The Hague (AFP) – Eurosceptics were triumphant Friday after Britain voted to leave the EU and swiftly demanded referendums in their own countries in what could sound the death knell for the European project.
“Yes, I think this is the end of EU. There is no way back from that. The EU has already passed away already,” Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders told AFP.
“The genie cannot go back into the bottle, the patient has already passed away.”
He vowed to make a Dutch referendum on whether to leave the European Union a central plank in his Freedom Party’s (PVV) campaign for parliamentary elections due by mid-March.
Britons voted 52 percent to 48 percent to quit the bloc, a margin of more than one million votes, according to final results from Thursday’s referendum.
“Victory for Freedom! As I have been asking for years, we must now have the same referendum in France and EU countries,” French far-right leader Marine Le Pen wrote on Twitter shortly after the results were announced.
“Europe will be at the heart of the next (French) presidential election” in April 2017, she told a later press conference.
Since last year, polls have consistently shown support for Wilders’ PVV party as Europe has struggled with its worst migration crisis since World War II.
And if held today, polls say the party would win 31 seats, more than doubling the 15 it currently holds, to become the largest party in the 150-seat parliament.
– ‘You need national identity’ –
Speaking to AFP, Wilders vowed that if he becomes prime minister next year, he would form a coalition government with parties with whom “a deal has been made that there would be a referendum.
“So I would govern with parties that would want such a referendum.”
There have been growing fears the British vote could trigger a domino effect, thereby threatening the core of the European project.
“The EU is failing, the EU is dying, I hope that we’ve got the first brick out of the wall,” said Britain’s jubilant top anti-EU campaigner Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party.
As EU leaders gathered for crisis talks in Brussels, EU President Donald Tusk rushed to offer assurances the bloc was “determined to keep our unity.”
Wilders dismissed concerns about a return to instability and strife.
“Nobody wants another war, and nobody wants not to cooperate or trade with another,” he told AFP.
But he argued that over the past decades the EU had moved away from its founding ideals of economic cooperation to become “a political project with the transfer of sovereign rights.”
“I believe that a democracy, a true democracy, needs a nation state. You need a national identity you need to rally around a flag, you need to be in charge of your own borders and your own budget.”
– ‘Now it’s our turn’ –
Italy’s most prominent far-right politician, Matteo Salvini also said his country should follow Britain’s example.
“Cheers to the bravery of free citizens,” the leader of the anti-immigration, anti-EU Northern League wrote on Twitter. “Heart, head and pride beat lies, threats and blackmail. THANKS UK, now it is our turn #Brexit”.
There were similar reactions from other European eurosceptic parties:
— In Denmark, the populist Danish People’s Party (DPP), which has been calling for a renegotiation of its EU accords, hailed what it called a “courageous” British decision. But it urged everyone to “keep their heads” and wait to see what happened next.
— Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the Freedom Party of Austria, demanded that European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker resign “out of decency and out of respect for a better future for Europe”.
— The extreme leftwing French presidential candidate Jean Luc Melenchon said the lesson to the EU was “either we change it or we leave”.
— The leader of Germany’s rightwing populist AfD Frauke Petry said Brexit was a warning that “if the EU does not abandon its quasi-socialist experiment of ever-greater integration then the European people will follow the Brits and take back their sovereignty.”
— Portuguese EuroMP Joao Ferreira from the Communist Party said it “opened a new dimension in the fight by those who have struggled for decades against an European Union of big powers.”
— Sweden’s small Left Party called for the country’s government to renegotiate the terms of its adhesion to the EU.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.