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PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   1178 thread views

Transnational Thursday for March 27, 2025

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Another week, another "Democratic" European country banning the leading opposition candidate from running.

https://apnews.com/article/le-pen-france-far-right-trial-verdict-explainer-83fb47af7aff36576c6a5f7caee141f2

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been sentenced to a five-year ban on running for public office for embezzling EU funds, a major political earthquake. The ruling, which takes effect immediately, is likely to bar her from running in France’s next presidential election

and people think these are our allies? We should be sanctioning them, not paying for their security and subsidizing most research, pharmaceuticals, etc.

EU Leadership is playing with fire and still does not want to see the writing on the wall - the genie on anti-liberal politics has been let out of the bottle and is no longer just tethered to charismatic individual politicians who can galvanise a few percent of electors at the margins of society. 3 decades ago, it needed extremely adept figures within far-right parties to elevate their results to national relevance, like Jörg Haider in Austria. Today, just being the designated "anti-system" party nets you an instant 10-20% of voters across Europe. Their support has at this point very little to do with personality cults (which was what carried figures like Haider or Jean-Marie Le Pen back in the good old days) and is almost entirely axed around concrete policy goals and fundamental mistrust towards the establishment.

While Marine Le Pen is certainly upset about the verdict essentially being a judicial coup depriving her of a very probable presidential victory, I doubt the atmosphere within the RN as a whole is beset with gloom and defeatism at the moment. They are by now the largest single political party in France both in polling and in parliamentary representation, the most popular with the working class by far, are making massive inroads into the rural vote to take advantage of a fractured and exhausted centre-right, and are competitive with the far-left for capturing the youth vote. Compared to their predicament just a decade ago (when they were already surging heavily), the Rassemblement National has become a well-oiled machine with legions of young recruits hailing from increasingly polite and respectable backgrounds - a massive long-term lifeline for parties that traditionally were forced to recruit their party apparatchiks from dubious backgrounds due to a lack of "normal" people wanting to be seen alongside neo-nazis and such. Successor figures like Jordan Bardella are the targets of unrelenting mockery and derision by the French Left, yet they underestimate that despite his relative inexperience and lack of political seasoning, he still polls considerably higher in popularity than both Macron and Mélenchon - and was able to convince 37% of voters to support his party in this past summer's parliamentary election.

https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/1473435/cote-taux-popularite-jordan-bardella/

https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/1473510/cote-taux-popularite-jean-luc-melenchon/

https://fr.statista.com/infographie/33119/cote-popularite-president-et-premier-ministre-macron-bayrou-barnier-attal-borne/

All in all, I doubt this verdict will have the intended result of meaningfully weakening the European far-right; rather, it will just be another stepping stone in the polarisation of our societies, yet another heightening of the liberal project's progressively undeniable internal contradictions, bringing us yet another inch closer to the precipice - when will we jump?

intended result of meaningfully weakening the European far-right

It may suffice to simply delay any far-right power moves until demographics neutralizes the far-right forever.

Yes, I think EU leadership is banking on kicking the can down the road by all means in the hope that some Covid-level event will resurge and they can resurrect the police state atmosphere of the lockdowns, rallying society behind them by means of alarmism and fear. This is probably also a central function of their warmongering towards Russia - creating a siege mentality in which large swaths of the political spectrum can be labeled treasonous and banished from open discourse, probably even moving towards arrests, party bans and other forms of persecution by use of emergency powers if it really gets to the point where EU soldiers are deployed to Ukraine.

I think I'm marginally less blackpilled than you concerning demographics, the true tipping point for most Western European countries is probably still 3-4 decades away from now, which is a lot of time for upsets and shifts to happen. The EU really is a paper tiger when it comes to actually enforcing it's own internal laws, if major countries decide to opt out from certain treaties and pacts like the Dublin Agreement, there is functionally nothing Brussels can do aside from rhetorical scolding - it's not like they can send policemen to arrest Denmark's cabinet or Victor Orban. Since the Great Recession and the ensuing Eurocrisis, the EU has mainly been surviving based off of Germany's economic dominance and its internal long-lasting political dominance by status quo oriented establishment parties like the SPD and CDU. Now that these certainties are fracturing, I don't find it difficult to envision a completely neutered EU that increasingly behaves like the League of Nations, proclaiming edicts that no one feels any pressure to follow anymore since there's no actual punishment for transgressing them.

This is, of course, a cautiously optimistic view that banks on certain key elements of the democratic process being maintained and allowing for far-right victories to happen.

there is functionally nothing Brussels can do aside from rhetorical scolding

blocking funding

The funding comes from member states. If Germany doesn't play along with Brussels, it's Brussels that's in danger, not the other way around.

It was/is trying to do it with Hungary.

EU coerced Poland by blocking funding (done in way to influence elections)

Yet, EU cannot wins against member states in general, but multiple member states can win against one of two of them using funding blocking as a cudgel.

It's a completely different ballgame when the EU attempts to intervene in member states that are net receivers of EU money, as Poland and Hungary are. Neither of those states pay for other members infrastructure development, West and North Europe pay for theirs. If you've driven around those countries before, as I have, you'll see that virtually every new highway, hospital or power plant was built with EU funding.

Germany receives nothing comparable from other member states - sure, they have downstream economic interests in developing the economy of their neighbours, but in the immediate sense, Germany cannot be blackmailed by Brussels the way Budapest can.

it's not like they can send policemen to arrest Denmark's cabinet or Victor Orban

AFAIK Hungary is net receiver of EU funds

And even in case of Germany they can for example make German companies ineligible for say rearmament funding send by other countries or do something similar. Also, while Germany is net payer they may suspend some payments - forcing German government to surrender or deeply escalate.

An earlier AP article provides more details.

The National Rally and 27 of its top officials are accused of having used money destined for EU parliamentary aides to pay staff who instead did political work for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations. The National Rally was called National Front at the time.

The European Parliament’s suspicions were further heightened when a 2015 organizational chart showed that 16 European lawmakers and 20 parliamentary assistants held official positions within the party — roles unrelated to their supposed duties as EU parliamentary staff.

A subsequent investigation found that some assistants were contractually linked to different MEPs than the ones they were actually working for, suggesting a scheme to divert European funds to pay party employees in France.

Investigating judges concluded that Le Pen, as party leader, orchestrated the allocation of parliamentary assistance budgets and instructed MEPs to hire individuals holding party positions. These individuals were presented as EU parliamentary assistants, but in reality, were allegedly working for the National Rally in various capacities.

The European Parliament’s legal team is seeking 2.7 million euros in compensation for financial and reputational damages. This figure corresponds to the 3.7 million euros allegedly defrauded through the scheme, minus the 1 million euros already paid back.

Le Pen, whose party has softened its anti-EU stance in recent years, denies wrongdoing.

“Parliamentary assistants do not work for the Parliament. They are political assistants to elected officials, political by definition,” she previously said. “You ask me if I can define the tasks I assigned to my assistants; it depends on each person’s skills. Some wrote speeches for me, and some handled logistics and coordination.”

Despite her denial, her party has already paid back 1 million euros to the European Parliament, the Parliament’s lawyer Patrick Maisonneuve said. Of that amount, 330,000 euros were directly linked to Marine Le Pen’s alleged misuse of funds.

Pretty similar to Trump, byzantine campaign finance rules that no one really follows only get maximally enforced when it furthers the interest of the ruling elite.

Embezzling funds sounds like something that should be relatively easy to tell if someone did it, or is being railroaded, so I'll wait for the opinion of our local Frenchmen (I think we have at least one), before forming mine.

From what I understood, the matter is (at least that's what the officials say it is) that they used funds allocated to pay one kind of the employee (aides working on EU matters) to pay another kind of the employee (aides working on French local matters). While this may or may not be violation of whatever regulations exist in EU (I certainly claim deep ignorance on the subject, and not sure why you can't have an employee working on both matters), calling it "embezzlement" seems going too far - it's not like Le Pen bought cars, family dinners and Gucci bags with public money. Making it a criminal violation disqualifying a leading opposition candidate from participating in the elections stinks to high heaven, to be honest.

Also, I imagine if US had similar regulations - where you can't use federal funds allocated for Congressional aides to hire a member of your own party - that'd disqualify about every single Congressman in existence, as I don't see many Democrats hiring Republican aides or vice versa. And I am sure a lot of congressional aides deal with day-to-day matters that concern partisan affairs - talking to voters, organizing fundraisers, meeting important allies, that kind of stuff. Are there any regulations for that in the US?

Odd it took them 10 years then.

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