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ʻPro-independenceʼ wave crosses EU member states
UK premier announces "full sovereignty" for 2019 · Visegrad Bloc calls for power "balance", rising far right parties in France, Netherlands promise referendums on EU membership
A "fully independent" country again
The fact is that the "leave" victory in the referendum on UK's EU membership was largely linked to the emergence of a party, the UKIP, that has the "independence" word in its very name. The UKIP now has a negative trend in opinion polls, but who worries? It has already achieved the goal for which it was born: to hear Prime Minister Theresa May say "we are going to be a fully independent, sovereign country -a country that is no longer part of a political union with supranational institutions that can override national parliaments and courts." May yesterday said she expects the UK to leave the EU by summer 2019. Many in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar do not want it.
Orbán: refugee rejection as symbol of sovereignty
Theresa May pronounced those words the same day that Hungarian voters where choosing in referendum whether their country should be accepting or not a refugee quota as decided by Brussels. Turnout did not reach the required threshold, but out of those who voted, 98% did so by rejecting to host refugees in the country without prior consent of the Parliament of Hungary. Nationalist conservative Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán put the vote's focal point in the defense of Hungary's sovereignty and independence vis a vis the EU. Orbán' government is raising fences at the borders of neighboring countries so as to stop the passage of migrants, yet -and even if only symbolically- it is tearing apart Hungarian communities living there -such as Vojvodina- from their kin in Hungary.
Visegrad Countries' "balance"
Orbán's plans are more or less shared by the other three Visegrad Pact countries -Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. All of them often insist that a "balance" must be kept between European integration and "national sovereignty", in the words of Polish minister of Foreign Affairs Witold Waszczykowski. Earlier this year the Polish government indeed had a bitter dispute with Brussels about a probe by the European Commission on the country's democratic standards. The ruling Party of Law and Justice approved resolutions speaking about the "sovereignty of Poland". Prime Minister Beata Szydlo warned: "I’m a European, but before all, I’m a Pole."
Dreaming of Frexit...
After the Brexit referendum, National Front leader Marine Le Pen insisted once again that it is in France's interests to leave the EU too. "We can again become a free, proud and independent people," Le Pen told party supporters just one month ago. Le Pen has promised a referendum on EU membership is she elected as French president in 2017. All opinion polls predict Le Pen will make it into the election's second round, probably to be defeated either by Nicolas Sarkozy (by a narrower margin) or Alain Juppé (by a wider margin), Les Republicains' best placed candidates. Sarkozy, by the way, does "not exclude" a referendum on the EU, but the former president places it a scenario of a "refounding" of the bloc. Meanwhile, stateless nations' parties are unanimous in the need to remain in the EU.
… and Nexit
Far right Freedom Party is leading polls to the upcoming 2017 Dutch parliamentary election. Party leader Geert Wilders said in June: "We want be in charge of our own country, our own money, our own borders, and our own immigration policy." Wilders, however, will be far from an absolute majority, and he will likely have a hard time to find enough parties in Parliament to take forward his proposal.