Europe’s New Right: Is the Liberal Order in Danger?

By Matthew Parish

Monday 31 August 2026

Europe has always had a far right. What is new is that the far right is no longer very far away. For much of the period following 1945, explicitly nationalist, authoritarian or ethnically exclusionary political movements occupied an uncomfortable position on the margins of European political life. They existed, sometimes noisily, but respectable conservative parties generally declined to govern with them. Memories of fascism were too recent. European integration itself was conceived in substantial part as an antidote to the nationalist passions that had twice destroyed the continent. Liberal democracy, constitutional government, international institutions and progressively more open borders became components of a European political orthodoxy.

That orthodoxy is now under sustained pressure.

The Alternative für Deutschland is Germany’s second-largest parliamentary party, with 150 of the Bundestag’s 630 seats. In Saxony-Anhalt, where regional elections take place on 6 September 2026, recent polling has put the AfD at an extraordinary 42 per cent — approximately twice the support enjoyed by Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has transformed itself from the pariah movement founded by her father into one of the dominant forces in French politics. Giorgia Meloni has demonstrated that a party descending from Italy’s post-fascist political tradition can occupy the Palazzo Chigi and conduct relatively conventional European diplomacy. Right-wing populists have entered or supported governments elsewhere, including Finland and Sweden.

At European level the transformation is equally striking. Following the 2024 European elections, Patriots for Europe obtained 84 seats, making it the Parliament’s third-largest group; the European Conservatives and Reformists obtained 78 and the still more radical Europe of Sovereign Nations 25. Between them these formations occupy a substantial portion of the European Parliament — and the traditional liberal and centrist parties can no longer behave as though they are merely eccentric voices shouting from its fringes.

Something important has happened. The question is what.

What does “far right” mean?

One difficulty with contemporary discussion of this subject is that the expression “far right” is applied indiscriminately. It can encompass a free-market Eurosceptic, a Christian traditionalist, a national conservative, an anti-immigration populist, an authoritarian nationalist and an actual neo-Nazi. These people do not necessarily have very much in common.

This imprecision is dangerous because liberal democracy must permit people to hold conservative opinions. There is nothing inherently illiberal about believing immigration is too high, that criminal sentences should be more severe, that European integration has proceeded too far, that national governments should recover powers from Brussels or that traditional cultural values deserve protection. A political order that labels every such proposition “fascist” will eventually persuade voters that the word fascist means nothing.

Nor does opposition to the European Union necessarily amount to opposition to democracy. Indeed an intelligent Eurosceptic might argue precisely the reverse — that political decisions ought to be returned to national parliaments because those institutions are closer to their electorates.

The distinction that matters is therefore not between left and right. Nor is it even between moderate right and radical right. It is between liberal democracy and majoritarian authoritarianism. Liberal democracy consists of considerably more than elections. It requires independent courts, political pluralism, freedom of speech, an independent press, lawful opposition parties, equality before the law, protection of minorities and constitutional limitations upon what governments may do even when those governments have won elections.

An authoritarian populist makes a superficially democratic argument against these things. We won the election, he says. Therefore we represent “the people”. Judges, journalists, universities, civil servants, NGOs and international institutions that frustrate us are frustrating the people’s will. That proposition is seductive — and profoundly dangerous.

Why has this happened?

It would be convenient for Europe’s liberal establishment to attribute the rise of the radical right to stupidity, racism, Russian propaganda or the malign influence of social media.

There are elements of all four. But they are nowhere near an adequate explanation.

The more uncomfortable truth is that Europe’s traditional political parties have failed substantial portions of their electorates.

Immigration is the most obvious example. European governments permitted very substantial migration while frequently treating public concern about its scale as morally disreputable. This was politically foolish. Immigration produces economic benefits, but its costs and benefits are distributed unevenly. The affluent professional employing an inexpensive cleaner may experience immigration differently from the low-skilled worker competing for housing, public services and employment.

To tell the latter that his concerns are merely xenophobic is not an argument. It is an invitation to vote for somebody who promises to listen to him. Then came economic stagnation. Parts of Europe have experienced mediocre growth, high taxation, expensive housing, ageing populations, declining industrial competitiveness and increasingly strained welfare states. Globalisation created winners but also losers. European integration sometimes appeared to transfer decisions from elected national institutions towards distant technocratic ones.

Meanwhile a peculiar cultural gulf developed between metropolitan professional classes and populations outside the principal cities. The former increasingly spoke the language of identity, diversity, climate transition and internationalism. The latter frequently worried about wages, electricity bills, immigration, crime, pensions and whether their children could afford houses. Neither set of concerns is illegitimate. The political failure lay in pretending that one was morally superior to the other. The radical right entered the space thereby created.

The Hungarian warning

Europe has already conducted an experiment in what happens when national populism acquires prolonged political power. Viktor Orbán’s Hungary became the paradigm of what Orbán himself famously described as “illiberal democracy”. Over successive terms Fidesz altered constitutional arrangements, consolidated influence over institutions and generated sustained European concerns about judicial independence, media pluralism, civil society and corruption. Freedom House described Hungary under Fidesz as an “entrenched hybrid regime”, while the European Union withheld substantial funds because of rule-of-law concerns.

This matters because the Hungarian experience illustrates that democratic deterioration in twenty-first-century Europe is unlikely to resemble the 1930s. There need be no brownshirts marching down boulevards. Parliament need not be abolished. Tanks need not surround the television station. Elections continue.

The government simply changes electoral rules, pressures independent institutions, captures public broadcasting, rewards friendly media proprietors, intimidates NGOs, politicises appointments and portrays every institutional restraint upon executive authority as the conspiracy of an unpatriotic elite. Each individual step may appear technical. The cumulative result may be profound. That is the principal danger presented by the authoritarian right in contemporary Europe — not necessarily dictatorship by coup d’état but democracy hollowed out from within.

But the right is changing Europe even when it loses

There is another, subtler phenomenon. Radical parties do not need to enter government to exercise power. They can change the policies of parties that do. Mainstream European conservatives have moved substantially towards harder positions on immigration and asylum. Governments have become more willing to discuss deportations, offshore processing, border controls and limitations upon irregular migration. Environmental policies have encountered increasing resistance where their economic costs are perceived as excessive. The language of national sovereignty has returned to respectable political discourse.

At European level the old cordon sanitaire is becoming increasingly porous. The European Parliament emerging from the 2024 elections contains two large Eurosceptic formations — Patriots for Europe and ECR — that have overtaken some of the traditional pro-European groups. Academic analysis consequently describes the Parliament as having entered unfamiliar political territory.

This does not necessarily represent the destruction of liberal democracy. Some of these changes may instead represent liberal democracy functioning exactly as it should.

Voters complain. Political parties adapt. If European governments tighten immigration policy because millions of Europeans want them to do so, that is democracy rather than fascism. Indeed refusing indefinitely to accommodate strongly held electoral preferences may itself destabilise democracy.

The danger arises when adaptation extends from changing policies to changing the rules under which political disagreement occurs. A democracy may deport illegal migrants and remain a liberal democracy. It may reduce environmental regulation. It may restore powers from Brussels to national capitals. It may promote traditional family policies. It may increase defence expenditure or reduce foreign aid. But when governments seek to subordinate judges, suppress hostile newspapers, manipulate elections or classify political opponents as enemies of the nation, something qualitatively different has occurred. That distinction must constantly be maintained.

Russia and the European radical right

There is nevertheless an additional complication particular to the current historical moment.

Some — although emphatically not all — European radical-right movements have displayed sympathies towards Moscow or hostility towards European support for Ukraine. The relationship is neither universal nor ideologically straightforward. Europe’s radical right is deeply divided over Russia and the Russo-Ukrainian war, as recent scholarship examining European Parliament voting patterns has emphasised.

Giorgia Meloni, for example, confounded those who expected her government to become a Kremlin-friendly wrecking ball inside NATO and the European Union. Other nationalist movements have taken markedly different positions. Nevertheless Moscow has an obvious strategic interest in a Europe composed of quarrelling nation states rather than a coherent political and military bloc. The Kremlin does not need Europeans to become communists, fascists or anything else. It merely needs them to distrust one another.

A European political movement that regards Brussels as the enemy, NATO as an imposition and assistance to Ukraine as an unnecessary expense may therefore advance Russian strategic interests irrespective of whether its leaders consciously intend to do so.

For Ukraine this is no theoretical question. The European liberal order is intertwined with Ukraine’s survival. Russia’s invasion is ultimately a proposition about political order: that powerful states possess spheres of influence, that smaller nations enjoy sovereignty only conditionally and that borders may be revised through violence. The European Union embodies almost precisely the opposite proposition — that states submit their disputes to institutions and laws rather than armies. That is why Ukraine’s war and Europe’s internal political struggle are more closely related than they initially appear.

The liberal establishment has made mistakes

Yet defenders of liberal Europe should resist the temptation to respond by prohibiting everything they dislike. Germany is currently engaged in an especially difficult argument about precisely this problem in relation to the AfD. The temptation to employ constitutional mechanisms against parties considered hostile to constitutional democracy is understandable given German history. But banning popular political movements carries enormous dangers.

If millions of citizens vote for a party and the state responds by prohibiting it, those citizens do not disappear. Their grievances do not disappear. Their opinions do not disappear.

Instead they may conclude that the political system is fraudulent. A liberal democracy must possess means of defending itself against organisations genuinely committed to destroying democracy. The Weimar Republic supplied the most terrible imaginable lesson about the dangers of constitutional naivety. Yet the threshold must be exceptionally high. Otherwise “defending democracy” becomes a euphemism for preventing voters from choosing incorrectly. That would ultimately vindicate the populists’ most powerful argument.

Europe is not returning to 1933

Historical analogies are irresistible and usually misleading. Europe in 2026 is not Europe in 1933. Its states possess mature constitutional institutions. Civil society is extensive. Courts are powerful. Populations are wealthier and better educated. Military coups are almost unimaginable within most of the continent. European institutions constrain national governments and NATO embeds much of Europe within a wider democratic security architecture.

Nor are contemporary radical-right voters necessarily embryonic fascists. Many are former social democrats, conservatives or politically disengaged citizens who believe conventional parties no longer represent them. The remarkable expansion of right-wing populism during the decade since Brexit is nevertheless undeniable. Pew Research Center’s 2026 assessment observes that such parties have become a regular feature of Europe’s political landscape even though their fortunes continue to rise and fall from election to election.

That last point matters. Hungary’s Fidesz finally lost power in the April 2026 elections after four consecutive victories. In the Netherlands Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party was unable to form a government. Elsewhere radical-right movements have encountered electoral ceilings, coalition difficulties and internal divisions. European liberal democracy is therefore not collapsing. It is being tested.

The liberal order must learn to fight politically

The worst response would be complacency. The second worst would be panic. Europe’s liberal parties cannot preserve the liberal order merely by constructing ever more elaborate institutional barriers around themselves. Nor can they endlessly denounce their opponents as extremists while declining to address the conditions that produce extremist votes.

They must compete. That means controlling borders while maintaining humane asylum systems. It means pursuing economic growth rather than accepting permanent stagnation as the price of enlightened government. It means building houses, reforming dysfunctional welfare systems, restoring confidence in policing and ensuring that climate policies do not impose politically intolerable costs upon ordinary households.

It also means defending freedom of expression — including expression liberals dislike. Above all it requires abandoning the assumption that expertise confers political legitimacy. Experts know things. That does not entitle them to rule. In a democracy the ultimate political authority remains the electorate, with constitutional restraints preventing temporary electoral majorities from extinguishing the rights of everyone else. This equilibrium is difficult. That is why liberal democracy is difficult.

The greater danger

The European far right does pose a danger to the liberal order — but perhaps not in quite the way its opponents imagine. Its principal danger is not that fascist columns are about to march upon Brussels. It is that repeated electoral victories by authoritarian populists might gradually weaken the invisible architecture upon which European liberty depends: independent courts, impartial administration, free media, minority rights, international cooperation and acceptance that losing an election does not make somebody an enemy of the state.

Yet there is an equal danger on the other side. If Europe’s liberal establishment responds to populism by insulating political institutions ever further from popular preferences, restricting legitimate debate and attempting to exclude millions of voters from political influence, then liberalism may destroy its democratic legitimacy while claiming to defend democracy. The answer to the European radical right is therefore neither surrender nor prohibition. It is better government.

Europe’s liberal order survived communism, fascism, economic catastrophe and two world wars because it ultimately developed a political system capable of correcting itself. The rise of the new right is a warning that another correction is required. Europeans are saying that their political institutions have ceased to listen to them. Some of the answers offered by the radical right are ugly, some impractical and some genuinely dangerous.

But the question cannot therefore be ignored. The future of European liberalism will depend upon whether its defenders understand an uncomfortable paradox: to save the liberal order, they must allow it to change. A political system that cannot respond to democratic dissatisfaction will eventually cease to be democratic. A political system that responds by abandoning constitutional restraints will cease to be liberal. Europe’s task is to do neither.