The analysis piece we ran in yesterday’s paper about the threat populism poses to European integration has gotten so much feedback, that I thought I’d post more on the interview I had with Dutch European affairs minister Ben Knapen, which helped inspire it.
As mentioned in the original piece, Knapen is highly critical of officials — including José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission — who argue that populist sentiments should be marginalised or ignored by European leaders. Instead, he thinks Brussels should take such concerns more seriously than they are now.
In fact, Knapen singled out Barroso in our interview, which Dutch officials tell me is a bit of pushback to recent comments Barroso made urging European leaders to “not give in to the populists or extremists” in upcoming EU budget negotiations, remarks picked up by the Dutch press. Said Knapen:
When the president of the commission says that governments of member states should not be tempted to listen too much to populism in the country, from a rational point of view I can understand that. But even if you dismiss all the sentiments that sound a little populist, they’re still there.
Knapen also made the point which I tried to hammer home at the end of the piece, which is that in a globalised world, it’s easy for the urban elites – on both the left and the right – to adjust and thrive in a rapidly-changing environment. But for the less educated, the more rural, the more traditional – regardless of political affiliation – it is incredibly difficult, and such frustration is a strong political motivator.
If you live in a city in Britain or in the Netherlands or in Germany and without moving you discover after 10 years you’ve moved to another country, that’s fine if you’re accustomed to traveling or living in other countries, or have money to live in a corner of the city where these people don’t show up. But if you don’t have [that], you want to make sure this sense of insecurity is taken seriously by your political leaders. It doesn’t mean stimulating xenophobia, it doesn’t mean living with your back towards the developments in the world, but it means you take their worries seriously. That’s why we bring up these issues here, not just because we want to just give a voice to sentiments of anti-foreigners or anti-Europe.
It’s certainly an argument worth considering, since attempts to exclude populism from the political mainstream appear to have only forced voters to support fringe parties many consider extremist or xenophobic.
But Knapen himself acknowledged it hasn’t been a winning strategy just yet for the Netherlands’ governing coalition, which saw another round of electoral setbacks in the spring.
“We’re determined to go that route,” he said, “but it’s too early in the day and there are too many adverse winds.”
Across the globe: Gideon Rachman and his FT colleagues debate international affairs on