"Far-right populists are threatening to eclipse Europe's once-powerful conservative parties, in one of the biggest political realignments since the end of World War II. The continent's center-right is now searching for a survival strategy.
In Germany, after dominating politics for almost two decades, the center-right is now on the defensive, with the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, now leading in some polls for the first time since its creation in 2013. In the U.K., the Conservative Party, after losing an election to the Labour Party last year, is now in danger of being overtaken on the right.
While center-right parties remain in government in large parts of Europe, they are losing votes and popularity to more radical upstarts, a trend fueled by frustration over rising immigration and slow economic growth.
In France, the far-right National Rally is the largest single party in the Assemblee Nationale, while the center-right Republicans and their allies hold 48 of the chamber's 577 seats. And in Italy, Giorgia Meloni became prime minister in 2022, backed by her populist party, Brothers of Italy.
Right-wing populists are now in government or supporting ruling coalitions in the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Sweden, Croatia, Slovakia and Hungary, a marked increase from last year. They also made big gains at last year's European elections.
The U.K.'s Tories and Germany's Christian Democratic Union have been two of the holdouts. But they are now under siege -- and oscillating between three strategies in response: imitation, opposition and collaboration.
Nothing appears to be working.
The rise of the populist right "reflects a gradual erosion of confidence in democratic institutions: parliament, the government, etc.," said Manfred Gullner, head of the German Forsa polling group. In Germany, recent political instability, including the premature collapse of the last government, was feeding this erosion of trust.
In some countries, the center-right has addressed the challenge by adopting antiestablishment policies and discourse -- an approach that has often backfired.
In 2016, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron held a referendum on whether Britain should remain in the European Union to appease the Conservative Party's euroskeptic fringe, which he went on to lose. Almost a decade on and after burning through a succession of leaders, the party is facing an existential threat from Reform UK.
Polling this past week by YouGov shows startup party Reform UK with 29% of the vote share and the Conservatives lingering on 17%. If that polling persists until the next general election expected in 2029, the Tories would be almost wiped out, pollsters say.
Led by euroskeptic champion Nigel Farage, Reform is now peeling away large numbers of Tory voters with a tough line on immigration and climate policies, while courting traditionally left-wing supporters with an interventionist economic pitch that includes nationalizing the steel industry. Last week, it won against both the Tories and the center-left Labour Party in local elections.
The Conservatives' new leader, Kemi Badenoch, has said she needs time to rebuild the Tory brand after it was ousted from government last year. She has ruled out going into coalition with Reform and is fleshing out anti-immigration measures instead.
Conservative strategists are wary of chasing Farage down the right. They point to Canada's Pierre Poilievre and Australia's Peter Dutton, who trumpeted populist policies and not only lost elections but also their own seats.
Elsewhere, centrists of various hues have reacted to far-right surges not by stealing their message but by banding together to form moderate governments.
For the first time in Germany's post-World War II history, it took Germany's new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, two votes in Parliament to secure an endorsement from lawmakers even though his proposed coalition had a relatively comfortable majority. Merz, chairman of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, is governing in an alliance with the center-left Social Democratic Party. He now faces an ascendant AfD.
Born as a fiscally conservative protest movement opposed to the bailout of eurozone member states during the region's sovereign-debt crisis, the AfD has morphed into one of Europe's most radical far-right parties.
It is stridently anti-immigration, wants Germany to leave the EU, and has called for a rapprochement with Russia.
After years of investigation, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, classified the AfD as a right-wing extremist organization.
Germany's Nazi past has made any talk of cooperation between traditional parties and the AfD highly controversial. And despite pressure from the Trump administration, the Christian Democrats under Merz have so far stuck to the "firewall," an agreement between all other parties to keep the AfD out of power at the regional and national levels." [1]
There is no politics in one EU country - Lithuania. We keep electing to power book keepers of limited ability promising us wealth to all and never delivering.
1. World News: Far-Right Populists Gain Traction in Europe --- In Germany and U.K., parties that have held sway for decades are being overtaken. Bertrand, Benoit; Colchester, Max. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 10 May 2025: A9.
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