10.04.2009
April 7, 2009 (the date of publication in Russian)
Ruslan Kostyuk
NATIONALISTS AND ATLANTICISTS IN ONE BOAT
Alliance for Europe of Nations may team up with Libertas in the EP
Among institutionally structured transnational parties, the Alliance for Europe of Nations (AEN) may be defined as the utmost rightist association. Established in 2002, AEN encompassed a multitude of nationalist and national-conservative parties of the Old World. The most prominent of them include Ireland's Fianna Fail ("Soldiers of Destiny"), Poland's Prawo i Sprawiedliwość ("Law and Justrice", PiS), the Liberal Democratic Party of Lithuania, the popular Party of Slovenia, and Tevzemei un Brivibai ("For the Fatherland and Freedom"), the major rightist party of Latvia. In Ukraine, this association found common language with the post-collaborationist Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, a member of Victor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc.
AEN member parties are today represented only in three national governments: in Ireland, Latvia, and Poland. Lech Kaczynski, the current Polish president, is a co-founder of PiS.
Most of the member parties are pro-conservative American. In Poland, Latvia, and Ukraine, party programs are strongly anti-Russian.
In the European parliament, AEN occupies the niche to the right from the European Popular Party that represents respectable rightists and Christian Democrats. After the 2004 elections, AEN established a homonymic faction, including 44 EuroMPs from Italy, Poland, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Naturally, AEN distances itself from EPP's rightist-centrists, running an independent campaign to the Europarliament. On the eve of the race, AEN elaborated an ideological platform, more attractive for other minor parties. The association urges to transform the very logic of the European process, in order to "build a Europe that is completely independent from any political and cultural domination". AEN advocates the principle of freedom of nations and their state sovereignty. The alliance insists on dominance of "sovereign democracy" over all-European rules and superiority of national legislation over European law.
Recognizing the necessity to develop all-European norms in such spheres as human rights and liberties, AEN members simultaneously strongly demand that Brussels respect their national traditions, promoting conservation of cultural heritage and national languages. At the same time, AEN's program unambiguously states that Brussels shouldn't intervene into the traditional realm of national legislation.
Most of AEN parties reject the Eurofederalist approach, and therefore viewed as Eurosceptics. The association is critical towards expansion of duties of the Europarliament and the European Commission. At the same time, AEN – unlike particular ultra-rightist parties – does not utterly reject European integration. In its platform, AEN admits necessity of "economic and social cohesion" of European nations at the face of the crisis, though member parties are ill disposed towards the common currency system and common foreign policy. Most of AEN members are skeptical about designs of European security outside the NATO framework.
AEN urges its electorate to support those parties which "respect the Europe of diversity" along with common traditional Western values.
By today, it is certain that AEN will manage to maintain its faction after the EP elections. However, the configuration of rightists is likely to change. Having lost two major members, the Danish Popular Party and the Italian Alliance (that actually ceased existing, merging into Silvio Berlusconi's new "People of Freedom" Party), AEN is expected to ally with the rising Libertas movement of businessman Declan Ganley that reaped scandalously popular in Ireland, defeating major establishment parties in the campaign against ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. Libertas is presently running a campaign of its own.
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