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THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN EUROPE: THREATS AND OPPORTUNITIES
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cuts to public spending in the previous legisla-
ture. The fall was particularly dramatic for the
Labour Party, which was reduced to a mere
seven seats, compared to the total of 37 seats
that it had won at the previous election. The big
winners were Ireland’s other traditional govern-
ing party, Fianna Fail, which doubled its repre-
sentation, and the republicans of Sinn Fein,
which almost doubled its parliamentary pres-
ence with 22 seats, after focusing its campaign
on the fight against austerity, instead of its tra-
ditional nationalist platform. The weakness of
the two main traditional parties is compounded
by the presence in the Dail of small parties and
independents, which significantly complicates
the process of forming a government. If this
process is unsuccessful, then Ireland will have to
hold new elections in September.
In the other country to have held elections
so far this year, Slovakia, the resultant political
landscape provides challenging terrain for the
formation of a new government. The Social
Democratic Party (SMER), until now in govern-
ment, won the election but fell from 83 to 49
seats. As a result, it will need the support of at
least two other parties to form a government,
while the main centre-right party would need to
find at least five parties to form a government
without the social democrats.
The ghosts of the past return, part I:
nationalism and Euroscepticism
“Nationalism is war”. The words of French Pres-
ident, François Mitterrand, in his speech to the
Plenary Session of the European Parliament at
Strasbourg in 1995, are often quoted.
He was undoubtedly referring to the kind of
nationalism that had led to the outbreak of two
world wars during the 20th century, not the
small European nationalisms of the 21st centu-
ry. One of the reasons was that 20 years ago
these small nationalisms were simply not on the
radar.
In 2015, the only nationalist movement in
continental Europe to have a significant impact
was to be found in Catalonia. Some political
forces in this region of Spain have sought to
initiate a process designed to lead to independ-
ence, disregarding the constitution which re-
established democracy in the country in 1978.
Against the opinion of the majority political
forces in Spain, and despite failing to win the
support of the majority of the electorate at re-
gional polls in September 2015, which the pro-
independence parties had promoted as a plebi-
scite, Catalonia’s hard-line nationalists sought
to create a route to independence, but during
the intervening months their plans have suf-
fered a number of setbacks, and the future is
plagued by uncertainty.
It is important to note some of the differ-
ences between the Catalan independence
movement and its counterpart in Scotland.
While the Catalan movement seeks a unilateral
break with Spanish democracy, the Scottish
movement mobilised around a legal referendum
agreed with the British government, a vote that
it lost in September 2014.
There are also legal and historic differences,
such as the fact that the United Kingdom does
not have a written constitution and therefore
makes no stipulations with respect to the pos-
sibility of self-determination, or the fact that
Scotland was an independent country for cen-
turies until 1707, something that was never the
case for Catalonia.
There are, of course, nationalist tendencies
and movements in other territories of EU mem-
ber states, including Belgium, France and Italy.
However, unlike the situation in Catalonia,