3 days ago
With Poland's new president, Europe's rightward tilt becomes more pronounced than ever
Written by Aman K Pandey
If last week's presidential election result in Poland confirms anything, it is the populist zeitgeist in Europe, where conservative, populist, and far-right parties are now on a path of normalisation.
Just last week, the far-right Chega, founded only in 2019, became the largest opposition force in the Portuguese parliament — just like the AfD in Germany, which became the principal opposition party in the Bundestag following the snap election held in February. The trend was visible in last year's elections for the European Parliament, where far-right forces from different countries gained a favourable share of the vote, although not on the scale and magnitude predicted by many pre-election polls.
The only recent exception to this trend was the election of Nicușor Dan to the Romanian presidency with a decisive eight-point majority over his populist rival, George Simion. But given the broader trend in Europe, the result of the Romanian election looks like an outlier.
The continued rise of right-wing and populist forces has changed the political dynamics in Europe, where mainstream centrist and liberal parties have been forced to react to the new reality by adopting agendas once considered exclusive to the former, such as tighter immigration rules and increased border security.
What is common to these elections is the direct support of US President Donald Trump and members of his administration for many of the far-right candidates. While the right-wing presidential candidate in Romania had openly declared himself a follower and supporter of Trump, Karol Nawrocki — now the President of Poland — had visited the White House before the election and was openly endorsed by Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security Secretary and a member of the Conservative Political Action Conference of the US, which seeks to promote conservative ideas across the world. This endorsement came just five days before the second round of the election was scheduled to take place on 1 June.
Similarly, many leaders — like Herbert Kickl of Austria, Marine Le Pen of France, Andrej Babiš of the Czech Republic, and more prominently, Viktor Orbán, the poster boy of Make Europe Great Again (MEGA) — have expressed admiration for Trump and praised his leadership, showcasing their ideological alignment.
The overt support of Trump for these populist parties has prompted mainstream European leaders and parties to accuse his supporters of interference in European domestic politics. The critical support that Elon Musk provided to Alice Weidel, the AfD candidate in the German election, prompted Friedrich Merz to warn the billionaire of possible consequences for interfering in the German election. The open support that Vice President JD Vance gave to the AfD, and his harsh criticism of European allies — while addressing a gathering at the Munich Security Conference — for allegedly hindering free speech, only reinforced this belief.
Although far-right parties do not share universal agreement on many issues facing Europe — the conflict in Ukraine, for example — they remain united in their collective distaste for mainstream centrist and liberal parties. They accuse these parties of promoting the post-Cold War liberal international order, which, in their view, is responsible for weakening traditional Christian values, dismantling European borders (thus compromising the sovereignty of nation states), encouraging migrant influx into Europe, and, above all, strengthening the influence of media and NGOs to promote globalist and so-called 'woke' agendas.
For the European far-right, Trump is at the centre of efforts to weaken the Washington-led liberal international order, which they believe sought to replace the traditional tenets of Western civilisation with progressive ideologies. Trump's well-known hostility towards climate change action and multilateralism has found strong resonance among like-minded parties in Europe, as his actions tend to justify and legitimise their own nationalist and conservative ideals — especially through their anti-EU and anti-Green Deal rhetoric.
In February, prominent far-right leaders belonging to the Patriots for Europe group — the third-largest bloc in the European Parliament — gathered in Madrid not only to praise Trump's return to power but also to showcase unity by focusing on common enemies: globalists, 'woke' ideology, gender theory, and environmentalist culture. They downplayed Trump's aggressive threats to Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland and his ensuing tariff war against Europe. The gathering, in fact, widely shared Trump's antipathy towards multilateral organisations like the WHO, celebrated his anti-immigration policies, denounced the EU's climate and tariff policies as greater threats, and engaged in a great deal of chest-thumping about their close ties with Trump.
These leaders, however, faced an uncomfortable situation within a month when Trump and his Vice President launched a humiliating verbal attack on Zelenskyy during his visit to the White House. Ukraine has been a point of contention among European populists: leaders like Giorgia Meloni have expressed complete solidarity with Ukraine, while Orbán has repeatedly taken a pro-Russian stance.
The Trump-Zelenskyy spat placed Russia-sensitive European far-right leaders in a tight spot, prompting many to attempt a balancing act. They have done similar balancing on the question of Trump's tariff actions, where most of the time these leaders have questioned the effectiveness of the EU rather than criticising Trump's dwindling commitment to already declining transatlantic relations.
The focus of the European far-right has been on the mainstreaming of their agenda — something that received a boost with the return of Donald Trump to the White House. Trump, in many ways, legitimises their economic, political, and cultural crusade against the mainstream parties in Europe and reinforces their Eurosceptic rhetoric. The challenge, however, is the growing disenchantment of the European public with Trump's erratic, unpopular, and unpredictable policies. The real question for Europe's right-wing parties now is how to remain close to Trump without compromising their credibility in the eyes of their electorate at home.
The writer is a researcher with the Indian Council of World Affairs, Sapru House, New Delhi
