[BBC] “The far right is on the march” is something you often hear said across Europe right now. “This feels like Europe of the 1930s.”
So perhaps it is no surprise that with 350 million people across the European Union currently voting for their direct representatives in the European Parliament, there’s nail-biting by many a Eurocrat in Brussels. But are fears - and media headlines - exaggerated? Millennials and first-time Gen Z voters are among those predicted to pull rightwards. Figures gathered recently for the Financial Times newspaper suggest around a third of young French voters and Dutch under-25s, and 22% of young German voters, favour their country’s far right. This is a significant increase since the last European Parliament election in 2019.
Far-right parties are predicted to take up to a quarter of the total seats, and if they do win big, the optics will be clear. But the granular detail of what impact it could have on life and policy-making in the EU is more nuanced. And that is because the nationalist right itself is nuanced - different nationalist right politicians in different countries hold different positions. Some have toned down former far-rightist rhetoric to try to widen their appeal to voters. |