The far right rose on Sunday in the heart of the European Union. France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy and Luxembourg saw considerable rises in radical right parties. But the opposite happened in the east of the bloc and in the Scandinavian region.
This difference is paradoxical, because while Russia tried to help the growth of the ultras (for years it financed Marine Le Pen’s French RN with cheap loans and maintains close ties with the German AfD or the Austrian FPO) in the countries closest to Russia it provoked a contrary reaction. Citizens moved away from those parties to return to the most pro-European ones.
The European elections They are perfect for punishing the governments in power without overthrowing them, and in many countries they are carried out with a single constituency system that opens the door to formations that do not have space in legislative elections. Even so, the extreme right emerged this Sunday as the first French, Italian, Austrian and Dutch political force, second in Germany and Belgium, third in Spain and Portugal.
But to the east of the continent and in Scandinavia this situation is not repeated. The Polish ultranationalists of PiS lost the European Championship for the first time since 2009 against the party of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a center-right pro-European leader and former president of the European Council.
The party of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, attacked weeks ago by gunfire, He also lost to the progressive opposition. In Hungary he won Viktor Orban’s Fidesz, but for the first time in a decade and a half he lost weight against a new pro-European opponent, the conservative Péter Magyar. The Romanian extreme right fell to 15%, defeated by a coalition of social democrats and liberals.
Further north the scenario is even worse for the extreme right. The Finnish ultras had been the second political force in April 2023 with 20.1% of the votes in the last legislative elections and this Sunday they fell to sixth position with 7.6%. The Swedish extreme right, which had reached 20.5% of the votes in the 2022 legislative elections, fell to 13.2% and went from second force to fourth. In Denmark the extreme right did hold its ground, but there was a strong transfer of votes from the conservatives to a new formation of the environmental left.
Beyond national controversies, All of these countries have in common greater proximity to Russia. The European Union and NATO are seen, estimates a Swedish diplomatic source (their country entered the Atlantic Alliance this year) as a protective shield against what they consider to be a Russian military threat. That is why many would have voted against the far-right parties, more inclined to listen to Moscow.
Negotiations to form a European government
European political groups have been moving since Monday to have pacts outlined before the heads of national governments meet next Tuesday at an informal dinner.
For now, the conservatives keep their distance from the group of the Italian Giorgia Meloni because they have seen that with social democrats and liberals they add up to more than 400 MEPs and if they unite the environmentalists they will go above 450. The absolute majority is 361.
The talks are also advancing for the appointments of the bloc’s senior officials. The social democrats and environmentalists promote former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa for the presidency of the European Council, the body that brings together the heads of government. The conservatives demand the renewal of Úrsula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, in her position.
The electoral defeat of the Frenchman Emmanuel Macron and the German Olaf Scholz facilitates the way for Von der Leyen to repeat because the two national leaders are weakened by others who won, like the Polish Donald Tusk, or who lost by much less difference than expected, like the Spanish Pedro Sánchez.