Nationalism has defeated the idea of ​​Europe

So this is the situation: the French far-right party National Samling has more seats in the European Parliament than the whole of Sweden.

Not that I want to spray a huff in the rush of victory you can feel at the Swedish election result – a red-green superlative win over the Tido parties and a wonderfully flat fall for the Sweden Democrats. But there is no doubt that it seems strangely divided when the Swedish perspective is imposed on the broader European perspective.

I don't know How many mandates were given to the German Development Agency (AFD) Germany, but it may be more than Sweden even there. Italy's brethren, direct descendants of Mussolini's days, will also stand stronger in the EU Parliament than the entire Swedish delegation.

Poland's fairly small far-right party, Law and Justice, may win more seats than the Swedish Social Democrats in parliament.

The basic idea of ​​the European Union has always been to create an independent European consciousness among the citizens of the Union. The European Union and the European Parliament must be something else, something greater, than the sum of the interests of individual countries.

In practice it doesn't work at all. In any case, the parliamentary elections in the European Union only constitute a measure of how public opinion appears in each individual country.

In the closing stages of the Swedish election campaign The moderates launched with great enthusiasm, as if they had come up with something revolutionary and vote-winning, the idea of ​​Team Sweden. They wanted to join forces with the S and SD in Parliament to fight for Swedish interests.

In plain language, this means that European democracy and the idea of ​​Europe itself are used as an argument to promote nationalism and erase the scope of right and left: Sweden is a small village on the edge of an empire that must now jointly fight for its interests, regardless of whether you are a worker or a capitalist.

Fortunately, this Swedish team had no impact. But it bears witness to the paradoxes that the idea of ​​Europe can generate. I am glad that neither the red nor the green parties, not even the Center Party, have shown the slightest interest in Team Sweden.

However, it is inevitable The largest and most populous country that sets the tone for the European country. Since the United Kingdom left the European Union, the core of the union has been made up of Germany, France, Italy and Spain. When it rains in these great countries, we eventually have to open umbrellas also in Sweden, or in Finland where the left has been doing well now.

I enjoy the success of the red and green parties in Sweden, and at the same time I stand under the umbrella that protects me from the rain of right-wing European success.

Voter turnout is generally stagnant at a low level, with the popular classes still harboring the weakest European impulses. In Sweden, voter turnout declined on Sunday.

During my life, I have probably visited most European countries, but I have never felt European. What I loved, of course, was the European diversity: a day spent in Prague is profoundly different from a day spent in Barcelona. But what I really sympathize with across the EU are the labor movements, the left-wing parties, the green parties.

On the contrary, I have it with all my heart Rejecting colonialism and global capitalism that emerged from this Europe. Here, over the centuries, terrible elites have formed, elites that still exercise enormous economic power in the world and that make me feel less about Europe than I do about the poor populations of Asia, Africa, and South America.

I am a socialist, not a European. This anti-European sentiment will never leave me, no matter how rationally I believe that the EU can play a decisive progressive role on the climate issue.

Thus I stand days after the European Union parliamentary elections, smiling in relief at the success of the Red and Green Party in Sweden, at the same time as the miserable European rain falls on the umbrella.