DATE=May 7, 2002

TYPE=Dateline

NUMBER=7-36270

TITLE=The Right in Europe

BYLINE=Neal Lavon

TELEPHONE=619-0112

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Neal Lavon

CONTENT=

DISK: DATELINE THEME [PLAYED IN STUDIO, FADED UNDER DATELINE HOST VOICE OR PROGRAMMING MATERIAL]

HOST: The assassination of far-right Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn [PIHM for-TOWN] capped a week of electoral tensions in Western Europe. Recent elections in France and Britain showed political gains for the far right, and earlier, voting in Italy and Austria saw right of center candidates win. In this edition of Dateline, Neal Lavon reports whether the rise of the right is beginning to make some Europeans feel left out.

NL: The assassination of Pim Fortuyn of Netherland's Pim Fortuyn List Party, sent shocks waves through the Dutch nation. There was a night of unrest in the Hague. A suspect is in custody. Prime Minister Wim Kok [VIHM KOAK] recalled how he spent a meeting this week with Mr. Fortuyn about the goals of the slain leader's party.

TAPE: CUT 1, WIM KOK, :08

"…Sincere, serious, precise listening to each other and that's the best message we possibly can give."

NL: Pim Fortuyn had led the Livable Netherlands Party, one of several far-right parties across Europe. He left the Livable Netherlands Party, but the Livable Netherlands Party is expected to win some two dozen seats in national elections slated for May 15. Pim Fortuyn List Party spokesman Mat Herben said his party's leader would have wanted the elections to go ahead.

TAPE: CUT 2, MAT HARBEN, :08

"It is in the best interest of everybody that the elections should be held in a very calm and dignified way."

NL: Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President for Foreign Policy and Defense Studies at the Cato Institute, says the Dutch elections will go ahead as scheduled. But he doesn't think the shooting will affect the outcome of the voting.

TAPE: CUT 3, CARPENTER, :20

"First of all, I don't think it's going to have a dramatic effect on the elections in the Netherlands. The assassination will probably strengthen the hands of respectable right wing forces because hard right forces are not going to have a far right alternative in the upcoming election."

NL: In the Netherlands and throughout Europe, rightist and far-right parties have made political gains. In France this past weekend, President Jacques Chirac [ZHAK SHEE-RAHK] defeated far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen [ZAH mah-REE leh-PEHN] in a closely-watched election. France and all of Europe was stunned when Le Pen ousted former Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin [lee-oh-nell zho-SPAN(h)] in the first round of voting.

TAPE: CUT 4, CHIRAC, :16, ESTAB, TAKE UNDER FOR:

(IN FRENCH)

NL: Conservative President Chirac was the beneficiary of millions of left-leaning French voters who felt it critical to block Le Pen. The French president earned only twenty percent of the vote in the first round with 28 percent of the French electorate staying home. That was a record low for an incumbent French president. The Socialist mayor of the French city of Villemagne [veel-MAHN-yuh], Alain Boudain, illustrated how many leftist French voters felt about the election when he set up a fake disinfectant shower outside the voting booth. The "shower", he said, was given to voters after they cast their ballots to symbolize the choice between the conservative Chirac and the far-right Le Pen.

TAPE: CUT 5, BOUDAIN, :12

"It means they considered either of the two votes not clean and if they want to keep clean themselves, they have to be disinfected."

NL: For his part, Jean Marie Le Pen campaigned like a man with little to lose, ridiculing his opposition.

TAPE: CUT 6, LE PEN, :14, ESTAB, FADE UNDER AND OUT BEHIND:

NL: But the candidacy of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was considered by many Frenchmen as a racist and anti-Semite, was no laughing matter for Europeans. Mr. Le Pen, who had run for president three times before, got nearly six million votes in the second round of the French election. In the first round, he and another far-right candidate pulled five and a half million. Philip Gordon, Senior Fellow and Director of the Brookings Center on the United States and France, told journalists that Mr. Le Pen's showing in the election does not presage a rise in far-right political strength.

TAPE: CUT 7, GORDON, :18

"There was a slight rise for the extreme right in France. But the fact that Le Pen made it to the second round gives us the impression of a much greater shift than actually took place. So, over the spectrum here, we get a rise of less than three percentage points over fourteen years. That's not what you would call a surge."

NL: Mr. Gordon says that while analysts were focusing on a perceived rise of far right candidates in France, other political developments were ignored.

TAPE: CUT 8, GORDON, :32

"The rise of the far right, to the extent that it happened is not the only story here. In fact, in some ways it's not even the most interesting. Just to note some others for our discussion, I think the fragmentation of the political system is just as interesting and important. We had a record sixteen candidates this time, and seven of them got over five percent of the vote. So you had a real explosion of the political system in fragmentation, particularly on the left. But that's where it was most dramatic, where Jospin lost two and a half million votes compared to last time."

NL: As Philip Gordon suggested, much of the strength of French far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le-Pen came from the collapse of the Socialist Party of former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Columnist E.J. Dionne, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that even as it fragmented, the votes for leftist candidates outpolled those for the right.

TAPE: CUT 9, DIONNE, :27

"What you saw was the collapse of the kind of central power on the Left of the French Socialist Party. If you add it up, all of the votes for left candidates, or candidates that might be seen as left candidates, they actually outpolled Jospin in this election. And again, it's important to emphasize that Le Pen would not be where he is today if the Socialist vote hadn't fragmented."

NL: The results of the French election may be applicable to other European countries and to the United States, says E.J. Dionne. He says the first round of voting in France shows the dangers to politicians who espouse neither conservatism nor liberalism, but instead, the so-called "Third Way" of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former President Bill Clinton.

TAPE: CUT 10, DIONNE, :40

"The failure of Jospin, I think is not only a lesson for the French left but really raises problems for the whole moderate left project in Western Europe, and for that matter, in the United States. It's a problem for 'Third Way' politics. In practice, Jospin governed very much as a 'Third Way' politician. In truth, there wasn't a vast difference between the way Jospin governed and the way Tony Blair governed."

NL: In France, as in other European countries, the effects of immigration played a key role in the rekindling of far-right candidacies. Analysts criticized both parties in France for not addressing the issues of either crime or the assimilation of immigrants into European cultures. Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute believes that if conservative parties do not offer an attractive alternative to Europe's socialist and liberal parties, they may suffer the fate of being overtaken by the parties of the far right.

TAPE: CUT 11, CARPENTER, :34

"Far right parties have done the best in places like Austria and France where the establishment conservative parties have been the least responsive and the most corrupt. And I think in many respects, this is a protest vote against conservative parties that are indistinguishable from their socialist, left of center opposition. If the conservative parties become more responsiblenot just on the crime and immigration issuesbut generally to favor policies that lead to economic growth, I think that is what is sadly lacking in a number of the European countries. And it feeds the discontent against immigrants."

NL: That view is echoed by the Brookings Institution's Ivo Daalder, who says that as established rightist parties gain support across the continent, they may turn to far-right parties for help in achieving a majority.

TAPE: CUT 12, DAALDER, :35

"The far right has come in or near power as supporters of center-right governments throughout much of Europe. In Italy, in Portugal, in Norway, in Denmark, they have either a seat in power or they are directly responsible for a parliamentary majority of the center right governments that are there. So you have a natural swing and because the center-right is starting to take over politically in Europe and needs support from somewhere, they look to the far right in order to sustain themselves in government."

NL: Opposition to globalization and the pressures to conform to rules and regulations of the European Union may have also been a factor in French voting and has been observed in other elections across the continent. Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute says voters are seeking a more decentralized approach to European integration and this view is not just affecting far-right parties but parties on the right in general.

TAPE: CUT 15, CARPENTER, :25

"There is some resentment against the high-handed and arbitrary policies of the European Union bureaucracy. And that's not reflected only in support for hard-right parties, but I think it's also reflected in support for dissident elements in some of the more establisihed conservative parties."

NL: So as Europeans go to the polls in legislative elections planned for this year, political observers may learn if the trend to the right is the one that is left at the end of the day, or the trend will shift back to the left, making it the right one for Europe.

For this edition of Dateline, I'm Neal Lavon in Washington.

MUSIC: THE ONE ON THE RIGHT IS ON THE LEFT, JOHNNY CASH TO TIME.