Tocqueville In Review: Deus Vote

The Far Right Factions in the European Elections Aren’t Important… Yet.

Dear Readers, 

Elections continue to be one of the defining features of 2024 as we approach its midway point. Ballots from yesterday’s South African election are currently being counted, and major elections are also approaching in Mexico and India. Today, we’ll be discussing the impending European legislative elections.

Much of the commentary surrounding the EU legislative election has been concerned with the upswing in populist nationalism on the continent, and has emphasized the disastrous ramifications of a larger far right voting bloc (namely, the Identity and Democracy party and the European Conservatives and Reformists party) within Parliament. While not unfounded, concerns that increased support might jeopardize the broader project of the European Union are mostly unfounded. There are three key reasons for this.

First, the degree of increased support for far right parties is overstated. Projections for the election suggest that the Identity and Democracy Party and the European Conservatives and Reformists Party combined are likely to pick up 30-60 seats. While concerning, this nonetheless leaves them in the minority, behind both center-right and center-left blocs -  something that becomes even more striking when you realize none of the other parties (with the exception of the PEL) share their Union-level priorities.

Furthermore, their continued success at the national level is already somewhat disputed, with many far right parties facing headwinds with their domestic electorates. The defeat of Poland’s Law and Justice Party and the election of Donald Task in late 2023 went a long way in undermining the apparent inevitability of the rising tide of populism. The Dutch Party For Freedom’s victory in November of 2023 was somewhat undermined by its subsequent inability to form a government within six months, its reliance on a hodgepodge four-way coalition government, and party leader Geert Wilder’s concession in not ascending to the premiership - the new government is expected to be comprised largely of civil servants. In France, while the Rassemblement National is as popular as it ever has been, many concessions have been made with regards to its platform, Marine Le Pen having taken great pains to distance the party from its ancestor under her father. This ultimately led to a split in the party when Eric Zemmour absconded with the more radical elements of the RN.

Second, the unity of far right parties is in question. Europe's populists are not on the same page. The inability to build a coherent project between the parties of the ECR and those of ID reduces their collective negotiating power and makes them much more likely to be ignored by the centrist consensus. A large tent would have more leverage to make demands and form coalitions, a fact of which many within both parties are aware. But the desire by the more successful parties within ID and ECR to appeal to more mainstream voters means that they are more likely to court center-right parties as they are to collaborate - a move which would risk tarring them with the sins of the ideological brethren. This played out recently with the exclusion of Germany’s AfD from ID on the basis of their extremism. It is this same risk, and the nuances as to what qualifies as acceptable xenophobia within a score of domestic environments, that makes center-right parties unlikely to collaborate with them at the European level. It has been politically expedient to collaborate with other center parties for 50 years, so why stop now? 

Third, the nature of what that means for the European project has changed substantially over the years. The National Rally and the Brotherhood of Italy both demonstrate a relative de-fanging of far-right priorities within the context of the European project. Where once plans to leave the Union or reestablish monetary independence were ubiquitous, now most far right parties within the ECR and the ID blocs that enjoy considerable domestic support have abandoned such projects. There is also the backlash related to Ukraine to take into consideration, as many of these far right parties which have ties to Russia were adversely affected by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. At both the domestic and EU level, concessions have been made in order to accommodate for greater hostility towards Russia and a renewed appeal of the European Union.

For these reasons, it is unlikely that even a larger swing than anticipated would lead to an unraveling of the Union’s projects for greater cooperation. Far right parties simply don’t command enough power to affect meaningful change at the European level. And therein lies the danger. The inability of these parties to engage with the political levers of the continent gives some truth to the idea that the European Union is a vast and antidemocratic machine, utterly unaccountable to the common voter. This in turn feeds the narrative of the far right.

At the same time, as long as centrist parties maintain cohesion and exclude the ECR and ID from power, these populist parties remain divorced from any accountability or responsibility for European decision making. Eurosceptic parties do best in environments where they can afford to be divorced from the consequences of their actions and ideologies - a fact to which the Tories will no doubt attest on the fourth of July.

Shane McLorrain

Managing Editor

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