European Politics

In Germany’s snap parliamentary elections, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) doubled its vote share to 21%, leaping from the fifth-largest party in Germany’s lower house to the second. In the UK, Reform UK is rising in the polls.

The populist radical right is on the rise across Europe, and mainstream parties are grappling with how to respond.

The German “firewall” approach involves treating them as a pariah. This means refusing to enter coalition with them, as well as excluding them from parliamentary posts and refusing to debate or engage with their parliamentary motions. After Germany’s election, the first-place party, the Christian democrats (CDU/CSU), has no majority and will need at least one coalition partner to form a government. But it will not ask the AfD – and nor will any other party due to the firewall.

There are clear threats to this approach. Often the appeal of the populist right is that they are plucky outsiders, challenging a self-interested political cartel that ignores the views of the people. What better way to prove this case than by ignoring the democratically elected populists too?

Furthermore, the firewall has clearly not worked in dampening support for the populists in Germany, as well as in France. This is especially the case when the populists have allies in the media, have privileges given them by the constitution or parliamentary rules (for example, membership on committees), or strong regional bases.

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Mainstream parties must also decide whether to maintain their own policy positions or ape those of the populist radical right, especially on key topics like immigration and welfare.

For social democratic centre-left parties, academic research is clear: do not move towards the populist radical right on policy.

Typically, the voter base of social democratic parties is made up of two coalitions: the educated, urban and liberal middle classes, and the old core of industrial workers who tend to hold more authoritarian attitudes. In attempting to win over voters lost to the populist right by copying their policies, these parties tend to lose more voters on their liberal-left wing than they win on their populist-right wing.

A seat at the table: AfD co-chair Alice Weidel joins mainstream party leaders after the German election.
Andreas Gora/EPA-EFE

For the centre-right, the decision is harder. They face a similar challenge to the centre-left in that their support coalition is often made up of social authoritarians (who are more likely to be populist radical right-curious) and more centrist free-market liberals. Moving towards the populist right will alienate the latter camp, so it is not a silver bullet for bringing voters back into the fold.

By not talking about policy areas which are clearly salient to the public, centre-right parties risk seeming out of touch. In contrast, talking about these issues increases their salience and highlights their rivals’ positions – but the centre-right may not be rewarded for this if they are seen to have been forced into changing policy by the populist radical right.

Academics have explored this question in various ways. A 2021 study looked at voters’ ideological positions and subsequent propensity for voting for the centre-right or populist radical right. Another, published in 2022, examined changing party positions through manifestos and subsequent voter flows between the populist radical right and the centre-right across 13 western European countries. The evidence suggests that when parties adopt populist radical right positions, voters are more likely to defect to the radical right instead.

The final strategy is the complete opposite to the German firewall: bring the populist radical right into government. The Austrian case is instructive here. In 1999, the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (OVP) entered a coalition with the populist radical right Freedom Party (FPO), which lasted until 2005. The pressures of government resulted in the FPO imploding and losing roughly two-thirds of its seat share in the next general election.

But the FPO has increased its seat share in every subsequent election, reentering government in 2017 and emerging as the largest party in the 2024 general election. The centrist parties have now taken a firewall approach, forming a coalition without the FPO – and the FPO have soared in the polls. By bringing them into government in the first place, the OVP legitimised the FPO in the eyes of many voters.

What should mainstream parties do?

For the centre-left, the choice is obvious: resist the urge to ape the populist radical right and instead (following the lead of the Danish Social Democrats) adapt to a party system where the populist right cannot be gotten rid of, but is a problem to be managed.

Centre-left parties need a robust message on immigration but they should not forget economics. They should primarily focus on traditional concerns around social protection and defending workers against the effects of globalisation.

This has clear implications for the debate around Blue Labour ideology – that the Labour party should combine leftwing economics with more socially authoritarian stances on crime and immigration, plus a greater emphasis on community over the state and market – and how closely Keir Starmer should be paying attention to it.

For centre-right parties like the UK’s Conservatives, there are no easy options.

The UK does not have the historical baggage of Germany which sustains the firewall against the AfD. But Reform UK is also less extreme than its German counterparts, so its electoral ceiling is likely to be higher than the AfD’s. And the first-past-the-post system makes the consequences of a three-party system much harder to predict.

Reform – like Ukip in the early 2010s – cannot be treated as a pariah, especially since it already has parliamentary representation which will probably be extended to Holyrood and the Senedd. The party also has a largely friendly rightwing media landscape. And perhaps most importantly, the Conservative party is split about whether to do a deal with Reform – if, of course, it actually wants said deal.

Openly ignoring the issues Reform campaigns on will not work. Immigration is too much of a salient concern among voters (especially on the right) to ignore. While banging on about immigration will only add fuel to Reform’s fire, the Conservatives do need to say something – and that should start with “sorry for the last 14 years”.

The Tories cannot openly move to the right without losing some of their centre flank. Of the seats won in 2024, Reform came second in nine, while Labour and the Liberal Democrats came second in 87 and 20 respectively. In 2024, for every vote the Conservatives lost to Reform, they also lost a vote to the Liberal Democrats or Labour.

There is no “magic formula” for the centre-right to vanquish the populist radical right. Instead, they need to nail a tricky combination: a clear vision of what they believe, a consistent policy platform that flows from these beliefs, and a charismatic leader who can communicate this to the public. More

The environment is less of a priority to German voters than it used to be. More

After months of wrangling over public debt and spending decisions, the German government collapsed in November 2024. Among the many disagreements between the parties which made up the governing coalition was how to pay for measures to combat climate change.

Seeking to take advantage of disillusioned voters (who in recent years showed record support for the Greens), populist parties have since cast doubt on the idea of tackling environmental issues at all.

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), for example, the rightwing party which denies the existence of man-made climate change, has raised concerns about energy security and the economic cost of green alternatives.

If the AfD’s broader aim was to take green issues off the political agenda, the plan appears to be working. In the run-up to the general election on February 23 2025, migration and the economy are the most important issues for voters (each on 34%), with climate change lagging far behind (13%).

Nor has the environment been a priority in the parties’ election campaigns. In the first TV debate between the chancellor, the social democrat Olaf Scholz, and his most likely successor, the conservative Friedrich Merz, the topic was ignored almost entirely. A lack of political will and fear of losing voters appear to have relegated environmental policies to the sidelines.

Others want it back at the top of the agenda. Germany’s foreign intelligence service, for example, describes the climate crisis as one of the major risks facing the country, alongside terrorism and war.

Business associations have urged the next government to address climate change mitigation for the sake of German jobs. The Federation of German Industries has demanded an increase in public spending on climate change of as much as €70 billion (£58 billion). Younger voters have called for a nationwide protest to bring the subject back into politicians’ minds.

So have German voters really become sceptical about dealing with climate change?
In a recent study, we found that people who planned to vote for the AfD and the leftwing populist BSW party are indeed sceptical of the need for far-reaching climate policies.

Among voters of these two parties, only 23% (AfD) and 41% (BSW) think that an energy transition is necessary to achieve national climate goals. For Green party voters that figure is 93%, and for SDP supporters it’s 83%.

Voters across the political spectrum have different priorities when it comes to energy supply. For populist party supporters, energy costs trump everything, with only 12% of AfD and 20% of BSW voters considering low emissions important.

These voters are also less likely to assume the energy transition would have positive effects on jobs, and are more likely to fear rising energy costs and security of supply. In short, they are afraid of the social and economic consequences of the energy transition. It is this fear that the far right appears to have been able to mobilise.

Climate costs

Our results are backed up by other research which shows that poorer voters are concerned about the potential costs associated with net zero ambitions.

There is also uncertainty about the possible effects on employment. Many people in Germany believe there will be job losses in their local community as a result of the transition to green energy, and 25% worry they will lose their job.

Climate change protest in Berlin in 2024.
D Busquets/Shutterstock

While these results may seem gloomy, we also found majority support – even among AfD voters – for climate change policies where communities benefit financially from local renewable energy projects, and where citizens feel they have more of a voice in how the energy transition comes into effect.

People want to be heard and participate in a potential transformation. Previous research in psychology has shown that participating in processes and a perception of fairness can increase acceptance.

Research also shows that people fear the effects of climate policies on their personal finances, and that these perceived costs inhibit environmentally friendly behaviour.

But the climate crisis won’t go away, no matter who governs Germany in the coming years. More “once-in-a-century” floods and droughts will hit the nation and bring the climate crisis back to the top of the political agenda.

When this happens, politicians need to ensure they have a positive and credible vision of the future ready to present to voters – where the costs are shared fairly. This will make it harder for populist parties to play on economic worries, and easier to persuade German voters to prioritise the climate crisis. More

The European Union has locked itself into a rigid structure instead of adapting to survive. More

To European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, Europe is like a Volkswagen Beetle – an iconic car produced by a once-mighty German manufacturer which has been struggling to adapt to a new world.

“Europe must shift gears,” she urged in a speech to business executives gathered in Davos, Switzerland at the beginning of the year. Yet, her call to arms failed to raise more than an eyebrow. After all, she has repeated the same call many times since she was elected six years ago. So far, there has been little result.

The US president, Donald Trump, may now even be tempted to finish off the EU (the most developed of the world’s multilateral organisations) by dividing its members over the single market for trade. This arrangement is the cornerstone upon which the union was built, but can it withstand Trump’s attempts to play European nations off against each other in order to get the best deal for himself?

The problem is that Trump is simply bringing to its most extreme consequences the weakness of a system that was built for stable times which are long gone. We urgently need a new idea, and it cannot be for a “United States of Europe”. That is a dream from the past that could not be more at odds with Europe’s current political climate.

Mini unions

Europe is unable to chart a path forward because it needs unanimity among its member states in order to make any major decision. Votes are not even weighted to reflect the different sizes of each of the club’s members.

This is a weakness that would gradually cause the deterioration of any international organisation. But in the case of the EU, the crisis is more serious because member states have surrendered part of their decision power. As a result, if the EU cannot move quickly, even member states turn out to be paralysed.

Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, has often been singled out as the bad guy especially – this has happened every time the EU has tried to approve sanctions against Russia or aid to Ukraine. But examples of free riding abound even among the founding parties.

For decades, France has resisted any attempt to reorganise the common agricultural policy that sends a third of the EU’s budget to farmers, many of them French. Italy has halted the ratification of the reform of the European stability mechanism that should protect states from financial instability, out of the assumption among part of the Italian electorate that this may compromise further sovereignty.

Von der Leyen at Davos.
EPA/Laurent Gillieron

Elsewhere, Germany’s constitutional court has derailed the reform of the EU electoral law that divides the election of the European parliament into a dysfunctional system of 27 national contests, because of the resistance of the German political system to any electoral law which is not proportional.

We need to find a way to change all this. And the solution cannot be the rather abstract idea of a union that proceeds at different speeds, where the older members are supposed to be part of an inner circle. Nor is it feasible to expect the abolition of unanimous voting for the simple reason that to forgo unanimity, you need a unanimous vote.

Instead, the EU should become the coordinator of multiple unions, each formed by the member states themselves around specific policies. A union might form around defence, for example, among member states which are ready for such a partnership, such as Poland, the Baltics and Finland.

Another might bring together countries that wish to collaborate on large projects such as a pan-European high-speed train, or a fully integrated energy market that may allow Italy, France and Spain to save billions of euros and decarbonise more quickly.

This is not entirely new. Arrangements like the euro and the free circulation of people (the Schengen area) follow this principle. Only a subset of EU nations are part of these projects, and offers have even been extended to join beyond the EU’s borders. Monaco is in the euro, for example, while Norway is in Schengen, despite neither being an EU member state.

The problem with these unions is that they are incomplete. The complement to the monetary union is a recently reformed “stability pact” that leaves so many loopholes that 11 out of its 20 members do not comply. And even within Schengen, there are still no proper common borders. The result is continuous reciprocal accusations of exporting each other’s illegal migrants.

The solution here is to fully share the levers within a certain policy area on terms which are more flexible and voluntary for the union’s members.

The possibility of calm divorce

Resilience is achieved through adaptability. Therefore, these new arrangements must make divorce between union members possible from the outset – and establish the terms of such a rupture in advance.

And in the event of an extreme case, the other parties should also be able to ask one of the members to leave their union (so as to avoid being systematically held to ransom by a free rider). The current union treaty does contain a provision (article 50) that enables a member to leave, as the UK did – but if Brexit showed anything, it was that this mechanism has limited use at preventing a divorce from descending into chaos.

People should always be part of these decisions, of course. When states decide to surrender some of their sovereignty to a larger organisation such as the EU, it changes the nature of the pact between the citizens of a country and the people who make decisions on their behalf. This evident truth has been ignored for decades as the EU has gradually been built from the top down.

The European Union currently resembles the marriages we once had in Europe (until well into the 20th century), before it was acknowledged that they are a civil (not necessarily religious) contract that can be dissolved through divorce – not some divine construct that can never be undone.

The marriage between EU countries is blighted by cheating and empty rhetoric. This is an issue we can no longer avoid if Europe wants to do more than just “shift gears”. The EU was the most successful political project of the 20th century. If it wants to continue to be so in the 21st, it has to learn to be flexible. Only those who can adapt survive. More

People who are dissatisfied with their lives are more likely to turn away from mainstream political parties. More

Anger and resentment have become the accepted currency of populist politicians. Donald Trump is generally the first example that comes to mind, but Europe has its fair share of these leaders too, from Viktor Orban in Hungary and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to Marine Le Pen in France and Giorgia Meloni in Italy.

These politicians portray life, the economy, and society in the present as being far worse than in the past. This is because of immigration, globalisation, taxation, corruption, and the excessive influence of politicians and intellectuals. And by positioning themselves as outsiders, they don’t have to accept any role in these wrongs.

Traditionally, when voters felt a government hadn’t delivered for them, they’d punish that government at the ballot box by voting for the main moderate (centrist) opposition party. This dynamic characterised European politics until about 20 years ago. Now, however, the punishment vote goes to populist parties.

How populist parties perform across Europe.
R Silva

This change can be seen by looking at the electoral performance of the largest populist parties in 17 European countries. If we look at elections held around 2000 and then the most recent election, we can see that almost all of those parties have grown in strength.

Countries that were most affected by the financial crisis of 2008 and the sovereign debt crisis in 2010 – such as Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and Ireland – saw the emergence of populist parties. The governments of these nations had implemented painful recovery programmes, frequently anchored on austere economic policies (such as tax rises and spending cuts).

At the beginning of 2000, populist parties were either nonexistent or somewhat irrelevant in these countries. But by the time of the most recent national elections in each, the picture was very different. In Italy, a populist party is now in government. In Greece and Ireland, populists lead the opposition.

Spain and Greece have also both experienced coalition governments that have included radical left populist parties (Syriza and Podemos) in the past 20 years.

And in countries like Germany, Sweden, and Austria – some of the main recipients of asylum requests during the 2015 European migrant crisis – radical right populist parties have gained particular relevance. Fundamentally nativist parties are in opposition in Austria and Sweden. Perhaps most famously, the far-right AfD is consistently making gains in regional elections in Germany and is polling second nationally.

In my research, I’ve found that people who report feeling very dissatisfied and unhappy with their lives were up to 10 percentage points more likely to support a populist compared to those who are extremely satisfied.

In 17 countries where far-right populist parties have parliamentary seats, people who reported feeling very dissatisfied with their lives were 7.4 percentage points more likely to support those parties than those who were extremely satisfied.

In seven countries where we find far-left populist parties represented in the national parliament, very dissatisfied people were 8.2 percentage points more likely to support those parties than those who are extremely satisfied.

Average support (%) for populist parties in Europe between 2002 (the first round of the European Social Survey – ESS) and 2018 (the ninth round of the ESS).

Countries marked by persistent economic inequality and social divides or which experienced severe economic recessions and austerity prove fertile ground for populists. The financial crisis of 2008 preceded a surge for the far left and the refugee crisis in 2015 a surge for the far right.

Geert Wilders, Viktor Orban and Matteo Salvini: three of Europe’s most notorious populist leaders.
EPA

Distrust as the vehicle

The key to understanding why dissatisfied people are more likely to support populists nowadays than in the past lies in trust – or lack thereof it.

Political trust is, in essence, the belief that a party or politician or can (and wants to) improve your life when they take office – or that the institutions of government are capable of doing so.

Departing from a baseline with a relatively high level of trust (which, in a way, was the case before 2000), successive governments in many countries appear to have failed to substantially improve the lives of certain segments of the population.

Among working class people and people without a degree, life satisfaction has not increased. Their median level of satisfaction and happiness did not change at all between 2002 and 2018. What’s more, the gap between this group’s median level of life satisfaction and that of groups with higher education and highly skilled workers has not been reduced. In some cases, it has widened.

The perpetuation of a state of dissatisfaction has gradually eroded the trust of these voters. Many no longer believe that mainstream parties and politicians, if elected, would implement policies to help them. This has fuelled further support for populists. People who are extremely distrustful of politicians and political parties were 14 percentage points more likely to support far-right populist parties compared to those who do trust politicians.

The successes of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and the Freedom Party of Austria show that there is no immediate prospect of a downturn in support for populists.

Arguably, however, the most sensible strategy to overturn this trend is for moderate politicians and parties to invest in strategies that alleviate feelings of unresponsiveness among voters. They might perhaps begin with those without a higher education.

Those same parties should focus on restoring their credibility by looking back at how they managed the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis and the 2015 migration crisis with the benefit of hindsight. More

NATO member Turkey’s intention to join the 9-member body that functions as an alternative to the Western-led order shows Ankara’s global ambitions. More