Another way to understand electoral trends in Europe is through the prism of the fight against the government. While there is a shift to the right, much of the support for right-wing parties in Europe is a protest vote against the status quo.
In 2009, a Dutch MP was refused entry to the UK because of his extremist views. In 2024, MP Geert Wilders emerged as the kingmaker in the Netherlands. While he will not become Dutch Prime Minister under the terms of the coalition agreement he has reached, his party emerged as the largest party.
In Germany, Alternative for Germany (AfD), the party considered too extreme even for the “far-right” ID Group bloc, won more votes than the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) in this month’s European Parliament elections.
Similarly, the France’s National Rally (RN), another “far-right” party, received more than twice as many votes as the five-party coalition led by President Emmanuel Macron.
This change in the electoral fortunes of parties once considered marginal has led to frenetic discussions surrounding the takeover of Europe by “far-right” forces.
While these facts and figures speak for themselves, they don’t tell the whole story.
On the one hand, even amid the rise of the “far right,” the moderate bloc of European Union (EU) chief Ursula von der Leyen’s European People’s Party (EPP) has not only emerged as the most big, but it has also increased its seats.
Although the UK is not in the EU, it is in continental Europe and voters there will almost certainly elect a Labor Party government in next month’s general election, ousting the Conservatives.
Has the “far right” really taken over Europe?
The contradictions amid the emergence of right-wing parties lead to two questions:
Has the “far right” really taken over Europe?
Are these parties (AfD, RN or Italian Brothers of Italy (Fdl)) really extremist and far-right or is it simply a label of the Western mainstream media that is not able to understand or comprehend the election results?
Europe’s right-wing parties are too ideologically diverse to be grouped into a single category, says Swasti Rao, Europe researcher at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis (MP-IDSA).
“While it is true that there is a shift to the right in Europe, it is not uniform or a complete takeover of power. The so-called far-right parties are divided on some of the most fundamental issues.
There is a whole spectrum of European right-wing parties, including moderate ones, extreme right-wing parties, and parties that are too extreme even for the so-called extreme right.. Media coverage often labels all right-wing parties as far-right as if they were a single entity. They are not,” says Rao, an associate member of MP-IDSA’s Center for Europe and Eurasia.
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