An uneasy Europe swings right

"Support for extreme right-wing nationalist parties is based partly on the sense that orders are being given from outside," says Stephen George, professor of European politics at Sheffield University in England. That feeling has been heightened by the way governments have had to tighten their budgetary belts so as to pass the entry test for the common European currency, the euro. Members of the euro club must keep their budget deficits and inflation rates below strict targets.

That has cramped traditional social democratic parties' freedom to follow their standard social welfare policies and promote high employment.

"In a globalizing world," points out Mr. Palmer, "national governments' autonomy of action has pushed social democrats into an ideological telephone box."

The left-wing governments that had dominated Europe until recently also stand accused of ducking the everyday issues of immigration and crime, which are closely linked – however unfairly – in many voters' minds.

"All that they (the right) have to do is to shout 'no' in a loud voice," complained Italian social democratic leader Francesco Rutelli in a recent interview in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera. "Left-wing parties, on the other hand, trying to marry their liberal approach with popular worries "have to come up with a complex response" that is not always clear.

Significantly, perhaps, the only center-left leader in Europe who is still riding high in the polls, British prime minister Tony Blair, has made stopping illegal immigration one of his highest priorities.

Other governments too, anxious to head off antiforeigner sentiment, have begun to tackle the question. EU interior ministers met two weeks ago in Rome with their counterparts from EU applicant countries to begin harmonizing their immigration and asylum rules.

But the rise of conservative parties has brought more extreme forces with them into government ranks. In Austria, Italy, Portugal, and Norway, center-right parties have formed ruling coalitions with openly anti-immigrant parties. The Dutch Christian Democrat leader Jan Peter Balkenende is expected to invite followers of the slain anti-immigrant politician Pim Fortuyn into his government, and the Danish government relies on the parliamentary votes of the antiforeigner Peoples' Party to stay in office. These coalition partners are uniformly hostile to the European Union. They are populist forces feeding on resentment against political elites – and the European Union is very much an elitist project, with which ordinary Europeans are often out of step.

Meanwhile, it is unclear whether the center-right's new ascendancy will make much difference in economic terms. Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi has been unable to keep his promise to cut taxes – he cannot afford to do that if he is to keep budget deficits within prescribed euro-zone limits. And his efforts to liberalize labor laws, making it easier to sack workers, provoked the country's first general strike in years.

President Chirac will recall that his attempt to push through reforms in the teeth of opposition from the public sector unions brought the last conservative government down in 1997.

"In Europe, reforms have to be done in the framework of social-welfare systems that nobody wants to eliminate," says Dr. Romano. "It's a cultural matter, and it's not easily changed."

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