As Portugal has just elected its new parliament, the far-right “Sega” party has won a record 18% of the vote. The score echoes the advance of the far right across Europe three months before European elections.
The far right has never been on the rise in Portugal in recent years. The “Sega” party (“Enough” in Portuguese) made a historic breakthrough on Sunday, March 10, winning 18% of the vote in the legislative elections, according to partial results. The far-right party, which comes in third place behind the left and center-right, is thus redrawing the boundaries of the political game in Portugal and Europe.
Indeed, while the citizens of the European Union go to the polls to elect their MEPs in three months, between June 6 and 9, the RN (National Rally) and its European allies are beginning to seize power to effectively weaken European institutions. they. Appetite was strengthened by their progress in almost all EU countries. In recent years, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia and the Netherlands have joined the list of countries where the far right has won local legislative elections.
Racist speech and totalitarianism
How common is this phenomenon to European countries? To verify this, political science researchers have identified parties aligned with far-right ideology since 2019 and created this project. Popular List*. A reference database that includes analysis of 31 countries, including the 27 countries of the European Union.
What exactly do these researchers mean by “extreme right-wing parties”? They envision organizations that preserve a nativist ideology, i.e. establishing a hierarchy among individuals according to their degree of belonging to the majority ethnic cultural group and perceived seniority in the territory. These parties thus run a racist discourse, where “Non-indigenes pose a threat to the integrity of the nation-state”, Teachers explain Populist. Another characteristic criterion: authoritarianism. The far right promotes “The vision of community, order reigns and attacks on authority must be severely suppressed”Researchers insist.
If we take these criteria into account, Almost all European countries had training courses'to the right within their parliament in 2023. Nine of them, they are Even exceeded 20%. France ranks 8th in the ranking of EU countries with the most votes for the far-right. In 2022, the parties of Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan got 24% of the vote. Or 10 points higher than in 2017.
Only two states stand out from this observation: Malta and Ireland, where there is no far-right party, according to the nomenclature established by the researchers. He did not contest the Legislative Assembly elections.
Rapid rise in power since 2010
The far right, despite its diverse histories, grew stronger in the 2010s. The term “extreme right”. “Populist Far Right”. “It makes it possible to consolidate the populist right playing the parliamentary game and distinguish it from the smaller far-right groups”Nonna Mayer, Political Science Researcher at the Center for European Studies in Sciences Po explains.
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“That These include parties such as the RN with a far-right heritage From the liberal VVD party, Geert Wilders took the Islamophobic line of Pim Fortuyn's party for freedom in the Netherlands”, Completes the analyst.
Although these parties enjoyed their first electoral victories in the 1990s, several factors explain this progress. “It is a reaction to economic globalization and the crisis of political representation, the distrust of traditional political parties perceived as powerless”Nonna Meyer explains.
In the 2010 decade, economic factors were added: ““The recession of 2008, the refugee crisis of 2015 or the Islamic terrorist attacks”. Lists the expert.
More votes and more parties
Long-marginalized, far-right parties have established themselves in the political landscape, such as the National Rally (RN) in France. The Sweden Democratic Party, founded in 1988, had less than 2% of parliamentary elections until 2006. In 2022, it came second with 20.5% of the vote.
Other political forces that have grown into the ranks of the far right include far-right parties, although they have had a parliamentary tradition and have taken over far-right discourse in recent years. Authors of Populist Thus the New Slovenia Party, which has been around since 2000, believes that such a change was made in 2015. An event that Nonna Meyer emphasizes: “We have to distinguish a party that came from the parliamentary right, which is radicalizing and trying to forget it, from a party that came from a long far-right tradition like the National Front.”
The parties concerned have not only made electoral gains: they are growing. In the Netherlands, at the time of the 2007 general election, the Party for Freedom was the only nativist and authoritarian movement. In 2023, not only did it win 28 seats compared to 2006 out of 150 to be filled, but two other political organizations identified with the extreme right emerged (Forum for Democracy and Just Response 2021). “All of them are very successful in elections because of the high abstention among their opponents, especially among the left.”Analyze Nonna Meyer.
Radical and populist rights are very diverse
However, this global rise in power masks significant differences. “If these extreme rights have in common their authoritarianism and their nationalism, they have different economic and cultural values”, A political science analyst underlines.
He cites the example of Hungary and Poland: “There, the radical and populist right are on a very conservative line in terms of morals, which is not Marine Le Pen's, but closer to the right of Marian Marechal. And they are very liberal in economic planning.”
Even within the European Parliament, the far right is tearing itself apart. They are not part of a common organisation, but are divided between the Identity and Democracy (ID) group and the European Conservatives and Reformists (CRE) group. Their shared mistrust of Europe failed to trump their national interests. “They are of the same nationalism, with the same slogan: French first, Italians first, our country first. But they are too divided to form a blocking force against European institutions.”Nonna Mayer confirmed.
* Method
Relying on the work of Franceinfo populist, Conducted by eight political science researchers from various European universities since 2019. They list far-right parties (“right”) Reviewed and corrected by approximately one hundred peers in a database in Europe. she It includes an analysis of the political life of 31 countries, including 27 of the European Union, which includes Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Norway and Iceland. Regularly updated, this directory is limited to political entities active between 1989 and the end of 2022.
Establishing the total votes of far-right parties in Legislative Assembly elections In each country since 2010, the scores for each formation are classified by the authors to the extreme right. Populist Added by franceinfo.fr. For example, in France, in 2022, 18.7% of the votes were in favor of the RN (National Rally), 4.2% in favor of the Reconquête, and 1.1% in favor of the Debout la France. This left the far right with 24% of the vote. To make this calculation, only parties that exceeded 1% at least once or won at least one parliamentary seat between 2010 and 2023 were examined.
Seven parties are considered however Populist such as “Borderline case”. So the authors of the study cannot determine whether they belong to the extreme right or not. They are: New Flemish Alliance (Belgium), Finns Party, Bulgaria Without Censorship, Unity (Cyprus), Peasant-Citizen Movement (Netherlands), Croatian Democratic Union and Progress Party (Norway). Francinfo did not count these training courses.
When far-right parties allied with traditional parties, they too were not accounted for by Francinbo. Although the extreme right scores higher in some countries, this is a minimal representation.
Franceinfo, on the other hand, has decided on a case: the Spartans party (Greece). Until 2022, it never crossed the 2% mark. However, this recent period was not covered in the study Populist. So, even researchers Populist Knowing of its existence, it was considered too trivial to investigate whether it belonged to the far right or not..
However, for 2023, franceinfo.fr considered it to have met the criteria for the extreme right defined by this study. The movement is close to the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, which was convicted in 2020 and is considered a criminal organization by Greek justice. In its founding declarationEven the Spartans declare theirs “Greece and the Greeks first” And he resists “Any attempt to change [son] Cultural Identity and the Islamization Initiative”.
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