The name Patriots for Europe will easily go down in the history of the EU as the greatest misnomer ever. The name suggests an unlimited love for their home country Europe but its manifesto emphasises the national sovereignty of the nation-states on the continent.
Moreover, the launch of the Patriots for Europe by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and two allies on the 30 June this year is the epitome of a false start.
The new party was formed after the elections for the European Parliament had been conducted in the member states at the start of that month.
The sole aim of the foundation of the ‘Patriots’ was to strengthen the position of the populists parties from the separate member states in the European Parliament. Its purpose was not "to contribute to forming European political awareness and to expressing the will of the citizens of the Union" as article 10 (4) of the Lisbon Treaty has it, but to qualify for European subsidies.
The ambiguous attitude of the ‘Patriots’ is highlighted by their linguistic laxity. As they claim to be the champions of the nations of Europe, the translation of their manifesto should have been an obvious priority.
Actually, they could have been expected to outperform the EU’s commitment to multilingualism by ensuring the simultaneous translation of the manifesto in the vernacular languages of the constituent parties.
The neutral observer could hardly be more disappointed. While two of the ‘Patriots’ member parties are Dutch-speaking, not one iota of the manifesto has been translated into the language of the Low Countries.
In good populist’s tradition, the PfE manifesto identifies an enemy. While it acknowledges that the process of European integration may have been initiated for noble reasons, it posits that ‘institutions’ have taken control and are planning to transform the EU into ‘a European central state’.
As their aim to subjugate the proud nations of Europe to an emerging empire, now is the time for to peoples of Europe to reclaim sovereignty and to take back control over their own destiny.
For this goal to be achieved, they should a) replace democracy with diplomacy and b) stop the EU from meddling into the internal affairs of its member states.
While the two arguments are obviously correlated, the latter reveals Orbán’s real reasons for launching the ‘Patriots’ after the 2024 elections for the European Parliament. He is not driven by noble motives such as respect for the principles of international law but by more down to earth considerations. He simply wants to tap his money from the Brussels cash machine.
The Hungarian prime minister is pissed off by the EU decision to withhold money from the Recovery and Resilience Fund as long as his government does not respect the values of the EU.
As his argument that the EU is not entitled to oversee the way in which his country is spending the subsidies received from Brussels because that would amount to unwarranted intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, has been rejected by the EU Court of Justice, he tries to get his money by changing the laws of the Union.
In order to attain their prosaic goals the self-styled Patriots have to turn the current EU into a caricature.
In reality, the European Union is neither a dictatorship nor an Empire or a Fourth Reich.
The EU has been founded by democratic countries on the European continent with the aim to prevent the renewed outbreak of war between them and to attain common economic and political objectives.
Guided by their constitutional principles of respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law, they wanted their organisation to function democratically too. Although it was said to impossible by political theorists, they succeeded in overcoming the democratic deficit of the early stages of integration.
In a prolonged period of trial and error, they created a new model of democracy. On the basis of the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, the EU can be described as a democratic union of democratic states.
By portraying the EU deliberately as a ‘European central state’, the manifesto entitles and encourages its member parties and their voters to destroy the union from within.
Unlike the Brexiteers who wanted the UK to leave the EU in line with article 50 TEU, the ‘Patriots’ aim to dismantle the EU and to abolish the European Parliament and the EU Court of Justice altogether.
Just like Orbán prefers to describe himself as the leader of an ‘illiberal democracy’, the manifesto wants to reduce the current European democracy to an ‘undemocratic organisation of illiberal states’.
The upcoming legislature will have to prove whether the EU and its political parties are capable of beating off the attack from within. As a resilient democracy, it is obliged to defend itself in the interest of its citizens and its member states.
Jaap Hoeksma is a philosopher of law, author of The European Union: a democratic union of democratic states and the recently-published The Democratisation of the European Union.
Jaap Hoeksma is a philosopher of law, author of The European Union: a democratic union of democratic states and the recently-published The Democratisation of the European Union.