Europe in 2016

Good afternoon, Memo readers. With the holidays approaching, the Europe Memo will be taking a break until January 2016. As we say goodbye to the old year, here are a few of the themes that stand out on a Continent where events are moving fast amid unpredictable changes.

Look East: As the Balkans reprise their historic role as a conduit of mass movements between East and West -- movement being fenced out in turn by bordering EU states -- European diplomacy in the region is kicking into high gear. NATO is bringing tiny Montenegro into its embrace, while momentum is building for Serbian accession to the European Union (and Bosnia-Herzegovina seeks to accelerate its own accession). Russia will attempt to play a spoiler role through shared cultural affinities in Orthodox countries such as Serbia, as well as its energy dominance. Within the European Union itself, the rule of the Law and Justice party in Poland bears watching. Was the election of the far-right party a signal that Poland will go the way of Viktor Orban-led Hungary, or was it just a blip in the country's political evolution -- the act of an electorate fed up with a leadership that had worn out its welcome? Already there have been protests across the country, and indications that Poles are concerned about the democratic direction of their current leadership.

Brexit: Of all the crises the European Union faces, Britain's potential exit from the Union is the most baffling. Optimism abounded in the aftermath of the Tories' sweeping victory in May's general election, but the glacial pace of negotiations on Britain's EU membership has given the campaign to leave Europe a considerable boost. In Brussels this week, European leaders agreed to push back the process again, until February. The goal was to bring the United Kingdom to a referendum on the matter in 2016, but at this pace it may well be pushed back to 2017. Britain's choice will be crucial to the fate of Europe's unity.

Will Russia's economy hold? While embroiled in two strategically inconclusive war theaters and shadowboxing with Western institutions in the Baltics, Balkans, and Caucasus, the Russian economy is under severe strain. Food inflation sits between 25 and 60 percent, regional budgets are under stress, and there are doubts as to whether Russia's military modernization program, launched in earnest at the end of the last decade, can continue under current conditions. Current European sanctions against Moscow run through January 2016.

Mainstream versus the fringe: All across Europe, for more than a decade parties once seen at the fringes of the ideological spectrum have leapt past the hurdles built into national electoral systems and upset the left-right binary balance of European politics. Be it the Front National in France, the Netherlands' Geert Wilders-led Party for Freedom (PVV), the Lega Nord or Five Star Movement in Italy, the United Kingdom Independence Party, or Podemos and Ciudadanos in Spain, bit-player parties that once would have been content to collect protest votes are now changing the political landscape, and fast. In multi-party systems where leading vote-getters achieve pluralities, and not outright majorities, those parties can even emerge outright winners, as did the Front National in the first round of France's regional elections. Mainstream parties and the European institutions have so far proved adept at handling the challenge: In recent years, we have see Wilders' PVV included as a support party for a minority government; the center-left government of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi triangulates with rivals on the right to pass reforms; the election of Greece's radical-left Syriza party was effectively neutered by uncompromising negotiators in Brussels and Berlin; and socialists in France pulled candidates from the second round of regional elections to void the rise of Marine Le Pen's party. The two rails of European national politics are increasingly no longer about left- or right-wing leadership. They are the politics of continuity set against the politics of disruption. Expect this trend to continue.

Feedback

Questions, comments, contributions? Feel free to send us an email, or reach out on Twitter @JoelWeickgenant.