Frank Furedi on Europe's political culture

"It would be false to claim that the political culture of Western Europe is irreconcilable with that of Eastern Europe," British sociologist Frank Furedi stresses in the newspaper's Europe magazine. He points out that in both Eastern and Western Europe not all citizens endorse the EU's philosophy of a multicultural society. "It's not just in Poland and Slovakia that there are right-wing extremist and populist parties. The right-wing extremist NPD registered a major success in the state elections in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, and there are large bases of support for right-wing nationalist parties in Belgium and even in France... The reason why European bureaucracy reacts so sensitively to Eastern European populism is because it expresses values that also exist in Western Europe, albeit in a more civilised form. The EU feels safer confronting nationalist and populist forces in Bratislava than in 'old' Europe because it's easier to discredit the former owing to their ties with right-wing xenophobes."

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