Katja Adler: What will happen if the far right wins the EU elections?

“The far right is on the rise” is a saying you often hear across Europe at the moment. “This looks like Europe in the 1930s.”

So perhaps it is not surprising that with 350 million people across the EU currently voting for their direct representatives in the European Parliament, there is strong criticism from many European bureaucrats in Brussels. But are the fears – and media headlines – exaggerated?

Millennials and first-time Gen Z voters are among those expected to shift to the right. Figures recently collected by the Financial Times indicate that about a third of young French and Dutch voters under the age of 25, and 22% of young German voters, prefer the extreme right in their country. This is a significant increase since the last European Parliament elections in 2019.

Far-right parties are expected to hold up to a quarter of the total seats, and if they win a large majority, the picture will be clear. But the finer details of the impact it could have on life and policy-making in the EU are more nuanced.

This is because the nationalist right itself has a slight difference: different nationalist right politicians in different countries take different positions. Some have toned down previous far-right rhetoric in an attempt to broaden their appeal to voters.

So, what might change in Europe if the European Parliament shifted to the right?

The European Union has long harbored a huge ambition – to be one step ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to the environment. But voters in Europe are increasingly concerned about the costs of the green transition.

Take, for example, the recent mass farmers’ protests. Tractors from across the European Union descended on Brussels and the European Parliament, bringing work to a halt. Protesters said EU and national environmental laws and bureaucracy had put them out of work.

Nationalist right-wing parties in France, the Netherlands and Poland jumped on this bandwagon, seizing an opportunity to promote their claim to be representatives of “ordinary people” against “out-of-touch elites” in the European Union and nationalism.

Results? The European Union has rolled back or eliminated several key environmental rules, including stricter regulations on the use of pesticides.

Environmentalists fear the EU will now avoid specifying how farmers can contribute to its vision of cutting 90% of emissions by 2040. They believe a shift to the right in the European Parliament could mean further dilution or endless delays to green targets.

Most European voters say they don’t want to leave the EU, even though they have many complaints about how it works. Instead, right-wing nationalist parties promised a different EU: more power for nation-states, and less “Brussels interference” in daily life.

If their voices become louder in the European Parliament, it could make it more difficult for the European Commission to obtain more competencies from national governments, such as health policy.

You might think this is obvious, and that a shift to the right in the European Parliament would lead to tougher EU immigration legislation.

Take, for example, the far-right leader in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders. His party, the Party for Freedom, became the largest group in the Dutch parliament this fall after national elections. He has promised to pass “the toughest immigration law ever,” and exit polls suggest the Freedom Party will do well in this election.

But it is worth bearing in mind that the EU’s migration and asylum policy has long been nicknamed the Fortress of Europe. The top priority is keeping people out. There has been a wave of economic deals with non-EU countries such as Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Turkey to crack down on people smugglers who send economic migrants or asylum seekers.

But what a larger group of the hard right in the European Parliament could change is so-called solidarity politics.

Each EU country is supposed to take a share of asylum seekers, or at least make significant contributions, to help fellow EU members such as Italy and Greece, where most migrants arrive via people smugglers’ boats. But MEPs on the nationalist right may refuse to play the game, as we have already seen with populist nationalist governments in Hungary and, until recently, Poland.

Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine has EU leaders across the EU talking about making their “region” safer.

Not only by spending more on defence, but also by accelerating the process – or at least showing more tangible enthusiasm – to get neighboring countries to join the EU. I’m talking here about Ukraine, Georgia, and Western Balkan countries like Kosovo and Serbia, the latter of which is a major concern for Europeans due to its proximity to Moscow.

But the nationalist right is generally less enthusiastic. They fear the costs of expansion. A larger EU, with more poorer countries, is likely to need a larger budget, with larger contributions from relatively richer member states.

It also means that bloc members who received large EU subsidies such as Romania and Poland as well as French farmers (who remain the single largest beneficiary of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy) will probably no longer benefit. It is hard to imagine that they would stand a chance if, for example, the huge rural agricultural Ukraine, dubbed the breadbasket of Europe, joined the European Union.

The right tends to view security and defense as a workhorse, but in these days of conflict, most EU members agree that defense spending is a priority. Their condemnation was strengthened by the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House as President of the United States.

Since World War II, Europeans have looked to the United States for security support. Just look at how important Washington is in providing aid to Ukraine.

But Trump has been clear that if he wins the presidency come the US elections in November, Europe should not take anything seriously.

EU leaders are convinced that they need to prepare better.

Ukraine is a clear example of why generalizing about the far right as a unified movement can be so misleading.

It is true that far-right parties spread across the European Union say they intend to change the bloc from within. If they win more MEPs this week, and if they gain access to more national governments, that will give them a greater voice in the European Parliament, at key meetings of EU ministers and at EU leaders’ summits.