In Europe, Chaos Is the New Normal
The European elections are the beginning of the end for Emmanuel Macron.
Elections to the European Parliament are often a sleepy affair. This year, they have produced a political earthquake. In France, they have inspired Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections for deputies in the Assemblée nationale in a desperate—and likely ill-fated—gamble to save his crumbling presidency. And across the continent, they have demonstrated that the “populist moment” is here to stay, with far-right parties gaining as many votes as the members of any other single political family.
When voters headed to the polls across the continent on Sunday, most of them did not cast their vote to influence the way the European Parliament is going to vote over the next five years, or even to determine who should be the next president of the European Commission. Rather, they were making moves in a series of loosely-connected national dramas, rewarding the few governments that are popular and punishing the many that are not.
This helps to make sense of the results in some of Europe’s biggest countries, from the humiliation of Macron in France and Olaf Scholz in Germany to the comparatively strong results for Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Donald Tusk in Poland. And yet, these highly heterogeneous election results point to two major transcontinental trends.
The first of these is the rise and rise of the populist right. The far right once represented a small fringe of the electorate. As it expanded its share of the vote over the course of the 2000s and 2010s, many observers continued to put faith in the idea that the “populist moment” would prove to be fleeting. When the effects of the Great Recession, or the shock of the migrant crisis, or the impact of Covid finally wore off, they promised, the far right would start to fade.
It is time to give up on that tired piece of wishful thinking once and for all. The far right is no longer a marginal movement; in many European countries, it has become the largest political faction. In some countries, right-wing populists now dominate the political scene: there, it is but a small exaggeration to say that they are to this political epoch what, in the postwar period, Social Democrats were to Sweden or Christian Democrats were to Italy.
Results in France, where Le Pen’s National Rally took about twice as many votes as Macron’s second-placed Renaissance, are the most stark representation of this trend. But the far right also topped polls in Italy, in Austria, and in the east of Germany, among others. For now, the various streams of the far right are split between different political factions in the European Parliament; if they were to unite, they would rival the center-right European People’s Party as its single largest parliamentary block.1
Remarkably, these developments are fueled, not slowed, by young voters. In Poland, a plurality of voters under the age of 30 supported the far-right Konfederacja. In France, the National Rally did a little better among voters under the age of 35 than it did in the population as a whole. In Germany, the young are now significantly more likely to vote for the far right than the old, with the AfD out-polling the Greens among those who are younger than 25.2
There are many reasons for the growing strength of the far right. But it is clear that one reason outweighs the others: Voters simply don’t trust mainstream parties to control immigration. And that concern is now especially pronounced among the continent’s young people, who are more accustomed than their elders to living in a genuinely diverse environment, but also more directly exposed to the problems that flow from a lack of integration. A few years ago, David Frum admonished Democrats that, “If liberals won’t enforce borders, fascists will.” Moderate parties in Europe would do well to heed the same lesson.
The second of these trends is in part a result of the first: The era of ideologically cohesive government has, for the time being, come to an end. Throughout the postwar era, there were two clear and recognizable blocs in most European countries: Labour and the Conservatives in Britain, Social Democrats and Christian Democrats in Germany, Socialists and Republicans in France. From time to time, awkward political coalitions needed to be assembled to secure a majority (as when left and right competed for the support of the economically liberal FDP in Germany) or different branches of government were in the hands of different ideological families (as when French presidents had to bear the humiliation of cohabitation). But for the most part, elections had a clear structuring logic: They presented voters with a choice to put either the left or the right in charge, and allowed incoming governments to pursue their political program with some modicum of coherence.
Over the past decade, the rise of populist movements has added a second political cleavage to the politics of the continent: The distinction between insurgents and the establishment is now as important as that between left and right. On both sides of the political spectrum, this double cleavage has effectively placed ideologically coherent governments beyond electoral reach. The places in which establishment parties on either the left or the right have an independent majority of their own are few and far between.
It is these changes that have hamstrung Macron’s presidency over the last two years, and are likely to cripple it for the remainder of his presidency. In 2022, Macron’s party failed to secure a majority in the Assemblée nationale, and was forced to cobble together an unstable minority government reliant on support of deputies that span the ideological gamut from the outer edges of the center left to the outer edges of the center right. He now appears to hope against hope that a new round of voting, held in the shadow of Sunday’s humiliation, will break the gridlock and strengthen his party’s standing.
To be sure, it’s too early to predict the outcome of the new vote Macron has called. His political instincts have often proven to be more astute than his detractors imagined. It is, as recent elections in India remind us, always a mistake to believe you know what the people will do before they have cast their votes. But for what it’s worth, all the signs currently point in the opposite direction: the new Assemblée will likely see a big increase in the strength of the far right; it’s even imaginable that the representatives of establishment parties could fall below a 50 percent share of the seats. Like many other parliaments across Europe, the Assemblée nationale is slouching towards ungovernability.
A storm has long been brewing over France. Now, the clouds are about to burst. The torrential rain is likely to wash away what remains of Macron’s presidency. And in the wake of the next presidential elections, scheduled for 2027, Marine Le Pen may well be taking up residence in the Elysée Palace.
Yascha Mounk is the editor-in-chief of Persuasion.
A version of this piece originally appeared in French in Le Point.
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The exact size of the faction would depend on how you count. The center-right EPP is currently projected to gain 188 seats. The two major far-right factions, the European Conservatives and Reformists and the Identity and Democracy Group, have 145 between them. Adding the two strongest far-right parties among the non-aligned group, the Alternative for Germany and Fidesz, gets you to 170. How many of the remaining 52 MEPs from the nonaligned bloc should be counted among the far-right faction depends on tough judgment calls regarding a variety of minor parties and movements.
Five years ago, the Green Party gained seven times more votes among those below the age of 25 than did the Alternative for Germany. This time around, the Alternative for Germany did better than the Greens, sharing first place with the center-right Christian Democrats. More broadly, the underperformance of Green parties across Europe, both because sluggish economic growth has put economic concerns front-and-center in the minds of voters, and because many of them have embraced deeply unpopular ideas associated with the identitarian left, is one of the widely overlooked stories of this election.
The media are addicted to using the terms "far right", "right", "center right", "middle", "center left", "left" and "far left" to describe a "political spectrum" that was, perhaps, the reality of the late 20th century, but no longer describes what is happening as we move further into the 21st century. If politics could ever be described in terms of a one-variable (right-left) spectrum, that is no longer the situation. We need a new understanding and with it a new vocabulary.
'And that concern is now especially pronounced among the continent’s young people, who are more accustomed than their elders to living in a genuinely diverse environment, but also more directly exposed to the problems that flow from a lack of integration.'
Diversity is only a strength if it is contained within certain shared values that provide some cohesion for the whole. Mindless diversity for the sake of diversity alone without providing for this is exactly the lack of integration mentioned above and here we are. People are fond of saying the US is a melting pot. Well, it was, but only because the immigrants who came here embraced values they found here and it allowed us to enjoy, reward and enfold these folks but also to maintain our integrity as a nation. And they have enriched our country beyond measure. But it is a fact that values held by some societies whose immigrants find their way to the West are fundamentally incompatible with Western values. And you can bet that at least some of those are bent on bringing down the very countries whose freedoms allow them to be there in the first place.
The assumption seems to be that populism = fascism. Mr Hodosh below hints at we need a new definition. How about one that has a wide latitude of tolerance and hospitality for different peoples and cultures, but also knows who it is as a nation, has a healthy sense of self preservation and isn't afraid to draw the line when its integrity is threatened as a start. I would never go to another country and expect them to abandon their values and fundamentally change to become something they aren't for me or my tribe. Marriages where one person tries to fundamentally change the other beyond the usual give and take usually do not last long. So why should it be different for nations?