By Athena Papakosta

Far-right parties are becoming more and more powerful in Europe.

They win elections, as happened last November in Netherlands with the victory of the extreme right Geert Wilders who leads the anti-Islamic, anti-European Party for Freedom (PVV) but they also set, even as an opposition, the political agenda, just as happened in December in France with the government of Emmanuel Macron which succumbed to far-right support National Alert (RN) of Marine Le Pen to pass his immigration bill.

A poll for the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) shows that the role played by the Far Right in 2023 in Europe will continue with the same momentum in the new year but will not be limited to the national level.

In view of the European elections, the next day in the European Parliament is expected to be much more… to the right.

According to the results, the main political parties in the European Parliament: the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), the center-left Social Democrats (S&D), the center-liberal Renew Europe (RE) and the Greens (G/EFA) lose seats.

On the contrary, the Left (GUE/NGL) is expected to win seats. The same goes for the center-right group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) but also the far-right Identity and Democracy Group (ID) with the difference that it is the real winner of the European elections since it jumps out and becomes the third force with 98 seats.

A negative impression is created by the fact that in nine of its member states The European Union far-right parties are expected to finish first. These are France, Austria, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Netherlands.

At the same time, in an additional nine member states the extreme right is expected to emerge second or third force. These are the countries of Germany, Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Romania.

As the study states, these results are important findings since many of the above Member States, immediately after the European elections, will have national elections, such as Austria in the fall of 2024. Other Member States, such as the Netherlands , will “use” the result as an indicator of whether a government will be formed until the European elections, and others like Poland to see if voters have indeed turned away from the populist right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, as they did in the national October 2023 elections.

The analysis should “serve as a wake-up call about what’s at stake” in the European elections, said political scientists Simon Hix and Kevin Cunningham, who wrote the ECFR report, and also pointed out that if Donald Trump is re-elected in the United States States, the “strategy of interdependence and that of international collaborations for the defense of European interests and values” could be thrown into the wastebasket with a more right-wing and inward-looking coalition in the European Parliament.