Hard-right parties are entering government across Europe
IN 2000 AUSTRIA’S conservatives invited the Freedom Party (FPÖ), a hard-right outfit with Nazi roots, into government—and opprobrium onto their own heads. Other eu governments suspended contacts. Scientific and artistic boycotts were mooted. Louis Michel, Belgium’s foreign minister, urged his compatriots to snub Austria’s ski slopes.
How quaint it seems now. When Mr Michel’s son Charles, who presides over the European Council, scans the table at the eu summits he chairs, he sees eight leaders from right-wing populist parties or dependent on their support. Many of the 19 other countries have had a similar experience, or could soon face it (Austria among them; the FPÖ may rejoin government after an election in September). The cordon sanitaire is fraying even at EU level. Mr Michel’s counterpart at the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has flirted with the Brothers of Italy, a post-fascist party, in her bid for a second term.
Most countries with no prospect of far-right government are small, such as Ireland, Malta, Portugal and Luxembourg. An interesting one is Belgium, where in the 1980s the notion of the cordon sanitaire was born, against far-right Flemish nationalists. In Wallonia, the French-speaking bit, far-right politicians cannot even get a hearing in the media—even though many voters may be receptive to their message.
But the most important exception is Germany. The hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came second at the recent European elections, with a record 16%. Yet the AfD remains firmly beyond the Brandmauer (“firewall”). It has never come close to power in any of Germany’s 16 states and is shunned at federal level. Any hint that the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) might consider working with it invites huge backlash.
The AfD conveys both rank amateurism and a whiff of brownshirtery, making it easy to ignore. At national level, it remains small enough to work around. True, it may come first in three east German state elections due to be held in September. But although that will make forming centrist coalitions in those states hard, the firewall is likely to hold. National hostility to the AfD is such that, overall, the CDU stands to lose more by working with it in the east than by holding the line.
The CDU does, though, hope to blunt the appeal of the AfD by talking tough on irregular migration. Some find this upsetting. Mainstream parties considering aping the populist right are warned that, in the words of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of a xenophobic party in France, voters prefer the original to a copy. In last year’s Dutch election the leader of the ruling liberals tilted right, hoping to undercut Geert Wilders’s populist Party for Freedom. The gambit backfired, and Mr Wilders won.
Yet in many countries the hard right has simply grown too big to disregard. What to do? “This is the €1m question,” says Léonie de Jonge of the University of Groningen. Of three possible tactics—ignore, demonise or accommodate—none has consistently succeeded. Excluding far-right parties bolsters their argument that they represent the only genuine alternative. Little wonder many creep into government.
How that happens varies. In countries with proportional-voting systems hard-right parties join coalitions (usually with the centre right), or prop them up. Since 2022 Sweden, which once had one of Europe’s strongest cordons sanitaires, has had a government backed by the hard-right Sweden Democrats.
Elsewhere change can take more dramatic form. In France the “republican front” against the hard-right National Rally (RN), led by Jean-Marie’s daughter Marine, has so far kept the party from power. That may be about to change as France heads into a snap parliamentary election. But even if it doesn’t, Ms Le Pen has performed steadily better in presidential elections over the past decade; in 2022 she took 41.5% of the run-off vote. If she wins a majority at the next, in 2027, the game will be up. ■
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