NEWS ANALYSIS : Voter Disillusionment a Boon to European Fringe Parties

Emile Verrijken is convinced the future is his, and if he’s right, Europe is in for big changes.

He is a rotund, middle-aged lawyer with a confident air and a quick smile who won a parliamentary seat in Belgium’s national elections Sunday. He is also part of a disparate but growing group of political outsiders who are challenging mainstream leaders in several West European countries with increasing success.

Their biggest asset is voter disillusionment as governments fail to resolve the gut problems of the post-Cold War era: structural unemployment, immigration, environmental controls and rising budget troubles. Their goal is to unseat the long-established, moderate parties that built the region’s enormous economic success and guaranteed its political stability during much of the post-World War II era. Their politics range from xenophobia and nationalism to pacifism.

“This is a very rich Europe, but it’s also one that’s very frightened,” Verrijken said, explaining the popularity of his Flemish Bloc, a party that wants independence for Flanders, the Flemish-speaking region of Belgium, and the expulsion of any immigrant, illegal or not, who has been unemployed for six months.

While the Flemish Bloc--which campaigned on the slogan “Our People First”--didn’t make the major gains nationally that were widely predicted in advance of Sunday’s elections, it did capture more than a quarter of the vote here in the country’s second-largest city and managed to increase marginally its representation in the national Parliament.

Against expectations, established parties held their own Sunday, but they did so more with a sense of escape than victory.

In the final days of the campaign, Belgium’s King Albert II, Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene and editorial writers of the country’s major newspapers pleaded with voters to stay within the mainstream.

With a major scandal engulfing one of Belgium’s main parties, pre-election polls found that more than half of those questioned had lost confidence in the political process.

A similar mood of apathy and public disillusionment accompanied the initial round of last month’s French presidential elections, when, for the first time ever, the combined votes of the two leading candidates failed to top 50%.

The main reason: an unexpectedly strong showing by National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who won 15% of the vote by campaigning mainly on a pledge to expel France’s 3 million immigrants. His total, together with that of another fringe candidate, Philippe de Villiers, equaled the first-round showing of the eventual winner, Jacques Chirac.

In Germany, the environmentalist, pacifist Greens emerged from two state elections 10 days ago holding the balance of power in both Bremen and North Rhine-Westphalia, a development heightening the prospect that they could easily find themselves in a similar position nationally before too long.

The Greens doubled their share of the vote--to 10%--in North Rhine-Westphalia, the country’s most populous state, while the fast-fading Free Democrats crashed out of their 11th state legislature in nearly two years, a losing streak that raises serious doubts about their ability to continue their traditional role as kingmaker at the national level.

“Things are going to be different in Germany,” said Chancellor Helmut Kohl after the vote. His three-party coalition depends on the Free Democrats for its majority.

While some members of Kohl’s Christian Democrats have already tried to stretch out a hand to the Greens, the environmentalists are likely to choose to work with the opposition Social Democrats if they get the chance.

But in German elections too there was voter apathy. The Greens’ success came amid the lowest voter turnouts since World War II in both states.

Whether these alternative forces will continue to gain strength and eventually win a share of power as they did in Italy last year remains unclear. But there are few signs of any solutions to the problems driving voter dissatisfaction.