Europe’s ascendant right-wing parties want to remake EU. They can’t agree how
Right-wing nationalist parties look set to surge in elections across Europe this week, but the shock wave will travel slowly due to rifts among the political forces. Many of the parties see former President Donald Trump as a model. They pledge to peel back Brussels’ power and shift European Union policy on hot-button issues including migration and climate policies.
Balazs Orban, political director for Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, believes the EU elections put a long-elusive goal within reach: building a single nationalist alliance to reshape the bloc. Across Europe, opposition to the EU’s expanding powers is increasing, he said. A strong right-wing result this week, buttressed with a potential Trump victory in November, could force EU leaders to abandon their search for an ever more centralized bloc, believes Orban, who is no relation to the prime minister.
“I think in the short term, the entire political environment can change," he said. The initiative is hitting setbacks. Relatively moderate right-wing leaders, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, are noncommittal and eager to explore ties with center-right politicians.
France’s more hard-line National Rally, meanwhile, broke ties last month with its EU partner, the Alternative for Germany, after spying allegations and other scandals at the AfD. Jan Zahradil, an EU lawmaker and former president of the European Conservatives and Reformists, one of the bloc’s two right-wing political groups, said this week’s vote could change the political atmosphere. But he believes it will take many nationalist victories in member state elections over coming years to build a new force that could reshape Brussels.
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