Europe is facing a crisis of governance, as a global wave of populism threatens to overwhelm its democracies — with potentially severe consequences for the union they have spent more than seven decades building.
To have any hope of winning back frustrated voters, Europe’s centrist leaders must summon much greater ambition and cooperation than they have so far.
Not since before World War II have extremists been so close to gaining power across Europe. As of September, populist parties — mostly right-wing and anti-immigrant, sometimes disdainful of the EU and sympathetic to Russia’s totalitarian regime — had captured more than one-third of votes in parliamentary elections across 30 European countries, weighted by population. They are among the leading factions in the EU’s two largest members, France and Germany.
The populist rise is troubling not only in its own right, but also in the way it is paralyzing traditional centrists. With their vote shares shrinking, they are increasingly forced to forge awkward alliances that are too conflicted to get anything done — as exemplified most recently in France, where President Emmanuel Macron is on his fourth prime minister since last year amid failed attempts to get a budget through a fractious parliament.
What is driving voters’ shift to the fringe? There is no single or simple answer. Among the plausible explanations: unusually large influxes of refugees; stagnant working-class incomes; high housing and energy costs; the lingering impact of the 2008 financial crisis; and populist parties’ skill at exploiting social media. All matter to different degrees in different places.
That said, populists do have one thing in common: They portray established leaders and institutions (with some accuracy) as an out-of-touch, corrupt, incompetent elite. Unfortunately, their preferred solutions often involve the explicit contravention of democratic checks and balances — a playbook Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has followed to the EU’s dismay.
How can mainstream parties counter this destructive narrative?
Co-opting does not work — as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz learned earlier this year when he proposed an immigration-limiting measure with the support of the fascist-adjacent Alternative for Germany party, only to suffer a severe backlash. When centrists adopt extremist rhetoric, they succeed mainly in alienating their core constituencies. Merely hoping that the populists are going to moderate once in office is no solution, either.
Instead, Europe’s leaders must demonstrate that they and their institutions can deliver results. That means addressing voters’ legitimate concerns — including reviving Europe’s meager economic growth, bolstering its defenses and enacting policies that accentuate the advantages of immigration while mitigating its downsides.
To that end, cooperation is crucial. To attract the private investment they desperately need, individual countries must stop coddling their own financial institutions and unite their capital markets. To secure Europe’s borders, they must coordinate policies on immigration and asylum. To most effectively provide for their common defense, they need to join forces to achieve economies of scale — rather than, for instance, producing 12 types of main battle tanks.
For all its faults, the EU remains well suited for managing such cooperation.
Europeans consistently said they view the union more favorably than their national governments, and that they want it to do more. At a time when zero-sum geopolitics is on the rise, Europe has a chance to show that liberal democracy and cross-border partnership could work better.
The latest polls in France and Germany suggested right-wing populists could win the next elections outright, giving them much more influence over the EU’s two most powerful countries. Europe’s leaders should see this trend as the warning sign that it is — and act accordingly.
The Editorial Board publishes the views of the editors across a range of national and global affairs.
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