Five years of far-right aggression in Europe against the green agenda, migrants and workers’ rights

He based his campaign in 2019 on the fight against immigration, a phenomenon he speaks of with words like “invasion” and he dedicated a large part of his efforts to making it as difficult as possible to negotiate the immigration agreement, which has been one of the most complicated problems in legislative files that the EU has faced in this legislature. But extreme right-wing forces soon found another victim: the European Green Deal, which, however, was the big bet of the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the groups that support her majority (EPP, Socialists and Liberals) in the face of pressure from the greens.

Nationalism, xenophobia and the rejection of the green agenda have been the main characteristics of the presence of the extreme right in the institutions. Its growth in the last elections, its presence in several European governments – notably in Italy with the far-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni – and the threat of doing so even more in the next legislature influenced European legislators, who substantially toughened the migration pact. There is no trace of solidarity in the distribution of refugee quotas, initiated by the former president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who now warns his party about the risks of mixing with the extreme right, and the new model is designed to build a ‘Fortress Europe’ that prevents the arrival of people looking for a better future in the old continent.