The EU is braced for a rise in the hard right. What matters is how the centre responds

When the results of the European parliamentary elections start to emerge on Sunday night, polls suggest they will show that the world’s only directly elected transnational assembly will have tilted, unambiguously, to the right.

Yet, for all the talk of a significant surge in support for the forces of Europe’s hard right, their gains should prove broadly in line with a steady progression over the past couple of decades or more. The difference will be in the response.

“The real storyline is not the continuing advance of the hard-right parties,” said Alberto Alemanno, a professor of EU law at HEC Paris and the College of Europe. “It’s the extent to which the centre right is prepared to normalise some of them.”

Across Europe, national-conservative and far-right parties are now in government in half a dozen of the EU’s 27 member states: Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia.

In Sweden, a hard-right party is propping up another rightwing coalition in exchange for policy concessions on immigration and law and order. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom party has sealed a deal to form the next government.

Related: What are the EU elections and why do they matter?

Austria’s autumn elections seem certain to yield a coalition led by the far-right FPÖ. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) is streets ahead in the polls, while Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is second in Germany, above all three ruling parties.

Setbacks for far-right and national-conservative parties in elections in Spain and Poland last year show that the progression is not necessarily all one way. But the prevailing trend seems clear.

The fraying cordon sanitaire

At the EU level, a “grand mainstream coalition” of centre-right, centre-left and liberal parties has always held an absolute majority of seats in the parliament, maintaining – more or less – a cordon sanitaire around the hard right.

Polls suggest that this time around the centre will hang on to its majority, albeit in reduced form. Together, hard-right parties should return a fifth or more of the assembly’s 720 MEPs – far from enough, in theory, to impose their will.

But analysts and observers agree that for the first time Europe’s national-conservative and far-right parties will be able to exert real influence on the EU’s policy agenda: that cordon sanitaire is fraying fast.

“The dynamics are going to be very different,” said one senior EU diplomat. “Parts of the hard right are clearly aiming to maximise their influence by collaborating, rather than fighting. And clearly, parts of the mainstream are very open to that.”

That could have a significant impact on the EU’s policy agenda, particularly in areas where hard-right positions have most traction: immigration, climate action, enlargement, institutional reform, cultural identity and possibly rule of law.

The situation would be more alarming if the hard right were not splintered into multiple clans, agreeing on some issues but starkly divided on others, some anchored in rival parliamentary groups but others politically homeless.

Most of Europe’s hard-right parties want to reduce EU authority, slash immigration and delay the green deal. Beyond that, though, they are at loggerheads: some are EU-critical but mostly constructive; others are fundamentally anti-EU and very obstructive.

Some, mainly in the national-conservative European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which is led by Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, are staunchly pro-Kyiv; others, in Le Pen’s Identity and Democracy (ID) group, are Moscow-friendly.

Yet more, including AfD – ejected from ID for being too extreme – and Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, do not belong to either. Some kind of reconfiguration, perhaps involving Fidesz joining ECR and a new group being formed around AfD to the right of ID, looks inevitable.

A far-right “supergroup” uniting all or even many of the factions, as suggested to Meloni by Le Pen and hailed by Orbán, seems a non-starter. “They are inherently incompatible, and too nationalist to cooperate across borders,” said Alemanno.

Moreover, said Dr Nicolai von Ondarza, the head of EU research at the German Institute for International Affairs (SWP), “for Meloni, a merged supergroup would just retoxify her brand. It’s much more interesting for her to work with the centre right.”

However, formal cooperation between the various hard-right factions may not be necessary for some of their core positions to be reflected in the EU’s top jobs and, down the line, the bloc’s political choices on a range of crucial dossiers.

The favourite for commission president, for example, is Ursula von der Leyen, who needs a simple parliamentary majority for a second term but may well not get it because up to 15% of “grand coalition” MEPs are thought to be unlikely to vote for her.

Scrabbling for votes, von der Leyen has been courting Meloni – who contrary to all expectations has proved, superficially at least, a committed European.

Von der Leyen’s logic seems clear. Her centre-right European People’s party (EPP), expected to again finish first in the parliamentary elections, has said it is willing to work with any party as long as it is “pro-EU, pro-Ukraine, and pro-rule of law”.

That rules out most of ID. But luring Meloni, and possibly some other ECR members, into the fold would serve many purposes: splinter the hard right yet further, bring her the extra votes she may need – and, critically, align with multiple EPP policy objectives.

‘A turning point?’

From Helsinki to The Hague, centre-right parties – mostly EPP members – have been more than willing to cooperate with populist hard-right parties at the national level, trading support for tougher policies on migration and justice and looser ones on climate action.

That process, analysts suggest, is now well under way in Brussels. Not formally: the centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the liberals of Renew and the Greens have all said they will torpedo von der Leyen if she cuts a deal with the hard right.

But Dr Stephanie Luke, a researcher at the University of Sheffield, said that given the hard right’s projected gains and “the growing areas of policy overlap between the EPP and ECR/ID, it seems likely … that rightwing ‘issue-based alliances’ will be more common”.

In effect, a rightwing majority – combining parts of the EPP, ECR and ID – has already seen the light of day, with all three groups working together against, for example, the EU’s planned nature restoration law, now on the verge of collapse.

The EPP would have to be careful, von Ondarza said. “If it sides with the hard right too often, it could lose all support from the centre,” he said. “But at the same time it will be under heavy pressure to push through what it may see as ‘true right’ policies.”

Frustrated by years of compromise with the centre left, liberals and Greens, many EPP members could jump at the increased chance to benefit from hard-right votes to delay, for example, the EU’s planned 2035 ban on new fossil fuel cars.

This new rightwing balance of power would only apply in parliament, not the commission, Alemanno noted. “So the hard right will only be able to delay or slow initiatives, not make new policy proposals, which is the commission’s job,” he said.

But, he added, that “could very well prompt the commission to say: look, given this parliament, there’s no point even proposing”. The impact on EU policy would be incremental but real.

Ignoring the hard right, said the EU diplomat, would become a whole lot harder after these elections: “It does feel like, maybe, a kind of turning point.”