Support for far-right parties has been growing across Europe. Radical-right and populist parties are in coalition governments in Croatia, Czechia, Italy and Finland, and they lead the polls in Austria, Belgium, France and Germany. The Guardian reported this year that nearly a quarter of voters in Europe chose far-right parties in their most recent national elections, a fivefold increase since 1995.
In Germany, Alternative für Deutschland recently won a historic state election in Saxony-Anhalt. Far-right parties have lost ground in the Netherlands, in Hungary and in Sweden, where the Sweden Democrats lost vote share. Their ideas still shape mainstream politics, notably on immigration and law-and-order.
Spain holds an election in November. France, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Slovakia, Poland and Italy follow next year. Guardian Europe correspondent Jon Henley said that if Spain, Italy, France and Poland all have far-right parties in government after those votes, the EU will face major challenges. He does not expect the union to collapse, but he expects it to agree even more slowly on major issues.
Henley said hardly any European far-right parties now want to leave the EU. They want to transform it from within into a looser “Europe of nations”. He said a President Marine Le Pen could paralyse decision-making, challenge the supremacy of EU law and push a “France First” agenda that would undermine the single market and the Schengen free-travel zone, and oppose EU expansion and climate action. He does not see an imminent risk of the AfD taking national power in Germany. He added that Le Pen is unlikely to have a parliamentary majority even if she wins France’s presidential election, which he called highly plausible though not certain.
Henley said Le Pen’s National Rally is not an ally of the AfD and does not share its views on “remigration”, the mass deportation of immigrants. The French party previously removed the AfD from its European Parliament grouping after comments to the effect that not all Nazis were bad.
Asked whether far-right wins in Britain, Germany and France would break up Nato and the EU, Henley said he does not see either disintegrating. He said they would become harder to run. Far-right-led governments could erode the EU from within by using vetoes, as Viktor Orbán did in Hungary, on the EU budget, enlargement and the green deal, or by ignoring EU law. Nato, he said, would survive but become more paralysed on longer-term decisions.
Europe community affairs correspondent Ashifa Kassam pointed to an EU vote earlier this year aimed at increasing deportations. Right-wing MEPs chanted “send them back”, and centre-left and left-wing MEPs answered “Shame on you.”
On Donald Trump, Henley said the US National Security Strategy last year made plain the administration’s efforts to promote far-right parties in Europe. He described an ideological affinity on anti-immigration, hostility toward the EU and softer stances on Russia, while Trump’s “America First” demands — including over Greenland and tariff threats — and his unpredictability create problems for far-right leaders trying to look credible. Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Marine Le Pen in France have openly criticised Trump and distanced themselves from his more erratic statements, conspiracy claims and hostility toward European security. Henley said European far-right voters’ support for Trump varies by country but is broadly low, and that peace and security in Europe matter more to them than anti-immigration sentiment.
Before the last European Parliament elections, the Guardian’s data team found that a quarter of all private money donated to political parties in the EU went to far-right, far-left and populist movements. Only a quarter of EU countries require parties to identify private donors. About €97m — roughly one in every seven private donation euros — went to far-right parties. A 2023 European Parliament report estimated that about $1.18bn flowed into Europe from 2019 to 2023 toward organisations targeting LGBTQ+ rights and promoting traditional family policies. A 2022 declassified US intelligence assessment found that the Russian government had covertly sent at least $300m to foreign political parties, often in Europe, from 2014. In July, the Guardian reported that Donald Trump’s State Department intended to allocate $12m to organisations in the UK.
Kassam said she had asked research groups about any change in online activity around Spain’s Vox after a Yandex datacentre was targeted by Ukraine. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, asked by Eldiario.es whether he was worried about foreign interference given his opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza and the US-Israeli attack on Iran, answered: “Yes, and not only by nations, but also by non-state actors.”
Kassam and Henley also tied the far-right vote to living standards. Kassam cited Spain’s housing protests and encampments, and quoted Barcelona’s Socialist mayor Jaume Collboni, who with 21 other European mayors wants the EU to treat surging housing costs as a “new pandemic”, with billions for affordable housing. Collboni told her: “We cannot remain stuck in the rhetoric of defending democracy, inclusive societies and equal opportunities if people’s standard of living is getting worse.” In the most recent Eurobarometer, the cost of living ranked among the top concerns across Europe, while immigration was in seventh place. Henley said mainstream parties have not adequately addressed the cost of living, weaker public services and job security, and that copying far-right framing rarely works because, as Jean-Marie Le Pen put it, people tend to prefer the original to the copy.