The president of Europe's largest coalition of far-left parties has told the European Newsroom (enr) that fighting the far right will be a priority in the forthcoming European Parliament elections.
“Fighting the far-right is a moral and a cultural obligation," Walter Baier told the enr in an interview this week. "There can be no compromises with the agenda of hatred, of anti-Semitism, of scapegoating the migrants," he said.
The 70-year-old Austrian has been president of the European Parliament's Party of the European Left (PEL) since December 2022. The PEL is the largest faction of the 37-member far-left bloc in the European Parliament, where pollsters predict a far-right surge in the elections to be held in June.
According to Baier, fighting the European far right requires strong social politics, respect for the interests of employees, the liberation of young people from economic insecurity and guaranteed access to decent housing.
The PEL's manifesto “is written from the perspective of the working class and young people,” said Baier, the former head of Austria’s communist party.
”It cannot be that large parts of our societies are worried about heating their homes during the winter or that they are afraid of the necessary ecological transformation,” he added.
Baier said that to combat the extreme right, it is essential to address the ”social interests of the working classes."
Climate change must also not be forgotten in the fight for social justice, he said. “Ecological reorganization must go hand in hand with the reduction of social inequalities,” Baier said.
Last month, the PEL chose Baier to be its so-called lead candidate in the elections. He will visit around ten EU member states to campaign, he said.
In principle, that makes him the faction's choice for president of the European Commission, an office currently held by German conservative Ursula von der Leyen.
But in practice, the elections won't decide who gets the top job.
Instead, the leaders of the EU's 27 member states will meet behind closed doors to choose a sole candidate - most likely von der Leyen - and then ask the parliament to confirm the appointment.
Last time, von der Leyen - who was no group's lead candidate in the 2019 elections - was confirmed by only the slimmest of margins.
This time, she is the lead candidate of the centre-right European People's Party, but she appears unlikely to win support from PEL representatives. Baier said “she is not the right person” to implement the social policies his group wants to see.
A RIGHT TO DECENT HOUSING
Baier wants to establish decent housing as "a fundamental right in the primary law of the European Union."
He said fulfilling that right means imposing limits on rents and creating a European fund to help municipalities and cooperatives build houses.
“We would like the European Union to invest in the housing sector." The PEL also wants "strict and rigid regulation" of platforms like Airbnb, Baier said.
In addition, the group wants an EU directive “that obliges member states to introduce legal limits on rents and to ban fixed-term tenancies and forced evictions from primary residences.”
TIME FOR UKRAINE TO NEGOTIATE
Baier echoed Pope Francis' call for Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war with Russia, which launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“I believe helping the Ukrainian people means now making attempts to end the war,” said Baier.
Baier underlined that his faction – whose 26 members include Germany’s Die Linke, France’s Communists and Greece’s Syriza – “absolutely condemned the Russian aggression” in its manifesto.
He wants the EU "to take diplomatic efforts to start negotiations to achieve a ceasefire and to achieve the withdrawal of the Russian troops,” Baier said.
“In this regard, I fully support what Pope Francis was saying. Now it’s the time to end the war, and now it’s the time to negotiate and stop killing,” he said.
In an interview broadcast earlier this month, the Argentine pontiff urged Kiev to “raise the white flag and negotiate.”
The Ukrainian government reacted with fury. The Vatican insisted the words “white flag” were intended to mean a cessation of hostilities, not a surrender.
LEFTISTS CAN BRING WESTERN BALKANS INTO THE EU
Baier also said leftists in the EU can help Western Balkan countries that want to join the bloc to meet the membership criteria.
He recalled the Copenhagen criteria, which were set in 1993 as basic conditions for EU accession, emphasizing the importance of respect for human rights and the rule of law.
“I would also add respect for trade union rights and labour rights. I think that the European Left Party, which is in contact with left forces in different countries of the Western Balkans, can play a constructive role in creating these conditions, which are laid down in the Copenhagen criteria,” Baier pointed out.
