This article appears in the January 17, 2025 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Romania, Austria, Croatia:
The Writing Is On the Wall for EU Elites
[Print version of this article]
Jan. 12—Elon Musk’s confrontational tweets about German, British, and Italian politics have triggered protests of “interference” from those countries’ liberal establishments. However, irrespective of their content, Musk is simply paying them back in their own coins: For decades now, European liberals have been interfering in U.S. politics, openly campaigning for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Thus, their protest reeks of hypocrisy.
But that’s not the only point. It reflects a wave of governments being upset in electoral races in Europe, from Germany to France, and from Belgium to Romania, even more so in the new situation created by the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President. As the perspective of a negotiated peace in Ukraine becomes more and more concrete, the political and moral bankruptcy of EU governments and politicians who insisted that this would only be possible after “the defeat of Russia” is increasingly evident. Voters are punishing those whose decisions have led Europe close to a military and economic catastrophe. The most recent cases of this are in Austria, Romania, and Croatia, making clear that large cracks are developing across the entire spectrum of Western governments.
The Austrian case is most interesting, because it could be a precursor to what might happen in Germany, where early elections will be held on Feb. 23. In Austria, all the established parties had built a cordon sanitaire around the FPÖ (Freedom Party), similar to what has been done in France around the Rassemblement National and in Germany around the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The tactic had succeeded in containing their path to power through alleged commission of so-called political crimes, such as “neo-Nazism” and “being Putin agents.” The FPÖ opposes Austria’s involvement in arming Ukraine, and calls for restoring purchases of Russian gas. And FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl became a member of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s “Patriots for Europe” grouping in the European Parliament last year.
However, the attempt to contain the FPÖ appears to have failed when on Jan. 4 the liberal party, the NEOS, opted out of the game, and the ÖVP (People’s Party) declared its readiness to form a coalition with the FPÖ, which had received the most votes (28.8%) in the elections last Sept. 29. According to traditional political mathematics, this latest move implies that the FPÖ’s Kickl should be the new Chancellor.
If the attempt to form an FPÖ-ÖVP government fails, Austria will have to hold new elections. But since the month-long chaos has increased the popularity of the Freedom Party, it could gain 35% or more of the vote. All this has caused high anxiety in Berlin, Paris, and Brussels as it underscores just how fragile the political stranglehold over the EU is becoming.
In the case of Romania, the EU has attempted to quash the Nov. 24 presidential election results, where anti-establishment candidate Călin Georgescu came in first with over 22% of the vote. Immediately, Brussels and the Romanian establishment came out attacking Georgescu as “far-right” and a puppet of the Kremlin, demanding that the elections be annulled because of alleged irregularities and “Russian interference.” Romania’s Constitutional Court soon submitted and postponed the Dec. 8 second round of voting, in which Georgescu was practically guaranteed to win the Presidency.
The Bucharest Court of Appeals held hearings on Dec. 30 regarding the allegations. However, despite the unprecedented move to suspend the democratic process, none of the Romanian governmental institutions were able to present a shred of actual evidence of Russian interference or electoral irregularities.
It’s clear there is a legal coup d’état underway to prevent Romania’s rejection of war and economic collapse from manifesting itself. And it’s clear it is being run from outside the country. President Iohannis himself stated on Dec. 18 that Romania had had “significant support from strategic partners,” i.e., Brussels, in “discovering” the alleged offenses. The Court of Appeals rejected the appeal by Georgescu and others on Dec. 31, allowing the annulment of the election to proceed, and the case will next go to the High Court of Cassation and Justice.
Croatia is yet another example of this revolt, as incumbent President Zoran Milanović—who has been critical of NATO, the EU, sanctions on Russia, and military support for Ukraine—has been re-elected as President. His landslide re-election Jan. 12 with over 74% represents a continued major rejection within Croatia of the EU liberal model, as all his opponents have repeatedly labelled him as “pro-Russian” and other insults. Not surprisingly, on Jan. 8 the London Centre for Information Resilience came out with a report claiming that “Russian bots launched a ‘pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign’ on social media to support anti-NATO Croatian presidential candidate” Milanović.
As European and Western governments generally continue to fall, it is telling that their responses tend to be very illiberal, attempting to suppress the obvious will of voters. How long these governments will retain power, and whether what replaces them will actually resist the disastrous policies of Global NATO and Brussels, remains up in the air. However, as Friedrich Schiller’s poem “The Cranes of Ibykus” so powerfully illustrates, there are periods when the power of natural law can no longer be suppressed. We have clearly entered such a time.
