Why the far right is surging in Europe | FT Film

The fight for the future and identity of Europe has already begun. Polls show there will be an increase in the proportion of the far

right

, possibly up to around 25 percent. The balance of power is going to change. Mass migration, energy policy, freedom of expression. People want a change in policy. If you want to have a strong European Union, then you cannot vote

right

. You can not. A right-wing coalition could relax regulations to protect the environment. It is also a key moment in terms of Europe's trajectory in the context of a war taking place on its doorstep.

Polls really worry a lot of people. There is much, much at stake. In June, from June 6 to 9, there will be simultaneous elections in 27 countries to elect members of the European parliament. The European Parliament is very important because it has to vote and negotiate many laws that come through the EU and then will have to be implemented in the 27 member states, defense policy, security, agricultural policy. Migration and asylum, reducing carbon emissions, there is almost no area of ​​policy-making that is not covered to some extent by EU law. We are sitting in this house and we are writing laws for almost 500 million people.

And the way this parliament is made up really matters. In many European states, the right is trying to strengthen itself. And if the European Parliament has different seats and other minorities, then of course the policy of the European Union will change. The current situation is that the centrist blocs, which is what we call the European People's Party, are the conservative centre-right. We have the Socialists and Democrats, who are center-left. We have the Renew, who are the liberals. At the moment, they have more than 60 percent of the votes and tend to make deals among themselves. And they can usually get the legislation they need.

What could happen after the election is that Renew, who are the Liberals, could lose some seats and become the fourth largest group, possibly, instead of the third. And then that brings in the ECR or the ID as potential partners. What we are going to see now is the potential for the center right to form coalitions on different laws with the populist right and potentially even the far right. This is a novelty in the way the European Parliament has functioned. And it could mean a pretty decisive change in the way parliament makes legislation. ...passed amendment 16 in two parts.

The first part is left open, by roll call vote. With the change in the center of gravity and parliament, the opportunity will come to have to create majorities around certain issues such as immigration. Voting is closed. Vote no. The immigration pact approved in recent weeks was clearly one of the most controversial laws approved by parliament in the last five years. The shift to the right in European politics is already affecting, and has already affected, the way the European Parliament has operated. Public opinion in France and much of Europe has hardened against immigration in the last decade.

Perhaps you can date that to the 2015 refugee crisis from the Syrian war. Traditional parties are changing in response to what they see as shifting sands, politically, around them. We have listened. We have acted and fulfilled one of the main concerns of citizens across Europe. Politicians read polls and open their mailbags and emails. They thought: we need to have a policy to address this. We need something in the election to reach out to voters and tell them we're dealing with this. They're basically trying to fight the far right by invading their territory, to some extent, you know, a modest part of their territory.

In terms of EU policymaking, this will likely have the greatest impact on immigration. But to understand the far right and the populist right, you have to really understand that there are many factors that drive them forward in all different countries. Far-right parties across Europe are doing well in polls. We still don't really know what that will mean in practice for the political leadership of the EU and parliament, partly because far-right parties in Europe are not uniform. There are different ones in each country and in reality they do not all represent the same thing. Geert Wilders, the anti-Islamic far-right firebrand, performed extraordinarily well in the Dutch national elections.

On the other hand, you could take a country like Spain, where the rise of the Vox party has been inspired much more by the rise of Catalan separatism than by anti-immigrant sentiment. A big question is whether the far right can really unite around an agenda. The biggest increases in the number of members of these groups will come from the large EU countries: France, Germany and Italy. And therefore, they will also bring with them some of the national priorities of those member states. The main contrast that can be established is between Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Marine Le Pen in France.

Both are far-right on paper, but it is clear that Meloni is now in power at the head of a coalition. She has played the game to the surprise of many people and the discipline of government ensures that you have to set rules, follow things and vote for things you may not agree with. For Le Pen, that contrast is quite stark. She is still an outsider and is trying to climb the last flight of stairs. The National Assembly, under Le Pen's leadership, has gone through this process of trying to normalize itself. In French they call it dédiabolisation, which literally means detoxifying the match.

Everything they do must be seen through that lens. They are trying to show voters that they can govern and that they are prepared. While some right-wing populist groups have moderated their positions in recent years, others have taken a more radical direction. The Austrian far right is one of them. The other really notable topic is Alternative for Germany. They have gone in a different direction than the RN. And I think that's why Marine Le Pen distanced herself from Alice Weidel and the AfD leader and the party itself. Le Pen's party even recently said it was no longer willing to sit with the AfD in the European Parliament because she considered it too radical.

Over the years that I've covered them, they've become more right-wing, more tainted by this kind of far-right ideology. And that makes them fascinating as a kind of case study. The rise of the AfD last year was largely driven by public concern over immigration, but that is by no means the only problem. There is clearly more to the AfD's appeal. I think in Germany, particularly, there has been a big backlash against the green measures. In Germany, the year 2023 was very, very difficult for the Scholz coalition government. Laws were passed that were considered extremely unpopular, such as the highly controversial heating law, which was supposed to persuade people to switch from gas and oil boilers to heat pumps.

This led millions of German households to think that they were going to have to shell out tens of thousands of euros to replace their gas or oil boiler in a short time. I'm not really a fan of AfD or things like that, but I call the energy construction law that. It really was an own goal. My name is León, León Henninger. I am a professional jumper and this is the project of my life. We're here doing everything new and new riding areas and building a new stable and things like that. For us, a heat pump was the most efficient in our energy mix because you put in one kilowatt of electricity and you get two kilowatts of thermal energy.

This is absolutely amazing, but it's not something for every home. This opinion has become quite common and is one of the reasons why more and more people are voting for the AfD. If you look at this technology, how expensive it is. Thus, a heat pump could cost a German household up to 30,000 euros if you take into account that you may also have to make renovations or changes to the operation of your heating system for it to be truly effective. Not everyone can install it at home. Maybe the owners are even too old, no bank gives them credit and things like that.

With this policy, many fears will be generated within the people. That idea is gaining ground. Anything to do with some sort of re-engineering of industry to reduce emissions or renovating homes is too much, too fast and unrealistic. On the other hand, there were many players in the field who really liked creating fear, misinformation, and chaos. That is an issue that the right has been able to take advantage of. You know, they want to take your car. They want you to remove the boiler from your house. So, it feeds into this narrative of people who feel like inflation is high, their pockets are tight, and they want some relief.

And instead, they are told what to do. What we've seen in recent weeks is that the Greens have really become a victim of this kind of widespread anger against government policies. There have been extraordinary scenes in which protesters have caused so much disruption that Green politicians have had to cut short their public appearances and almost take refuge from angry crowds. I have been in politics for more than 10 years and did many campaigns. If you're waking up and the first thing you read on the internet is how stupid you are or how you should be raped. I mean, that's not fun.

And then if threats, in real life, come to you, that's also something that, yes, is difficult. The AfD has become the main beneficiary of popular discontent. We have never been as successful as we are now, which is linked to the state of the country. This country is going against the wall. And the AfD is the only party that is not responsible because we have never been in government power. The AfD still polls around 18 percent, which is quite extraordinary given that large sections of the party are under investigation by the German security services. The Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz), the German internal intelligence agency, has classified certain regional associations of the AfD as absolutely confirmed far-right organizations.

And that makes them so unusual in Germany. They are an anti-party. They are an anti-system party. This has become a European-wide phenomenon, taking advantage of dissatisfaction with the way politics and established parties work. Very often I feel that the political class has lost much of the trust of the people. And if we let all these areas of anxiety and emotions be exploited by the far right, then we are making a big mistake. Many of these far-right parties are tapping into an anti-elite narrative. There are voters who will think that the government is incompetent and not doing its job well.

And there are others who simply think that the government and the people in it are not like them. They are an elite that protects itself, builds its own nests and is therefore ripe to move towards the far right. Populist and anti-establishment parties tend to do well in European parliamentary elections because voters will use them to cast a protest vote. France is the obvious example of this, where Marine Le Pen's National Assembly is the largest opposition party in parliament. Looking ahead to the European elections, they have a big lead in the polls, which is why they are first in the polls, in terms of electoral intentions.

They are still a bit far away, but in polls they represent about 30 percent of the electorate. And it is being configured as an alternative to the type of centrist politics advocated by Emmanuel Macron. I think the RN vote, for some people, is a protest vote, so it gives people the opportunity to say: we don't like the way the elites rule us. So it's essentially kind of... it has that element of just wanting to tear things down. There is this emblematic moment, every year, in France. It is an agricultural fair called the Agricultural Fair and it is a ritual.

The president opens it on the first Saturday. And then there is a parade of politicians that lasts all week. It's in this huge conference room on the outskirts of Paris. And this year was marked by the protest movement. Farmer protests have been increasing. I think last year they quadrupled compared to the year before. We have seen farmers protests in Brussels, Berlin, Athens, Rome and, of course, Paris. And this year's Agricultural Show was a particularly difficult occasion for French President Emmanuel Macron. It became a disaster. The police had to put massive protection on it because some factions of the farmers were angry and trying to enter.

And he ended up staying all day instead of fleeing back to the Elysée. But the images that appeared on television were almost catastrophic. I mean, there were images of him surrounded by dozens of police officers to protect him while he walked through this agricultural fair. And the RN has quite skillfully used this moment as a way to put pressure on Macron and also present itself as,again, the worker's ally. The National Assembly has historically defended rural life. Traditionally we are a party that has been denouncing that so much money was invested in big cities to the detriment of investments in rural areas.

Farmers are not traditionally a far-right constituency in France, but the party clearly thinks many of their grievances are similar; anti-globalization, anti-free trade, anti-environmental legislation and the weight of, in a way, the Brussels bureaucracy, as they see it, or the rules and regulations of the EU. I think the farmers' protests have offered the National Assembly a great opportunity to pose with tractors and attack Brussels. The RN has skillfully navigated this issue. They have a favorite term that they use a lot, which is punitive ecology, that the EU is a regulatory beast. Acting without control. I mean, I'm speaking for them.

I'm not saying I really agree with this. But the way they do agricultural policy is too punitive on farmers and farmers basically need to be freed from all these environmental and free trade rules. This caused many farmers to stop producing sugar beets, while importing sugar from countries where these products are allowed. When farmers say they want to make a living from their work, that they know how to do it and that they don't need any interference from any bureaucrats sitting in fancy offices in Brussels, people understand. They interfere in your daily life, all the time, without asking for it.

For some people, their struggles to make money and stay afloat epitomize a kind of broken bureaucracy. The populist right, if we can put it that way, is divided into two groups, Identity and Democracy, which are the toughest, eurosceptic, anti-immigration and anti-EU far-right parties. They have people like France's Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen's party. The other parties don't really collaborate with them. They do not involve them in the decision-making process. They tend to be disruptors from the outside. The European conservatives and reformists, led by Italy's Giorgia Meloni, are more in the tent. They chair committees. They produce reports.

They vote on laws. If we were talking about a far-right group, and if you joined Identity and Democracy and the European Conservatives and Reformists, they would be almost the largest party. That would be a completely different situation. They would have much more power. But we are not in that situation. And because they are divided, they are much less influential than they could be. We are different groups, obviously. We have the APP on our side, on the other side the DNI. These are the groups most similar to us, but especially with the ID we have some important differences.

There are all kinds of disagreements and disputes between Meloni and Le Pen and between different parties within their factions. They are obviously nationalists, so it is difficult to cooperate on transnational issues. Attitudes towards Russia and the war in Ukraine are, if you will, the great schism affecting far-right and right-wing populist parties in Europe. The European Council reconfirmed Europe's unwavering commitment to supporting Ukraine. We will support them with the necessary financing and provide them with much-needed predictability. On the key issue of Russia and Ukraine and how Europe addresses this existential challenge on its doorstep, Meloni is on the von der Leyen-Macron line, which is: support Ukraine, arm Ukraine.

Russia must be defeated. If they fall, we run the risk of a domino effect that will burn all of Europe. Marine Le Pen is on a much more, I would say, murky line. Our position on Ukraine is that we need peace. We need peace. Of course, we will never stop condemning Putin for invading a free nation. However, today we really need to seek a peace solution. And that's a big difference in the time we live in. That's nothing. It's huge. And that's what potentially makes them irreconcilable. They are extreme rightists who could be, at this moment, irreconcilable.

As long as this continues, it will soften, if you will, the kind of radical influence these centre-right parties will have on EU policy-making. A parliament dominated by the far right would be a very different parliament. And, honestly, I believe that the profound existential challenges of our times must also be combated in this parliament. If you want to have a strong European Union that has the values ​​of human rights, women's rights, climate and environmental protection, you cannot vote right. You can not. We want Europe. We want a different type of Europe, not a bureaucratic, technocratic and imperialist structure that they have created here in Brussels.

It will be a bit of a free for all. Parties that sympathize with the far right may win, but fundamentally, if they don't reconfigure themselves so that everyone can have a say together on the parliamentary line, it could end up not changing much. I think we can see some signs of how European policy is going to change in the next five years: less ambition on climate and a tougher lead towards the rest of the world. You are likely to see stricter policies. Voting is closed. But it's kind of a rightward evolution and a slightly more nationalist evolution.

It is not a revolution that will change the way the EU works.