Opinion In Europe, the far right fringe is in Parliament

The centre-right, social democrats and liberals together have more than 400 seats in the European Parliament (EP) which will be inaugurated on July 18. That might put them in a comfortable position vis-a-vis the far right in the 720-member House. But Europe’s mainstream parties will be erring in ignoring the fault lines and points of dissonance that are behind extreme nationalists and anti-immigration parties getting more than 130 seats — about 20 per cent of the votes — in the EP elections. The House will also have 34 additional hard right members drawn from Poland, Bulgaria, Germany’s AfD and Viktor Orbán’s Hungarian Fidesz party. The numbers suggest that the far and hard right could be the second-largest group in the EP behind the traditional conservatives, the European People’s Party. Europe’s extreme right is not a cohesive force, yet the group’s sheer size would mean significant rightward pressure on EU policies.

Since the last EU election in 2019, populist parties now lead governments in three EU nations — Hungary, Slovakia and Italy — and are part of ruling coalitions in Sweden, Finland and now the Netherlands. The latest results consolidate the transformation of the far right, once described as the fringe, into a political force that connects with voters on a diverse set of issues, including immigration, the Ukraine war, agriculture, and climate change. The loudest rumbles have been felt in France, where Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (NR) triumphed with more than 30 per cent of the votes — more than double that of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Party. The setback has pushed Macron into announcing a snap poll — a move seen by several analysts as a gamble. His success in the elections, scheduled for June 30 and July 7, will depend on the Rennaisance Party’s ability to mobilise voters with arguments about “the nationalist threat and the survival of Europe”. But Macron himself has not been averse to doing the far-right’s bidding through moves such as tightening the country’s immigration laws and imposing sanctions against companies employing “undocumented workers” — decisions, heralded by Le Pen as an ideological victory for NR.

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After the liberals, the greens are the second biggest losers. In Germany, a core green stronghold, the group’s vote share has nearly halved since the last EP election. Surveys across Europe show that ecological issues do strike a chord with the people. However, anxieties such as those that have surfaced during the ongoing farmers’ protests about who pays for decarbonisation remain unaddressed by the continent’s parties.