A graduate in history and political science, Max-Erwann Gastineau is an essayist. He has published
The New East Trial
(Éditions du Cerf, 2019).
The thing was being considered.
It is now acquired.
MEPs close to Viktor Orban, members of Fidesz, will leave the main right-wing parliamentary group, the European People's Party (EPP), which includes the Republican (LR) and German elected representatives of the CDU.
Nothing surprising.
Since March 2019, Orban's party has been suspended from the governing bodies of an EPP anxious to stand out from an ally that has become cumbersome.
Like Alain Lamassoure, ex-UDF and current president of the French delegation of the EPP, who said last June: "
The future of center-right parties goes through a return to fundamental values, by cutting branches unhealthy, in order to restore vigor to the tree.
Even if it means losing staff.
"
Divine surprise!
The “
unhealthy branch
”, Hungarian, has just detached itself from the EPP… Enough to allow the right to return to its fundamentals?
"
The European People's Party has been the largest political group in Parliament since 1999, but today it is experiencing major electoral setbacks, in France, Spain, Italy, etc.
", recalls François-Xavier Bellamy, to whom the EPP has entrusted the coordination of a working group intended to "
rebuild a clear line
".
The fact is that the EPP is looking for itself, caught between a liberal movement embodied by the Renew group, stronghold of MEPs En Marche (LREM), and the populist movement.
The European right has especially disappointed, revealed its powerlessness and, with it, that of the Union to protect Europe.
The European right is looking for itself… because it has been lost!
An episode illustrates this sentence.
We are at the turn of the years 2010-2011.
Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron speak in turn to denounce "
the failure of multiculturalism
".
The first shot comes from the German Chancellor.
“
We feel linked to Christian values.
Whoever does not accept this has no place here
”.
A few weeks later, David Cameron followed suit: “
For years we have encouraged different cultures to live apart.
The approach was that integration was not something to be promoted.
This turned out to be false
”.
Before letting Nicolas Sarkozy conclude this collective diatribe: "
If we come to France, we agree to merge into a single community
": the national community, which "
does not want to change its way of life
".
So many ways to recall that the “
opening up
” of European societies cannot continue to the detriment of the essential: the sharing of common cultural references, anchored in the history of a civilization considered intrinsically worthy of being prolonged.
Ten years have passed since these announcements… And what happened?
Germany has opened its borders.
The British left the European Union (EU) to regain control.
Islamic communitarianism has grown.
The Charlie Hebdo attack called for others all over Europe.
We no longer speak of multiculturalism but of separatism.
In Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France… the lost quarters of European civilization are multiplying.
The European right has certainly denounced, embodied a desire for permanence, the hope of seeing our old nations escape their multicultural destiny, but above all has disappointed, revealed its powerlessness and, with it, that of the Union to protect Europe. .
And if the inability of the right to make itself the party of a European civilization anxious to save landmarks and borders was, more than the fruit of electoral cynicism or of congenital shyness, the consequence of a contrary ideological impregnation to this safeguard imperative?
The question of law and NGOs pose, more fundamentally, that of "checks and balances", at the heart of the conflict between conservatism and liberalism.
To this question, Hon Viktor Orban replies in the affirmative: the right has lost its fundamental conservatives in favor of “
sick liberalism
”, of an “
integral
”
laissez-faire
- economic, moral and political - responsible for the internal weakening of nations and of the legitimate authority of politics, of its capacity to influence the course of events, as well as on the issue of migration.
Cohesion and Authority which form the two legs of a “
national conservatism
” of which Budapest has become, over the last decade, the European capital.
Indeed, since 2010 and the return to power of Fidesz, contemporary figures of the conservative intelligentsia have been read and received there: from the late Roger Scruton to Rob Dreher, including Yoram Hazony (author of the Virtues of Nationalism), Douglas Murray (now visiting scholar at the conservative think tank, The Danube Institute), or more recently Patrick Deneen, American political theorist, author of Why Liberalism Failed?
In this stimulating essay, Deneen asserts that populism is the natural reaction of peoples to total liberalism, the project of an elite which, on the pretext of erecting a "
neutral
" state, ensuring the peaceful coexistence of differences and disputes, would have imposed from above a systemic cultural relativism, depriving citizens of their "
community
" (national identity, moral, family ...) and political (sovereignty)
weapons
for the benefit of judicial, bureaucratic and "
societal
"
oligarchies
(media, associations, NGOs) always more interventionist, erected as popesses of triumphant human rights, allergic to sovereign themes.
Read also:
Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet: "Do we still have the right to choose a conservative government in Europe?"
Recent news gives weapons to this theory.
Think of the Frontex agency, accused in recent days by NGOs and the Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, of violating fundamental rights, following the expulsion of irregular migrants in the Aegean Sea.
Let us think closer to home, on January 27, of these six NGOs, most of them foreign (Amnesty International France, Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Justice Initiative, etc.), announcing the launch of legal action against the State. French, in order to put an end to “
discriminatory identity checks
”.
Will this legal action succeed?
What does it matter!
It marks the advent of a "
soft case law
", which does not need the ax of the courts to sanction public action, delegitimize the police.
The question of law and NGOs raise, more fundamentally, that of "
checks and balances
", at the heart of the conflict between conservatism and liberalism, Orban and the EPP.
"
In a modern society, NGOs play a crucial role and they must be able to do their job
", recalled in October 2018 the current President of the EPP Group, Manfred Weber.
President of the PPE group who justified in these terms the sanctions taken against Hungary, whose law requires NGOs "
supported from abroad
" to declare their sources of funding.
A
classic
"
Tocquevillian
"
approach
on the Weber side, who sees NGOs as the author of
Democracy in America once
praised the importance of associations as a counterweight to the tutelary power of the state.
In a democracy, the checks and balances (jurisdictional and associative) must make it possible to limit the action of the politician, not to reduce its effectiveness to nothing.
Let us plead for a renewed approach to this subject absolutely essential to the intellectual and political rearmament of the right.
As Raymond Aron writes, “
the true citizen wants powers that are legitimate but capable of action.
"
In a democracy, the checks and balances (jurisdictional and associative) must make it possible to limit the action of the politician, not to reduce its effectiveness to nothing.
The checks and balances must allow the expression of minority points of view, not impose on the people reforms that they have never validated.
But the change in our judicial order is leading to this.
As the Canadian political scientist Ran Hirschl explains, a new “
juristocratic
” order (dominated by judges and the rhetoric of “
fundamental rights
”) is
emerging
in the West, tearing away from collective deliberation societal orientations that are nonetheless structuring.
In Europe, it was thanks to an ideological conception of the rule of law that this “
juristocratic
” turn began.
By virtue of Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, which makes the principle of “
non-discrimination
” a “
fundamental value
” of the EU, the Commission is laying down the terms of an unprecedented societal supranationalism.
We will reread in this regard the speech on the general state of the Union of its president, Ursula Von der Leyen, who calls for the promotion of an "
open society
", attacking "
unconscious prejudices
" and "
historical and cultural causes. of racism
”, strengthening“
the rights of same-sex couples throughout the Union
”, through the implementation of an
adequate
“
strategy
”, targeting recalcitrant states.
Read also:
What if national conservatism was the future of populism?
What does the EPP think of such a development, taking the societal roughness of peoples and the sovereign prerogatives of States between the hammer of judges and the anvil of human rights?
A question which calls for a closer look, far from cartoons, at the Hungarian situation.
Faced with the rise in power of supra and infra national organizations, a fighting conservatism, legal and societal, has emerged.
Conservatism which runs through the constitutional order upset by Fidesz between 2010 and 2014, in order to promote a more "
community
" than a liberal approach to fundamental rights, explains the former Minister of Justice Lazslo Trocsanyi, illustrated by the preamble of the new constitution , which emphasizes "
the protection of the community, the morals of society
", the idea according to which "
individual freedom can only be realized in cooperation with others
", each one having to "
contribute to the accomplishment of tasks of the State and the community according to its means and capacities
”.
At a time when the right is divided without having really thought about the causes, a fresh look is needed.
Conservatism which aims to consolidate mediations which are less legal than cultural, considered essential for the registration of the individual in the community (family, churches, school, etc.), as illustrated by the encouragement given to the Church to take over management institutions entrusted until now to local communities, or the mission given to schools to promote "
national consciousness, Christian cultural values, attachment to family and country
".
Finally, conservatism can be found in the decision to limit the interpretation power of the Supreme Court which, on the strength of extensive previous case law, in 2012 opposed a law containing a definition deemed too "
restrictive
" of the family, not allowing to take into account "
the transformations of the model of the traditional family
"… Constitutional judges must control the conformity of the laws with the Constitution, not make the law, summarizes Trocsanyi.
At a time when the right is divided without having really thought about the causes, a fresh look is needed.
In a work published by the Institut Montaigne and devoted to the “
new authoritarians
” (Viktor Orban, Donald Trump, Jarosław Kaczynski…), the diplomat Michel Duclos concludes with a call to reconsider the causes of Western populism.
And expresses a wish: that the liberal parties give more space to “
conservative values
” and “
national feelings
”.
One could not send a clearer message to the EPP.
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