BRUSSELS – The European Union was “afraid” of Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon during the 2019 European parliamentary election – but those fears were allayed ahead of the 2024 vote, European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said.
referring to Bannon’s efforts to make “Clubs” for supporting far-right Populists like the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and France’s Marine Le Pen ran in the last EU election, Jourova said, adding that Brussels was genuinely concerned that their views would take flight.
“We were appalled by Steve Bannon organizing a pan-European campaign involving Mr. Wilders, Madame Le Pen and everyone else – useful partners and willing allies everywhere,” Jarova told reporters at a gathering Thursday night. “
“It was still a combination of the migration crisis, terrorism, and Trump’s influence,” Jourova said. “It was also the Cambridge Analytica case” – revelations that the infamous British data analytics firm illegally accessed people’s social media data to target them in several elections and linked to Trump’s successful 2016 US presidential campaign. “It was also a time of increased disinformation, targeted disinformation campaigns – these were things that were relatively new to us.”
Bannon, “with his simplistic vision of Europe, can easily trigger something that others who know Europe can use as a platform. That was my fear,” Jurova said. But this did not happen. And I believe that something similar will happen now.
Jarova, who is the European commissioner for values and transparency, said she believes Russia’s war on Ukraine will make Europeans a safer bet in the 2024 election, during which citizens of the EU’s 27 member states vote for the European Parliament. Vote to elect members.
Jourova said, “I don’t think there will be a rise of extremist parties – far right or left.” “Because people see now, especially in times of crisis, this is not the time to experiment.”
asked that revelations Whether the issue of corruption and influence-buying by countries such as Qatar and Morocco in the European Parliament will fuel extremist sentiment in the ballot, Jourova said it was “hard to say”, as the election was still a year away.
But, he added, “If I take a broad picture, when people see politicians in prison, there are two instincts: ‘They’re all rotten, they’re all bad, we knew it.’ But then when people see that the system works, and when corruption cases are closed and people are punished, I think the irony is that this kind of scam also increases people’s faith in democratic institutions. could.”