Brussels yawns as Europe’s populists notch yet another win

BRUSSELS — Keep calm and carry on.

That seems to be Brussels’ motto after another far-right election victory in Europe, this time in Austria.

Herbert Kickl and his anti-migrant, Russia-friendly Freedom Party (FPÖ) came out on top in Sunday’s vote but are likely to be kept out of government. EU diplomats and officials have in turn downplayed the direct impact of Austria’s election result on Europe. 

“Whatever comes out in terms of coalition, Austrian policy is unlikely to change much,” said one EU diplomat, reflecting the general mood in Brussels. The diplomat, as were others in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak freely.

“The tone will be different but substantially there may be continuity rather than radical change.” 

A senior EU diplomat took a similar line, saying Brussels has seen election results like this before and that there had been no direct impact on European policymaking.

Eric Mamer, the chief spokesperson of the EU executive, declined on Monday to comment on the results of the Austrian election but stressed that “the European Commission is carrying out its mission. It has been doing so in an extremely complex international context over the past five years, and as we have seen, both the leaders of the European Council and the members of the European Parliament reconfirmed President [Ursula] von der Leyen for a second mandate, which means that we are certainly doing a certain number of things right.”

But as Brussels shrugs, the surge of far-right populist forces shows no sign of abating. 

Earlier this month Germany’s anti-migrant Alternative for Germany recorded strong gains in regional elections, while last year anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders won the Dutch national election. Far-right forces also made major gains across the bloc in the European Parliament election in June, with France’s National Rally winning at the European ballot box and later becoming the biggest single party in France’s national parliament. 

Those election results have fed into the narrative of Russia-friendly, anti-immigrant Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán, who has been a thorn in the side of mainstream European politicians for years. 

The Austrian election victory illustrates that the trend toward radical, authoritarian and pro-Russian parties entering governments within the EU is by no means limited to Hungary, said Georgetown University’s Daniel Kelemen. 

“The EU is vulnerable to infiltration and extortion by ‘Trojan horse’ regimes serving the interests of its strategic adversaries like Putin,” Kelemen said. “Because of the power of national governments in the EU structure, the Union as a whole can be derailed when a member government comes under control of a party like this.”

Coalition stays grand

So far, the EU has largely been able to carry out its business as usual. The rightward shift in the European Parliament did not prevent von der Leyen from securing another five years at the head of the European Commission, while the radicals are themselves splintered, limiting their impact and power. 

“The top jobs in Europe went to the grand coalition of conservatives, socialists and liberals,” said Catherine De Vries, a political science professor at Bocconi University. “In addition, the far-right groups in the European Parliament often don’t cooperate. So overall it is a mixed bag when it comes to the influence of the far-right in European politics.” 

Across European capitals, the complicated process of coalition politics has often prevented the most radical politicians from entering government, or at least diluted their influence. 

In the Netherlands, for example, Wilders is not a part of the Dutch government, and has also backed down on some of his Euroskeptic, anti-migration positions in order to reach a deal with his coalition partners. A similar scenario may well play out in Vienna, where the FPÖ is likely to enter government only if it distances itself from Kickl. The party may even be excluded from government altogether if the center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) manages to cobble together a three-way coalition with the Social Democrats and the liberal NEOS.

In Italy, meanwhile, Giorgia Meloni is leading the country’s most right-wing government since World War II. In the European Council, however, Meloni has not proven as obstructive as many mainstream politicians feared, meaning that when the EU’s 27 national leaders gather, Orbán is relatively isolated (apart from occasional support from Slovak PM Robert Fico). But that could be about to change: If Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November, Orbán will doubtless feel emboldened. 

“Just as we were right about migration, we’ll be proven right about the war [in Ukraine],” Orbán told the Hungarian parliament on Monday. Hungary has long pushed the EU’s migration policy toward the right with its anti-immigrant rhetoric.   

Even if the far right doesn’t win power immediately, victories by extremist parties do impact the European political landscape, said the University of Oxford’s Vicente Valentim, author of “The Normalization of the Radical Right.” 

Across European societies, far-right victories normalize previously stigmatized behavior, Valentim stressed, as citizens who might already harbor xenophobic or far-right views feel more comfortable acting on them. 

On the policy level, Valentim continued, far-right parties “end up setting the agenda and making other parties talk a lot about their issues,” especially following electoral victories. Mainstream parties often end up enacting “the type of policy that oftentimes far-right parties would like to propose themselves,” he added, which only further normalizes the far right. 

In that sense, the difference between the response of Brussels to this weekend’s FPÖ victory and that of nearly 25 years ago is telling. 

Following the country’s 1999 parliamentary elections, when the party, led by the late Jörg Haider, was set to enter the Austrian government, the bloc imposed diplomatic sanctions on Vienna, including suspending high-level meetings. Ministers openly discussed excluding Austria from the European Union. 

Fast forward a quarter century, and the EU seems to have greeted the FPÖ win with a yawn — before carrying on with business as usual. 

Sebastian Starcevic contributed reporting.