Similar treatment is being meted out to Right-wing parties and politicians across the continent. In the case of Austria, it came with the suspension of an 80-year-old informal rule dictating that the party which receives the most votes is allowed to form a government, after the Right-wing Freedom Party won elections last month. Meanwhile in Germany, a debate has been revived about banning the Alternative for Germany (AfD) before federal elections in February. In other words: the exclusion of the second most popular party in the country from participating in the political process.

None of this bodes well for the future of democracy in Europe, because a system that tries to ban instead of engage with the substance of what surging populist parties are demanding is doomed to fail. After all, it is not the charismatic personalities of the AfD’s Alice Weidel or the RN’s Le Pen which explain their parties’ popularity. Instead, they are rising in the polls because they have dared to touch on the topics which the establishment parties have for decades refused to discuss: migration, cultural decline, and economic stagnation.

In Germany and France, we see parallel attempts to keep the most popular challengers to the status quo off the ballot, but there is significant risk that these attempts will backfire. The German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician Marco Wanderwitz wants to submit a law banning the AfD before Christmas, in the hopes that it could still take effect before federal elections early next year.

Although the likelihood of the law being passed is slim, there is more to the story. The head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (the German equivalent of MI5), Thomas Haldenwang, has been removed from his post and will campaign for a seat in parliament — as a member of Wanderwitz’s CDU. The very person responsible for painting the AfD as a “far-Right” party, far from being an impartial civil servant, seemingly had a political agenda — a claim the AfD has made for months. Originally, Haldenwang did not even intend to resign from his position, and it was only after Interior Minister Nancy Faeser found out about his ambitions that she decided to let him go.

The optics are disastrous, as even the Left-leaning public broadcaster ZDF had to admit. Haldenwang was supposed to publish an assessment of the AfD before the end of the year, which could be described fairly as a member of the CDU influencing the decision as to whether its strongest competitor should have a right to run in elections. Unsurprisingly, the AfD is already using this as a campaign theme, sensing that it could prove effective.

Optics clearly matter, then, and the same is true of the RN trial in France. While there may be a valid legal case, it will be hard to avoid the impression that this is a blatant attempt to keep Le Pen from the presidency at any cost. Corruption is a serious matter, but banning the most popular politician in France due to salary payments to parliamentary assistants will not dent her popularity; if anything, it might boost her standing. After all, the legal cases against Donald Trump fired up his base to the point that he became practically invincible during the Republican primaries — and now he is President-elect.

European leaders must be very careful that they do not push voters in the same way, as there is a growing sense among the public that establishment forces are trying to tip the political scales. If this impression is continuously reinforced, at some point people will make their anger felt.

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Ralph Schoellhammer is assistant professor of International Relations at Webster University, Vienna.

Raphfel

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