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?
It is true that Europe is in a crisis mood. But migration is just one of five crises that have shattered the continent in the past 15 years. It came on the heels of a global financial crisis that led Europeans to doubt their children would enjoy living standards better than their own, and alongside a climate crisis that forced them to imagine a world in peril. Meanwhile, Covid-19 exposed the vulnerability of our health systems and triggered fears of new digital authoritarianism. Finally, the war in Ukraine buried the illusion that a major war would never return to the European continent. These five crises have several things in common: they were felt across Europe; they were experienced as an existential threat by many Europeans; they dramatically affected government policies; and they are by no means over. But these five crises are not the same – they triggered different fears and sensibilities and they have simultaneously torn Europe apart but – paradoxically – also kept the EU together.
A new study we conducted helps us imagine Europe populated by five different “tribes” whose political identities have been formed as a response to those crises. These tribes create divisions between and within Europe’s member states.
The term “polycrisis” has emerged to suggest that many crises are taking place more or less concurrently, and that the shock of their cumulative interaction is more overwhelming than their sum. But an underreported feature of the polycrisis is that for different societies, social groups and generations, one crisis usually plays a dominant role above others. Emmanuel Macron captured this well when he contrasted those who worry about the end of the month (economic crisis) with those who worry about the end of the world (climate crisis). That is what we mean when we say that everyone wants a crisis of their own. The climate emergency, the war in Ukraine, Covid-19, immigration and global economic turmoil – each of these five issues has its own sizeable “constituency” of people for whom it is The Crisis.
Interestingly, Germany is the only country where immigration is clearly in the lead when people are asked which crisis bothers them most when they think about the future. Estonians and Poles are focused on the war in Ukraine. Italy and Portugal see the economic crisis as their biggest threat. Spain, Britain and Romania are the countries where Covid-19 is seen as the biggest trauma. And in France and Denmark the climate emergency is considered the most important crisis.
The current preoccupation with migration does not come from the fact that most people in most countries are obsessed with it, nor from the fact that it is the most divisive issue in societies.
In reality, we are witnessing the emergence of a kind of migration consensus all over Europe: support for strengthening external borders has become commonplace among political parties. But what singles out the “migration tribe” - those who define migration as The Crisis - is intensity. They are the angriest of all at EU policies and their anger pushes them to the right. Those who view migration as the biggest crisis will very likely vote for centre-right or far-right parties. In Germany this means a high chance of voting for the Alternative für Deutschland; in France, for Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National or Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête.
Climate is the other crisis that leads its tribe in a clear political direction. The climate tribe is the mirror image of the migration one, with its members often supporting green parties or centre-left parties. It is the clash between these two tribes that will define the upcoming European elections.
Interestingly, however, these two tribes have very different attitudes once their preferred parties are in power. When the migration tribe sees rightwing parties in power, its adherents tend to become more relaxed about the issue. In Italy, immigration ranks surprisingly low among the concerns of many voters: just 10% of the country’s population, and only 17% of Brothers of Italy supporters, describe it as their most transformative crisis, regardless of the fact that the Brothers of Italy party was elected on a strong anti-immigration platform, and that in the past year the flow of illegal immigrants has increased.
The climate tribe behaves in the inverse way. Our polling in Germany shows that people continue to worry about the climate crisis even when the Green party is part of the current government, which has a strong climate programme. Even though Germany succeeded in reducing carbon emissions last year by an impressive 20%, they do not consider the problem taken care of. In short, voters may perceive that electing a far-right government is the answer to immigration fears – even if little changes in reality – but they do not consider the climate emergency over after electing the Greens.
This asymmetry – that migration tribe is mobilised by rhetoric while the climate tribe suffers even when it delivers results – goes some way to explaining the real advantage of the right in the coming elections.
Each of Europe’s five crises will have many lives, but it is at the ballot box where they will live, die or be resurrected. What European leaders should realise is that the election will not just be a competition between left and right – or pro-Europeans and Eurosceptics – but also a battle for supremacy between the different crisis tribes of Europe. It is fragmentation, rather than polarisation, that shapes European politics. Many voters will focus on preventing the return of a crisis of their own. Focusing on migration alone would turn out to be the wrong policy.
Ivan Krastev is a permanent fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna. Mark Leonard is director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. They are co-authors of A crisis of one’s own: the politics of trauma in Europe’s election year
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
