Several countries in the European Union are currently governed by far-right political parties. In Hungary, Fidesz under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been progressively dismantling the country’s constitutional protections of the rule of law and democratic institutions. Poland under its ruling Law and Justice party has shown equally worrying trends. Most recently, Giorgia Meloni and the Brothers of Italy party just won the Italian general elections in September 2022 and have formed a governing coalition with Matteo Salvini’s far-right Lega and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. In Sweden, the newly elected minority government depends on support from the far-right Sweden Democrats.
While far-right parties have been present in Europe for some time, liberal democratic parties still do not know how to respond to their presence.
The European Parliament is a suitable place to observe the dilemmas that arise for mainstream politicians regarding the far-right. Particularly when the latter are elected democratically to office and form part of a democratic institution such as a supranational parliament. As the only directly elected body of the European Union (EU), the European Parliament hosts 705 elected members from 206 national political parties. Most of them gather in different political groups according to similar ideologies. The far right spreads widely across different political groups, underlining the degree to which they have become part of the system.
