When next month, on January 1, 2017, Malta assumes the presidency of the Council of the European Union, the in-tray of Joseph Muscat and his ministers will be bulging. Taking over from Slovakia, they will have to negotiate and agree proposals on tax harmonisation, competition, climate action, the banking union, you name it.
This is not to mention the usual suspects, such as fisheries, agriculture, food safety. And as if the refugee crisis is not enough, there is now Brexit, the next EU budget, the nomination of the next EU president when Donald Tusk retires in May and, let’s not forget, the “informal” meeting of 27 EU presidents and prime ministers in Malta a month later, on February 3 (perhaps we should all move to Gozo for the day).
As a law-giving body, the Council of the European Union is of course a more pedestrian body than the European Council, where all EU leaders meet to set the broad policy direction (confusing, I know, and this is not to mention the Council of Europe here, which is not European at all, but an international body for law and human rights…).
So, the Council of Ministers, as the Council of the EU is also called, negotiates and agrees EU legislation and is not involved in emergencies and crisis fighting. However, events like today’s constitutional referendum in Italy have the explosive power to render all its file work irrelevant.
It is understandable that Austria’s presidential election, which also takes place today, may look less relevant or almost insignificant when compared to the French presidential elections in March 2017, for instance. Austria is a small country and its president has merely a ceremonial role to play.
Yet I beg to differ. What takes place in Austria today can have grave consequences for Europe and should give serious pause about the future of Malta.
Traditionally, the president of Austria has functions like the Queen in the UK: he cuts the ribbon when a new bridge is opened, he receives foreign diplomats, he formally opens Parliament and is the figure head of Austria’s armed forces, not bothering much with governmental business.
His constitutional rights go much further though: he can theoretically dismiss the government, call for new elections, or shut down the parliament at will.
No president has ever done so since the role was created after the demise of the Hapsburgs, and it may therefore look a little comical that it has taken the Austrians four rounds and more than a year to come up with a hopefully valid result.
Yet the fact that one of the two candidates, Norbert Hofer, hails from the far-right Freedom Party makes international observers cringe. For most, it looks like Farage, Trump and Le Pen all over again.
On the face of it this is not wrong altogether. Austrian’s Freedom Party has a rather casual relationship with the truth, a scoffing disregard for independent media and nothing but scorn for the establishment, no matter how established they are themselves. They despise experts, foreigners, immigrants, globalisation and the EU at large.
What takes place in Austria today can have grave consequences for Europe and should give serious pause about the future of Malta
When we try to analyse what has happened with Brexit, with the US elections, with the sweeping gains of AfD in Germany, we talk about the losers of globalisation, the consequences of unfair income distribution, the long-stagnant wages in the industrialised world, the fear of terror and the unhinging of traditional societies by mass immigration and the information bubble – the algorithms, social media and machine-made information that create an impenetrable wall of misrepresentation of the factual world. This is propaganda gone into overdrive without an obvious source.
This may all add up to a hell of a cocktail and may certainly increase social pressure, but as the Austrian example of the Freedom Party clearly shows, there is more to it than that.
Like Malta since its independence, Austria has since the end of World War II been almost exclusively governed by the right-leaning People’s Party or the Social Democrats. Even in opposition, they cooperated diligently, bringing the labour unions and industry unfailingly to the negotiating table.
These parties had a fixed clientele: Volkspartei represented farmers and industry, the socialists, the workers and the lower income brackets. It was a success story: Austria developed into one of the richest industrialised countries on earth, with high employment, steady growth and a thriving industry.
Yet about 30 years ago the Freedom Party, until then a small pool of disgruntled ex-Nazis, started to rapidly gain in popularity. Under their youthful, infamous leader Joerg Haider they were soon sitting in provincial and federal government positions. Please take note: there was still full employment, no financial crisis in sight, no epidemic of corruption, no mind-boggling banker bonuses and not a single Syrian refugee knocking on the door. What happened?
Haider and his Praetorian cohort of handsome, young boys created a narrative of youthful engagement with the electorate – in stark contrast to the Alt-Parteien, the Oldies, as he called Austria’s traditional parties.
He was not entirely wrong. These parties were rapidly losing their core voters – there were just not enough farmers and workers around anymore in the 21st century. New classes of the less-privileged were forming and no one was sparing a thought for them. The classic parties had stopped focusing on the future, given up on passionate reforms. Meekly, they repeated old slogans of full employment and stability, pathetically promising to preserve the successes of the past. The future lasted for a legislation period.
They continued to govern smoothly, not much bothered to explain how and why. Everybody was fine, weren’t they? And this included their own functionaries too, sitting unmovable and unmoved in positions of distributive power.
But the PP and the SD, having traditionally shared all votes among themselves, started to lose out. Today, 30 years later, the Freedom Party is, according to latest opinion polls, the biggest party in Austria.
They never had to put on paper their vision of the future: how to solve the pension crisis, how to reform the labour market, how to invest in education, science and defence. It was enough to be the scourge of the rulers, who had for decades neglected their duty to enfranchise the electorate.
If I were Joseph Muscat, despite a bulging in-tray, I would devote some thought to Austria today. The 90 per cent of Maltese voting for the two traditional parties could one day become a thing of the past.
Andreas Weitzer is an Austrian journalist based in Malta.