By the numbers, the rise of Europe’s far-right looks like a trend, not a blip

By: Anshul Vipat

Experts believe a dramatic churn of events in Europe has forced a change in overall political climate in the continent

The recently concluded elections in Sweden gave a winning mandate to the right-wing bloc under the leadership of Ulf Kristersson over Magdalena Andersson's centre-left coalition, ending her eight years of rule. Parties like the far-right anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, who were once treated as a pariah by political parties, grabbed 20 percent of the votes. Amongst many narratives which follow, the most concrete is that far-right ideas have gained traction by mainstreaming, and this holds true not only for Sweden but Europe in general too.

Last month, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy political party termed as the ‘most far-right government since the fascist era of Benito Mussolini’ won the national election. Hungary also switched to right-wing government with a landslide victory in the country’s 2022 legislative elections. Serbians have re-elected Alexander Vucic a populist right-winger, as their president for the second consecutive term. Poland in 2020 saw President Andrzej Duda, a far right leader. Elsewhere in the EU, Spain's far-right, represented by Vox, holds around 15 percent of seats in parliament, a similar share to that of the National Rally (RN) in France.

Winds of change in Europe?

Of course polls can and do change, and one election does not imply a radical cultural shift. But the overall political climate in Europe has been trending rightward for some time. A research conducted by the Pew Research Group reveals that the right-wing parties have been winning larger shares of the votes in recent times. For instance, in Italy four in every ten voters casted their ballots for one of the three major right-wing populist parties: Brothers of Italy, Forza Italia and Lega, up from around a third who did the same in 2018 and around three-in-ten in 2013. Similarly, in Spain, the share of vote going to populist parties has nearly doubled in four years.

In the Netherlands, right-leaning populist parties garnered around 16% of the vote in 2021 – a high not seen in nearly a decade of parliamentary elections. In countries like Hungary and Poland right-wing populist parties have surged to power, making enormous gains in the last two decades. In France, Macron was almost overwhelmed by far-right leader Le Pen in the predictive polls before the elections, showing the surge of rightist-nationalist sentiments across France. The vote share of right-wing parties have risen from around 10 percent in the 1980s to around 44 percent as of the 2022 election.

What explains the shift in European politics?

Experts believe a dramatic churn of events in Europe has forced a change in overall political climate in the continent. The financial crisis gripping many countries post the pandemic saw the collapse of traditional left-wing parties as more nationalist and extreme-right alternatives to the mainstream began to arise.

The surge in immigration that followed Syria's and Libya's collapse into civil war were further sources of fuel. These parties and movements — critical of the European Union’s refugee policies, strongly opposed to immigration. The center-left’s inability to address these social issues with coherent policy resulted in many wondering what the center-left stood for. There was no direct rebuke to the nationalistic sentiments. Populist right-wingers thus took advantage of this decline of trust to mobilise economic polarisation and nativist sentiments, spreading a particular anti-left rhetoric.

Gains for once far-right, nationalist or populist parties are now becoming too routine to be dismissed as exceptions. They are following a clear pattern. Ever since the 2008-2009 financial crisis, political pundits speculated slow decline of European social democracy and a rise in nationalistic ideologies. While it took a decade or so for the change to happen, it points towards a strong shift in the political dynamics of the continent that will have far-reaching effects on the rest of the world.