco for defending Catholic traditions. His son, Roman Giertych, LPF founder, is deputy prime minister and education minister in the current government.

In May, the LPF and the populist nationalist Self Defence Party joined a government coalition led by the Law and Justice Party which had polled most votes in the September 2005 elections.

Support for anti-immigrant parties is high in some of the EU15 member states such as Belgium and, in France, National Front President Jean Marie Le Pen received nearly 17% of the vote in the presidential elections in 2002. But with the exception of Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel forming a government with the anti-immigration Freedom Party in 2000, there are few examples of extremist parties taking up positions in government in the member states which were EU members before 2004.

To an extent, the phenomenon of extremist parties entering government in the post-Communist countries can be explained by the rapid economic transformation in those states since the collapse of Communism in 1989.

From having little or no nominal employment (because under Communism jobs could be created easily in state-run enterprises), Poland has unemployment of around 18%. The political parties which emerged to contest the first free elections have more or less uniformly supported the economic shock therapy needed to dismantle the old Communist system and prepare for EU membership. But by presiding over rising unemployment, cuts in social protection and rising prices for essentials, they have been punished at the polls. Political groups such as AWS, which emerged from Poland's Solidarity movement, have witnessed their votes evaporate. In the 2001 elections AWS's share of the vote fell to just above the 5% threshold for seats in the Sejm. In 2005 the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), successor to the Communist Party, suffered the wrath of the disgruntled electorate, seeing its share of the vote plummet to just over 11%.

In Slovakia, the economic programme of Slovakia's defeated centre-right coal-ition was a freemarket economist's dream with the introduction of a 19% flat tax on household and corporate incomes, encouraging one of the highest levels of foreign direct investment in the ten new member states. While inflation has been cut from nearly 9%, unemployment is still nearly 15% and cuts in social benefits, lower spending on education and healthcare and an increase in the retirement age have increased public resistance to the reform process.

This has produced the same flip-flop in support for main parties. While Fico's SMER only received 13.5% of the vote in the 2002 elections, in this June's elections he won 29%.

The importance of marginal parties is also boosted by the post-transition member states having proportional representation.

While the reasons why such parties can make it into government in the post-transition countries are fairly clear, the question is whether the fact of being in government will automatically moderate their positions, as happened with Jörg Haider's Freedom Party in the Austrian coalition.

Analysts point out that the League of Polish Families politicians have not spoken out against the EU or the constitution since entering government, although they have provoked outrage with their comments on gay rights protestors and praise for Franco. Fico has given assurances to his European partners that the presence of SNS and HZDS in the government will not lead to any infringement of civil or minority rights.

Coalitions which rely on the support of minority parties are normally fragile and break up under internal tensions.

But this weekend's events in Poland appear to have bucked this trend with the two Kaczynski brothers who run the governing PiS assert-ing their control by forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewiecz and installing party boss Jaroslaw, twin sibling of the president Lech, as premier.

The two brothers were unhappy with Marcinkiewiecz's increasing independence, especially his decision to appoint a new finance minister without their approval.

The Kaczynskis' move can be seen as a sign of strength. But it remains to be seen whether disposing of a popular prime minister and replacing him with the relatively unpopular party leader (which they promised not to do after the elections in October last year) will retain the level of public support the government currently enjoys.

Given the scale of the economic challenges facing the new member states, there is little reason to believe that the political in these countries will be any less volatile in the near future.

Despite the radical swings between parties and the sudden emergence of marginal groups in government, it seems likely that the broad consensus for economic liberalism will hold.

The real question therefore is whether the emerging trend of increased scapegoating of vulnerable ethnic and sexual minorities as a proxy for protest against increasing social division will persist.

For the second time in two months, a newly elected prime minister in a member state which joined the EU in 2004 has brought openly nationalist and xenophobic parties into the government.

• Primary Source