Pwhy is the far right growing in Europe? An article by American economist Dani Rodrik provides a fascinating synthesis of the socio-economic literature on this subject. According to the author, globalization bears – with free trade, the liberalization of capital and automation – an essential responsibility in this process because it has caused strong economic insecurity for certain populations since the 1990s. Deindustrialization, relocations, and the distortion of the sharing between capital and labor have taken place to their detriment.
This situation should logically have benefited the left, but far-right political leaders have managed to turn it to their advantage by mobilizing the ethnonational and cultural divide, that is to say by constructing a narrative in which it is the foreigners or minorities who would be the real culprits. The European migration crisis of 2015 made such a discourse more likely: it invaded the public space in many European countries. Rodrik’s conclusion is that the great challenge facing policy makers today is to break with globalization designed according to the needs of capital in order to achieve a rebalancing in favor of labor.
France does not seem to have chosen this path, quite the contrary. While nothing is done to improve very degraded working conditions, and everything converges to increase suspicion towards active solidarity income recipients and job seekers, the debate on immigration saturates the public space to the great joy of far-right leaders. It is the European Commission and Parliament which seem to be initiating a social turning point, held back by the States, first and foremost France.
Put an end to social dumping
Indeed, several directives bring real progress for workers. On December 13, a political agreement was reached between the European Parliament and the states of the European Union (EU) on the directive on improving the working conditions of people working through a digital platform . This lists the criteria allowing a distinction to be made, within these workers, between true independent workers and those who should be recognized as employees (around 5.5 million people according to the Commission). The text should make it possible to put an end to the social dumping carried out by the numerous platforms which escape labor law obligations and cause Social Security to lose hundreds of millions of euros in contributions. Alas, on December 22, several states including France voted against this agreement.
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