Elections matter. Just ask the folks who pour billions each year into campaigns at every level and then embrace denial fantasies when the outcomes are not what they paid for. Even authoritarian systems, like Russia, go to great lengths to drape the leader in a cape of legitimacy, woven with elections that are not really open, free or democratic.
In Europe, where systems are mostly parliamentary, elections have huge consequences even if a contending party does not win. Unlike the winner-take-all system in U.S. constituencies, parties in Europe are allocated seats according to their votes and can thus facilitate or block legislation and enable or destroy ruling coalitions. During campaigns, powerful forces in the electorate can drive competing parties in directions they previously shunned, as they try to gain votes.
In June, voters in the 27 member-states of the European Union will elect members of the European Parliament (EP). This body is generally considered the weakest of the EU institutions but has gained power in recent years through its ability to pass budgets, approve or reject treaties, and issue its own detailed reports that get broad attention. Every five years its influence peaks as the most direct gauge of Europeans’ preferences. Depending on the timing, elections to the EP can give reliable evidence of popular sentiments.
And that is just was Europe’s traditional office holders are afraid of.
The Right will gain
Virtually all the recent projections show that in this round, radical far right parties will gain seats in the European Parliament. Such parties have already shown their power in unlikely places, like “liberal” countries, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands.
Right wing parties vary in their platforms and national appeals, but they share nationalist and usually exclusionary themes. They are hostile to immigration and not shy about their aims. "The Netherlands can't take it anymore,” says Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom, now the largest party in Parliament. “We have to think about our own people first now. Borders closed. Zero asylum-seekers." Not surprisingly, he is referred to as the “Dutch Donald Trump.”
In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), an extreme right party brandishing a barely hidden Nazi ideology, is now the second largest opposition party in the Bundestag and made unprecedented gains last year in state elections in Hesse and Bavaria. Their leaders have voiced support for “Remigration,” forced repatriation of immigrants. “Remigration is not a secret plan,” said one regional AfD leader, “but a promise.”
Polls in France show that the French National Rally (RN), long associated with Marine Le Pen but now with a charismatic 28-year-old leader Jordan Bardella—has a comfortable lead over the coalition led by French President Emmanuel Macron. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán flouts not only the EU but also the democratic values on which it is based. He has been in power for fourteen years.
A force on their own
In its study of the elections, the European Council on Foreign Relations predicts that Eurosceptical populists will win in no fewer than nine countries and come in second or third in nine others.
Once in the EP, they will be a force on their own and could produce, for the first time, a coalition that is opposed to major EU policies, on immigration, fiscal controls and especially climate change. Thus, the most democratic Europe-wide election in history could yield a parliamentary majority that is hostile to the European project that produced it.
Even without winning enough seats to take power, populist parties can exert a strong pull on mainstream parties—usually by pulling them in more extreme directions. (In fact, this usually backfires with centrist parties losing moderate supporters and the extreme parties gaining legitimacy.)
At the national level, this movement is evident in the shift in the German government’s stance on immigration. Under the previous government of Angela Merkel, Germany welcomed asylum seekers fleeing conflict in the Middle East — nearly one million from Syria alone.
“We can do this!” the German Chancellor famously said in 2015. Now, with more than one million new refugees from Ukraine and the AfD gaining in the polls, the current German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, says, “too many are coming. … We have to deport more and faster.”
Surveys show that a number issues trouble Europeans, including climate change, economic pressures and the pandemic. People who see immigration as most important issue facing their country are more likely to vote for rightwing parties.
These populist parties claim to be the representatives of the “real people” who are being exploited and cheated by privileged elites ensconced in urban enclaves, especially Brussels. Hence, they appeal to voters to “take back the power that the EU has confiscated from them” as Marine Le Pen put it.
In Spain and elsewhere, for example, right wing parties have become the allies of angry farmers who object to many of the EU’s policies, especially its “Green Deal” of ecological protections and the duty-free import of grain from Ukraine.
The news for Europhiles is not all bad. In Poland, a right wing government that had ruled for eight years, utilized various anti-democratic means to try to keep its power, and endured criticism and punishment by the EU, was defeated in October 2023. It was replaced by a leader symbolizing Poland’s presence in a democratic Europe, former Prime Minister and President of the European Council Donald Tusk.
In Germany and France large demonstrations have challenged the racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant views of radical right parties. In fact, the latest Eurobarometer survey shows that most Europeans rate their economic situation as good and are optimistic about the future — crucial sentiments since they also see the cost of living and unemployment as most important in the upcoming election.
Left behind and threatened
Across Europe, though, many feel left behind and threatened by cultural change, immigration and policies that affect them but over which they feel little influence. In response, right wing parties offer a return to an idealized past, protection of their version of national identity, and a promise to implement “national” solutions.
In practice this might be difficult because the problems they — and we — face, like climate change, desperate migration and disease, usually do not respect national borders.
Ronald H. Linden is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he directed the Russian and East European Studies and European Studies programs. From 1989 to 1991 he served as director of research for Radio Free Europe. His previous article was “Donald Trump is wrong: America needs NATO.”
First Published: May 15, 2024, 9:30 a.m.