Can Europe's tea parties upend EU?

[pampango]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53538.html

While the tea parties’ devotion to ideological purity roils Washington, a similar phenomenon is rupturing the traditional way that European countries are governed and putting at risk the Continent’s future prosperity. From Finland to the Netherlands to Belgium to Hungary, reactionary anti-establishment parties and factions are on the rise. Though created by differing political cultures, the gaggle of anti-establishment, right-of-center movements across Europe is united by several common issues.

Many commentators have focused on their shared anti-immigrant rhetoric, but the most troubling aspect for the future of Europe is these parties’ deep-seated euro-skepticism and growing bailout fatigue.

They all regard the EU as a distant and aloof super-state — rewriting the social contracts of their countries and enabling indulgent behavior in the Union’s southern member-states. While these parties lack the libertarian streak that has come to define the U.S. tea party movement, they play to their populations’ visceral anger, which has been ignited by the economic crisis, the government response and an underlying desire to return to something more reflective of its own “core values” – be it in Helsinki or The Hague.

This European tea party movement has something else in common with the American version: an ambivalence, if not outright hostility, to compromise. At the EU level, which is built on consensus, this intransigence threatens to derail the euro-zone and even put the future of European integration in jeopardy.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. How much ya wanna bet these gwroups are funded by corporatists?

European corporations don't like funding "the welfare state" and paying for all theat vacation time any more than ors do. It's the rise of global fascism we're seeing here.

[formernaderite]

2. having some relatives over there who are NOT teabaggers

I would have to tell you, it has more to do with many average citizens not wanting to bail out some of the other countries because of their debt problems.

Of course there are people who are spinning this to their own purpose...but I have not heard anyone complain about the social services they have in their own country.

[Blue_Tires]

3. agreed...

[LeftishBrit]

4. I doubt it- they've been trying for a long time, and not got very far...

Possibly because little groups of xenophobes don't make very good allies.

There are real problems with the way the EU runs - it does spend a lot of money on itself, and is often excessively bureaucratic. But if you meet a left-wing or liberal Eurosceptic, give them some material to read by RW North Americans who despise Europe for its welfare states and secularism. And then reinforce the message with some articles by RW teabagger-type Brits who want to get out of the EU so that they can follow hard-right libertarian economics and abolish the NHS. It may horrify them into realizing the sort of attitude that Europe needs to unite against, and that unity may be the only way of protecting ourselves from the economic hard-right, the anti-immigrant nutters, and the religious-right. Pipes and Steyn, washed down a little later with some choice material by Daniel Hannan, converted me to a pro-EU view - though I don't think that was their intention!