Europe's political permacrisis: Will 2025 see a far-right breakthrough?

Fears over migration. A stagnant economy. Toxic social media. This potent cocktail has fueled the rise of the far-right in Europe. 

So could 2025 be the year when ethnonationalism takes center stage within the governments of major European nations? Or has far-right populism reached its high water mark?

Two experts in European political and economic history who spoke to CGTN say matters are febrile and that the robustness of the continent's institutions will continue to be tested next year.

Renaud Foucart, senior economist at the UK's Lancaster University, says the last five years have seen the normalization of the far-right across Europe, allowing its political torch-bearers to feast on a sense of permacrisis besetting the continent. 

But Foucart does see a silver lining for the continent's political mainstream, stating that "Europe is built with crisis" and predicting that the presence of a Trump Presidency will force European countries to work together.

Associate Professor Ben Wellings is a UK-born expert on the politics of nationalism in contemporary Europe, based at Australia's Monash University. Despite "usually being a 'glass half-full' person", Wellings is less positive about the difficulties facing Europe, due to what he calls the "entrenchment of the oligarchs" in the continent.

Normalization of the far-right

According to Foucart, Europe has reached the normalization stage of the far-right's ascension. 

"You have very few of the kind of neo-Nazis you would have seen 15 or 20 years ago, like Jean-Marie le Pen," he tells CGTN. He uses the example of the Italian Prime Minister: "Georgia Meloni has normalized her view of migrants, with a lot of people on the right and the center and sometimes the left now sharing the same view.

"Maybe the only actual difference is the rule of law and whether they [far-right parties] are willing to believe in parliamentary democracy with checks and balances," he continues. "If National Rally takes power in France, the hope would be that it's another Meloni, who'll continue to play by the rules but have this very tough agenda."

Foucart believes the main far-right European parties don't appear to be existential threats for the European project, "either because they have toned themselves down or because everyone else has joined them. We've seen a lot of center-right parties who have been kind of cosplaying the far-right and trying to mimic their views."

Wellings agrees. "Fratelli d'Italia was the most far-right of the radical right parties and yet when [Meloni] came into power in late 2022 she's governed from hard conservative positions, but ones that have been attractive to other leaders on the immigration issue. 

"A cynical explanation is that politicians sound more radical than they are just to get into power, and then they end up just being conservative parties, which is a preferable outcome."

Elections

2024 was labelled the biggest election year in human history, with almost four billion people – around half of the world's population – going to the polls in 72 countries. Almost without exception, all incumbent governments lost votes, with most losing power.

Coming up, on February 23, is the German federal election which is likely to see Social Democratic Party (SPD) Chancellor Olaf Scholz ejected from office. His likely replacement is Friedrich Merz, of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), with the SPD pushed into third place by anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD). 

The German electorate's dalliance with AfD, which performed strongly in several regional elections in 2024, can be put down to economic issues, says Foucart. The 'debt brake' crisis has seen investment shrivel up despite allowing higher public borrowing to prop up Germany's flagging economy. The country's energy dependence on Russia also exposed it when the Ukraine conflict began. 

According to Foucart: "Germany didn't invest for several years and is the country which decided to be massively dependent on Russia for gas, with a big group of small and medium industrial companies relying on cheap energy."

The big question is whether the CDU can govern alone or in a grand coalition with the SPD and avoid bringing the AfD into government. 

Wellings explained: "Far-right support is rising to levels of where they can now start to seriously affect government, by either pulling center-right parties to the right or maybe even being in coalitions – or in Meloni's case, actually in government."

European integration

There are fears that the entire European project could collapse if enough populist parties take the reins in their national parliaments. 

Foucart and Wellings both believe the key factor in the bloc's survival will be whether the major European institutions remain intact. 

Foucart points to the example of France's 6 percent structural deficit being supported by the rest of the bloc, with the current acceptance that it will pay its way. 

"France is paying only a very small spread on its debt but everyone also expects France at some point to play the game and to come back," he explains. "If a country decided not to do that and to say 'We don't believe in European rules,' then everything could explode."

On the other hand, Wellings says the UK's difficult Brexit experience may have made the EU safe from disintegration.

"The example of Brexit made a lot of those radical right parties, particularly the National Rally, really think twice about leaving the EU," he says. "I wonder now if they've actually decided it's too hard. 

"Also there are some advantages to having this supranational body that actually helps them (radical and far-right parties) operate in a pan-European way because elections to the European Parliament often give them a platform they don't necessarily get in their national legislatures."

However, Wellings believes the danger for the EU is that it gets progressively captured by parties determined to weaken it. "They've already more or less kind of kicked the new Green Deal into touch," he says. 

Progressive Dilemma

The reaction of centrist parties of both a left and right bent is key to how the institutions cope with the disruptive tendencies of populist parties.

Wellings isn't convinced mainstream politicians have understood that the rules of the political game have changed. "Centrist parties are in a dilemma because they're essentially small-c conservative, defending gains made in the past, so they're just on the defensive," he says.

He believes that progressivism is a far easier cause in times of economic plenty. "When the economic conditions are helpful, it's easier to mount a case that the current system is okay but now the system doesn't seem to be delivering for people. The critique from the radical right leaves the centrist parties just sounding like they're managing decline."

Foucart is more hopeful. "Europe is being built with crisis," he says. "With the debt crisis that followed the financial crisis, it took the near bankruptcy of Greece for the European Union to finally agree on something that was unbelievable before, which was that the central bank became a de facto guarantor of national debt."

He says the spread on public debt now accepted across Europe would have been unthinkable before, while the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President has made countries aware of the need to be less dependent on others.

Foucart also mentions the salutary lesson of Brexit. "With Brexit, people were facing the reality of what it is not to have access to the European single market and total absence of a magic wand," he says. 

"Then all those people started to become pro European, meaning that as of today you can have Georgia Meloni prime minister in Italy, which still abides by most of the rules at the European level. Somehow the Brexit crisis has allowed Europe to survive, including in the time of populism, with a federal vision."

Foucart believes mainstream European countries will need to find a new way of appealing to voters. 

"They need to offer a bit of optimism and positive identity, making the kind of case that Pedro Sanchez is making by saying that 'OK, we are pro-European, we are playing by the rules, but also we believe that we can have social policy on a tight budget, choosing our battles and deciding that some things are too important to cut.'"

He believes it's important not to merely ape the language of the far-right. "The clear message of 40 years of history is that the moment you imitate them, you just vanish, you give them the floor. But this is not something that is bound to happen."

Wellings agrees: "Things are darkest before dawn. If party competition matters, then this ought to spur renewal. Anger is sometimes justified, and there might need to be some rethinking of the economy. The neoliberal framing of a capitalist economy might need to be reconsidered."