Will the far right be the big winner in this year’s European elections? If so, what would its victory mean for the future of the EU? And who is the far right? Five years ago, Europe’s leaders rightly recognised that Europeans were suffering a vertigo moment. In Milan Kundera’s words, vertigo is not the same as a fear of falling – rather, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves. Then, voters toyed with far-right populists and contemplated collapsing the union, but eventually the majority chose to vote for mainstream parties.
This scenario seems unlikely to unfold this time around. Today, most far-right parties have abandoned demands that their countries leave the EU or the euro and have detoxified their brands. Rather than quitting the EU, they want to remake it and to govern it. After the recent elections in the Netherlands and Slovakia, and regional elections in Austria and in some regions of Germany, a consensus view is emerging that the coming European elections in June are a disaster in the making, and that migration is the only issue that will define the campaign and outcome. But could this picture be wrong?
