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Six months from now, the European Union will face its next big test. Citizens across the continent will head to the polls to choose who will represent them in the European Parliament. The elections arrive amid populist rebellions, debate on how to curb economic inequality within the Eurozone, and questions about who will lead the EU with Angela Merkel on her way out and Emmanuel Macron weakened.
The latest projections have the two largest parliamentary groups, the centre-Right European People’s Party (EPP) and centre-Left Socialists and Democrats (S&D), remaining the biggest blocks, but they may well fail to win a majority of seats (and comparable polls have overestimated support for large and governing parties). Far from having been rejected, populism is going mainstream, and Brussels is braced for the strongest populist backlash on record.
The European elections of 2014 were striking enough. Against the backdrop of a financial crisis and worries over immigration, Eurosceptic, populist and far Right parties won a record 52 seats, an increase of 15 on 2009. The big winners were Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party and the Danish People’s Party, which each won their respective election. Five years ago this was a shock; the New York Times warned that the result called “into question the very institutions and assumptions at the heart of Europe’s post-World War II order”. This time such parties are expected to do even better.
A decade ago, populist breakthroughs felt like an outlier. Today they feel like the norm. In just five years we have witnessed a new record result for the Danish People’s Party; a record for Poland’s Law and Justice; a record result for the Austrian Freedom Party’s presidential candidate; and a second-place finish for Geert Wilders and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands. The Le Pen family has also had a record result in France’s presidential elections, and nearly half of all voters in France opting for Eurosceptic candidates in the first round of that contest.
In Germany we have witnessed the sudden emergence and rise of the Alternative for Germany, which won seats in every state parliament and more than ninety seats in the Bundestag – despite Germany long being thought immune to populism. And in Italy there is an openly populist government, with the League having more than doubled its share in the polls since the election only nine months ago.
Add to that the re-election of Viktor Orbán and Fidesz in Hungary; a new record result for the Sweden Democrats; and, most recently, the breakthrough of Vox in Spain, another state that was once considered immune to populism. And, of course, in Britain we have seen the rise of UKIP and the vote for Brexit, the first example of European disintegration.
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