Denys Pilash: In the left group of the European Parliament, it is the Nordic eco-socialist parties that take the clearest pro-Ukrainian position. And they were the ones who strengthened the most in the last European elections. In particular, your Left Alliance tripled its result to 17.3%, and you personally set a national record for the number of votes cast for you as a Member of the European Parliament. What explains this? What is your secret?

Li Andersson: I do think it’s important to point out that the French left and also the Portuguese left have also voted in support of Ukraine, even on arms, so it’s not only about the Nordic left parties. We have less discussions on it in the Nordic countries and we also have voted in favor of long range weapons or missiles to be used, so Ukraine could use it on Russian territory. That was clearly more dividing in the rest of the left. 

If you look at the Nordic countries – they are not superpowers. People try to make geopolitics only in a balance of superpowers, so it’s all about the US and Russia, you could not really fit other countries into that kind of context or way of analyzing the world, you don’t really give much weight to what Ukrainians or Baltic citizens and the Baltic states want. Coming from smaller Nordic countries, we have the same kind of analysis as the Ukrainian left on what Russian imperialism is and the importance of supporting the ones who are having to fight against it in the worst way imaginable. We also work a lot together, and this cooperation is beneficial. Right at the start of the invasion, when many parties were having a discussion about how to position ourselves on these issues, our positioning was supported by the close cooperation that we have. 

Some leftists are stuck in a kind of dogmatism of their own tradition. You can hear a lot of this kind of peace rhetoric in the European left that is something people just repeat, because they feel that this rhetoric has always been, it’s a part of their identity to speak and think in a certain way. And the danger of this, in the case of Ukraine, is that it actually leads to a political conclusion which does not take into consideration the realities of Ukraine and the fight against Russian imperialism in any way. I know I oversimplify it, but we witness over and over again this kind of logic – “guns are bad, so we oppose them”, or “we don’t want a larger war, so we oppose guns, for there to be no escalation”. The Nordic Red Green parties have done a lot of work in modernizing themselves, overstepping this dogmatism and now we have the modern red green analysis of the world and of societies. It is easier for us not to be stuck in a certain dogmatic tradition, at least in this case.

There are two reasons why we have good election results: one that has to do with the work that we have done, and another how bad the work of the far right is. The left in the Nordic countries benefited a lot from having a very logical and consequent line when it comes to international law and human rights. So all of these parties have been very vocal when it comes to Israel’s breaches of international law, very clear in our support with the Palestinian people, and very clear when it comes to Russia’s breaches of international law, and clear on our solidarity with Ukraine. And this is logical. It’s an absolutely logical line of reasoning, if you say you are in favor of international law and human rights, and I think that the voters are. Also, they agreed on our analysis and position on this. And you can see how the right wing in the Nordics are, of course, very anti Russia, and they condemn Russia’s violation of international law. When it comes to Israel, they don’t do the same. They are not logical in their line of reasoning. And then you see some parts of the left that’s very clear on Israel, but not very clear on Russia or Ukraine. The Nordic left has done good work on this. 

And of course, in the European election we also talk a lot about climate change, workers rights, having an agenda that combines traditional themes of the left when it comes to the labor market, when it comes to social rights, social services, with an ambitious line on climate and environmental policy. 

Were the results of the European Parliament elections in Northern Europe also affected by voters’ disappointment with right-wing governments that pursued anti-social policies?

Yes, the other reason was, as I said, that at the time of the election, Finland and Italy were the only countries in the EU where the far right was in government. In Sweden, they are not in government, but they support the party of the government. So they are almost in government, because they even have offices in the government buildings. They vote for their budgets, but they were not given Minister posts. And in Finland and Sweden, people have seen what kind of politics these parties do when they have power. So in a sad way, we are kind of ahead of the development of Europe. Because, in France, Germany, Austria, Spain, even Portugal and so on you can see far right parties really growing bigger everywhere but we already saw that, and now we see what they actually do when they get into power. 

In the Finnish context, this has meant the worst austerity policies this country has seen in modern history. I was party leader for eight years, so I did a lot of different election campaigns, and I’ve never met so many crying human beings as I did during the European election campaign, because they were so worried about the direction of our own country, and also some were just worried about how they will make ends meet, because there’s been really severe cuts in social support, especially for workers with low income, for poor families, and also for unemployed. And on top of that, they have also pushed through labor market reforms. I call them Thatcherite. I think Thatcherism describes the far right in Finland very well. So they have restricted the right to strike. They are going to make it easier to fire people. They are pushing for reforms which will mean that collective bargaining coverage will drop. They are also pushing for reforms which will set a cap on wage increase for public sector workers. In the long run this kind of stuff will make a structural change of the Finnish labor market, which will really harm both the possibilities of the trade unions to defend the workers, but also real wage increase. 

And also in Sweden, they have a huge crisis in health care. The government is more interested in giving tax breaks for rich people than giving enough resources for a health care system in crisis. We see a lot of the same, except the labor market policies there, because the trade unions and the employers keep it to themselves, but you see a lot of the same kind of attacks at the public sector, then, of course, combined with restriction on immigration, combined with attacks against public services and a lot of other things. In Finland, they passed an asylum law that was contrary to international law and EU law. 

And our main message in the European election was for people to make sure that the same kind of shift of power to the far right won’t happen on European level, because we have already seen what it means in Finland. Europe has not. That was a very successful message. Unfortunately, even though the Nordics did well, the rest of the European Left, maybe not so much. 

So we have now the shift of power to the far right. At the start, it looked like they would not get influence in politics, in the European Parliament, so that the court of the Senator would still be in force. Now, during the last two months, we have seen that this is not the case. So EPP that’s the mainstream right wing are willing to make majorities with the far right and the extreme right. So when it benefits them, they are willing to use this majority to push true laws on a national level as well. The left, we were not surprised that the right wing would do that. But I think in the Social Democrats and the greens and the liberals, they are shocked. And now the big question on the European level, is that, will these groups be willing to form a strategy on how we counter this right wing development, to cut off their force. Are they willing to work with pro democratic European political groups that support Ukraine, or are they actually willing to govern with the support of Meloni and Le Pen and ultimately, of Deutschland, like these kinds of parties and Fidesz that are sitting in the far right groups.

Yeah, so basically, these right wing governments did the same social labor policies that our economic bloc in our own government is also pushing forward. You now chair the European Parliament Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, what can you say about the ways of improving the situation with labor rights both in the EU and Ukraine?

I know there’s a big difference in the Nordics. If you look at Denmark and Sweden, the traditional Nordic labor market model is still working there, which means that the government doesn’t really interfere that much, but they leave it to the labor market parties to decide for themselves and negotiate and so on. In Finland, this system is already broken. In most European countries, you don’t have that kind of Nordic labor market model, so it’s more government driven. And the Finnish trade unions used to say that the EU is the workers best friend. Because so far in their point of view, the legislation that has been coming from the EU level has been better than what the national governments, the right wing government, actually say here. They would not say it in Sweden or Denmark, because they still have the power there. 

But I think for all of the other countries, this is something to reflect on, because that means for me that there still has been space in European politics for progressive policies when it comes to workers rights. I was coming from this terrible right wing government situation in Finland. I was really positively surprised when I studied in the European Parliament in the committee by how positively the commission was writing about collective bargaining. Even the right wing groups in the committee are kind of in favor of it. So I think we as the left should push on the EU level for as much progressive labor market policy as possible. I think that is one area where it would be difficult for the far right.

And we should also work together with Ukrainian trade unions and social movements. Because for me, I don’t know how you feel about this, but for me, this whole discussion and prospect of Ukrainian EU membership is something that we should use to push for improvements in the labor market legislation, use this EU argument that for Ukraine’s EU membership to become reality you need to enact labor legislation that gets collective bargaining coverage as high as possible. The EU also does a lot of workers’ health and safety, dangerous substances, regulates the amounts and so on. So I think that there could be a lot of cooperation through that theme for the left working in the European Parliament and for the Ukrainian social movements and trade.

Li Andersson

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