The 2019 EU Elections: Moving the Center

Cas Mudde

Journal of Democracy, Volume 30, Number 4, October 2019, pp. 20-34 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2019.0066

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/735456

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 The 2019 EU Elections:
Moving the Center
Cas Mudde

Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF Professor of Internation-

al Affairs at the School of Public and International Affairs of the Univer-
sity of Georgia and Professor II at the Center for Research on Extremism
of the University of Oslo. His most recent books include Populism: A
Very Short Introduction (with Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017) and
The Far Right Today (2019). He is also a columnist for the GuardianUS.

In May 2019, voters across the European Union headed to the polls in the
year’s second-largest democratic elections (after the even more challeng-
ing Indian elections). More than four-hundred–million Europeans were
eligible to vote in what are essentially twenty-eight separate national elec-
tions for representatives to the same supranational institution, the 751-seat
European Parliament (EP). As with the previous two EU elections, in 2009
and 2014, media coverage in the run-up to the vote zoomed in on the rise
of Euroskepticism, particularly as embodied by parties on the right. Seri-
ous estimates predicted that right-wing Euroskeptics would win between
a quarter and a third of the seats in Brussels, but this did not stop many
media outlets from speculating about a possible Euroskeptic majority.
In the end, the results of the May 23–26 voting were largely in line
with the more measured estimates of the polls. Right-wing Euroskeptics
(depending on how this category is defined) took between a quarter and
a third of the EP’s seats, with populist radical-right parties making the
biggest gains. There were also gains by pro-EU parties, although the
successful Europhiles hailed largely from outside the main center-left
and center-right party groups that have traditionally been dominant. The
upshot of these developments has been the increased political fragmen-
tation of the European Parliament.
The strengthening of the populist radical right is only the most visible
aspect of a more fundamental transformation of European politics—a trans-
formation whose elements also include shifting voter priorities, a sea change
in mainstream-party agendas, and the growing influence of Hungarian pre-

Journal of Democracy Volume 30, Number 4 October 2019

© 2019 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press
Cas Mudde 21

mier and “illiberal democracy” booster Viktor Orbán. Taken together, these
changes are the political legacy of the “refugee crisis” of 2015–16.1
As by far the world’s most powerful transnational organization, the
EU occupies an awkward midpoint between confederation and federa-
tion. Its central institutions, with offices spread across Brussels, Stras-
bourg, and Luxembourg, constitute four rather than three branches of
government. Like most states the EU has an executive (the European
Commission), legislature (the European Parliament), and judiciary (the
European Court of Justice), but above these three institutions hovers a
fourth that is the most powerful: the European Council. It is this last
organ, composed chiefly of the member countries’ heads of government,
that decides the EU’s overall political and policy direction.2
Under this schema, the EU elections decide who will sit in the Euro-
pean legislature, but they have limited influence on the composition of
the executive. Instead, the makeup of the European Council and the Euro-
pean Commission is determined first and foremost by national elections.
National-level elections bring to power the government leaders seated on
the European Council. The Council in turn nominates the Commission’s
president; per the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, it is merely directed to “take into
account the elections to the European Parliament.” National governments
select one nominee apiece for the remaining spots on the 28-member Eu-
ropean Commission. During the 2014 campaign season, many of the EP’s
political groups began proposing their own candidates for Commission
president (the Spitzenkandidaten) and arguing that the Council should
nominate the Spitzenkandidat of the group that emerged in the strongest
position. Former Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker (2014–19)
was chosen in accord with this system, but the 2019 elections appear to
have marked its demise. Formally, the European Parliament is guaranteed
only the right to an up-or-down vote on the Commission president and on
the slate of commissioners as a collective.
The disconnect between the outcome of EU elections and the makeup
of the EU executive means that European elections are what is called
second-order elections.3 Scholars have found that such elections are less
important than first-order elections and that the public treats them ac-
cordingly. Second-order elections tend to yield lower scores for main-
stream parties, particularly those in government; higher scores for pro-
test parties; and lower voter turnout. Comparing the 2019 European
elections to recent national elections in EU member states shows the
results to be on the whole in line with this theory, though the pattern was
less pronounced than in most previous EU elections.
Except for a few new, smaller parties, notably the antiestablishment
progressive DiEM25 and the prointegration Volt, there are no real “Eu-
roparties” (that is, political parties that contest the European elections
across the EU). National parties do, however, work together in ideo-
logically more or less coherent political groups in the European Parlia-
22 Journal of Democracy

ment. The traditional powerhouses have been the center-right European

People’s Party (EPP) and the center-left Socialists & Democrats (S&D),
with roughly half a dozen other blocs representing tendencies from the
Greens to the nationalist right. Commentators frequently sort these for-
mal groupings into informal “pro-EU” and “anti-EU” blocs.
One report offering a first take on the 2019 European elections sum-
marized them as “much ado about nothing.”4 Calculating the net changes
in the vote shares of the various political groups, the authors concluded
that the “pro-EU bloc” had lost just 3.9 percent. And while the “anti-EU
bloc” picked up seats, most groups within that bloc actually lost seats.
Only the populist radical-right Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF)
grouping—which was reformed and renamed Identity and Democracy
(ID) after the elections—made significant gains (see Table 1 below).
A slightly more nuanced view is that the center held but became more
fragmented. Fragmentation was the elections’ defining feature, and it af-
fected both the pro-EU and the anti-EU camps. On the pro-EU side, the
long-dominant EPP and S&D lost their combined parliamentary major-
ity for the first time in EU history. Yet pro-EU parties from the Alliance
of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE) group, since renamed
Renew Europe, and the Greens–European Free Alliance (Greens-EFA)
made large-enough gains to significantly offset the bigger groups’ loss-
es. These smaller groups picked up seats mainly due to increased sup-
port for member parties in a few large states (France, Germany, and the
United Kingdom). Unlike the EPP and S&D, however, Renew Europe
and Greens-EFA have major gaps in their geographic coverage: Renew
Europe is absent from much of Southern Europe, while Greens-EFA is
an almost entirely West European group.
The right-wing Euroskeptics, meanwhile, did increase their shares of
both votes and seats. Yet there remain important divisions among the dif-
ferent groups in this bloc—most notably the traditionally conservative
European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and ID (the former ENF),
whose membership includes parties such as Italy’s Lega, France’s Na-
tional Rally (the former National Front), and the Alternative for Germany.
Almost all the growth in the number of seats held by Euroskeptics came
from ENF-ID parties, which significantly increased their representation,
especially in Germany and Italy. While the ECR made a decent showing
in Southern Europe and did particularly well in Central and Eastern Eu-
rope, this could not compensate for its massive losses in Western Europe,
particularly in the United Kingdom. Finally, the more diverse Europe of
Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group, a largely strategic alli-
ance between Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S) and the U.K. Indepen-
dence Party (UKIP), failed to qualify as an official group in the new Par-
liament due to losses at the polls and defections by member parties.
With the populist radical-right parties of the ENF-ID outperform-
ing their fellow Euroskeptics and with Greens and liberals gaining back
Cas Mudde 23

Table 1—Political Groups in the

Eighth and Ninth European Parliaments
Group Seats in 8th Seats in 9th Change
Parliament Parliament
EPP 216 182 34
S&D 185 154 31
ALDE  RE 69 108 39
Greens-EFA 52 74 22
ENF  ID 36 73 37
ECR 77 62 15
GUE/NGL 52 41 11
EFDD 42 – –
Non-Attached Members 20 57 37
Total Seats 749 751 –
Source: The European Parliament, https://election-results.eu/european-results/2019-2024.
�Seats in 8th Parliament� reports seat totals for the outgoing parliament. For leading member
parties of each group, see Table 2 on page 27.
EPP: European People’s Party (Christian Democrats).
S&D: Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
ALDE  RE: On 12 June 2019, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE)
incorporated French president Emmanuel Macron's La République En Marche and renamed
itself Renew Europe (RE).
Greens-EFA: Greens–European Free Alliance.
ENF  ID: On 12 June 2019, Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) renamed itself Identity
and Democracy (ID).
ECR: European Conservatives and Reformists.
GUE/NGL: European United Left–Nordic Green Left.
EFDD: Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD). The EFDD missed the deadline
to form a group in the Ninth European Parliament.
Non-Attached: MEPs unaffiliated with a recognized political group within the European
Parliament.

some of the ground lost by the two traditionally dominant groups, the
2019 vote produced a more fragmented rather than just a more Euro-
skeptic European Parliament. But beyond the shifting balance among
the blocs and groups, more profound changes have been taking place.

The Rise of Populism

Populists, who appeared in postwar Western Europe largely as spo-
radic, short-lived movements and parties,5 began to establish themselves
as a more consistent presence in the early 1990s. In particular, popu-
list radical-right parties such as the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and
French National Front (FN) secured a foothold in their national political
systems with agendas and appeals that blended authoritarianism, nativ-
ism, and populism.6 At the turn of the century, populist radical-right
parties contested elections in almost all EU member states. While these
parties took only about 4.5 percent of the national vote on average, sev-
24 Journal of Democracy

eral were among the two or three biggest in their country and some
(such as the FPÖ) even made it into the national government. The years
following the 2008 financial crash that touched off the Great Recession
saw the emergence of some new successful left-populist parties, such
as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece, while several old and new
populist radical-right parties received an electoral boost.
The roots of the populist upsurge of the twenty-first century lie pri-
marily in structural changes that occurred in the mid- and late-twen-
tieth century.7 In the wake of the economic and social transformation
caused by the postindustrial revolution, mainstream parties converged
on an “integration consensus” built around shared support for Europe-
an integration, multiethnic societies, and neoliberal economics. They
propagated a nonideological politics of pragmatism, an approach some-
times described as TINA (a reference to U.K. prime minister Margaret
Thatcher’s insistence that “there is no alternative”). This led to a back-
lash among parts of the population who felt, often with reason, that the
mainstream parties had grown so similar as to offer voters little real
choice. Mainstream parties also came under fire for failing to engage
with key issues such as European integration and immigration.
As European publics grew more frustrated with their politicians,
they were also gaining political self-confidence thanks to the “cognitive
mobilization” brought on by the democratization of higher education.
This self-confidence was further fed by a commercialized media en-
vironment in which outlets increasingly freed from regulation “chased
eyeballs” by giving the masses what they wanted rather than what the
elites thought was needed. In this context, populists—particularly those
(such as Beppe Grillo in Italy and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands)
who were adept at capturing attention from traditional as well as social
media through provocative stunts and statements—provided the “news”
that journalists, and apparently a large part of the population, so craved.
The Great Recession was a catalyst rather than a cause of populism’s
rise. More than anything, it dispelled the aura of inevitability as well
as the optimism that had surrounded the integration consensus. It made
more Europeans susceptible to a line of argument favored by both left
and right populists: the illiberal-democratic critique of the mainstream’s
undemocratic liberalism. The urgency of the economic crisis had largely
waned by mid-2015, in part because of several multibillion-euro bail-
outs of EU member states. But at that point the Great Recession was
succeeded by a new “crisis,” which boosted only one form of populism:
the populism of the radical right.

The Impact of the “Refugee Crisis”

In the second half of 2015, Europe experienced a surge in arrivals of
asylum seekers. The number of non-EU citizens applying for asylum
Cas Mudde 25

within the EU more than doubled between 2014 and 2015, from 626,960
to 1,322,845. Asylum applications stayed at that level the next year,
then dropped off following the hardening of borders in the Balkans and
an EU-Turkey deal on the return of refugees. The spike in asylum seek-
ers coincided with a series of high-profile terrorist attacks, including
deadly assaults on the offices of the French satirical paper Charlie Heb-
do in January 2015, on Paris’s Bataclan theater in November 2015, and
on Brussels airport and a central Brussels metro station in March 2016.
Right-wing media and politicians across Europe were quick to spec-
ulate about links between refugees and terrorism. They increasingly
shifted to the less sympathy-evoking term “migrant,” implying that all
or most asylum seekers were not real refugees, and adopted the rhetoric
of “crisis” to describe the influx.8 Appending this label to a political is-
sue shapes public perceptions by suggesting that the situation is grave,
urgent, and out of control. Consequently, the issue comes to dominate
the political agenda until it is “solved” or, at the very least, has ceased
to be described as a crisis.
The framing of a spike in asylum seekers as a “refugee crisis,” to-
gether with rhetoric linking this “crisis” to terrorism, created a “perfect
storm” for the populist radical right. It brought their key issues—im-
migration, security, and Euroskepticism—to the top of the agenda, and
it made voters more receptive to nativist, authoritarian, and populist ap-
peals. With mainstream journalists and politicians eagerly adopting the
populist radical right’s frames, populist radical-right parties and politi-
cians merely had to remind voters that they were (to use the expression
of FN founding leader Jean-Marie Le Pen) the original and not the copy.
As European politicians and pundits obsessed over the “refugee cri-
sis” and the “terrorism threat,” often implicitly or explicitly conflating
the two, European politics was transformed in at least four ways: 1) The
political salience of immigration grew; 2) far-right parties surged at the
polls; 3) mainstream parties shifted to the right; and 4) Viktor Orbán
emerged as a key player in European politics. Together, these related but
separate changes explain why the 2019 European elections were much
more about the far right than about rising populism per se.
The Immigration Issue. The “refugee crisis” lifted the issue of immi-
gration (and the issue of security) higher on the list of political concerns
throughout Europe. The salience of immigration peaked in late 2015:
The percentage of Europeans considering this to be the most important
political issue grew from 18 to 36 percent between 2014 and 2015, then
dropped off to 26 percent in 2016 and 22 percent in 2017.9 Similarly,
the percentage of Europeans naming immigration as one of the two most
important issues facing the EU peaked at almost 60 percent in 2015,
dropping off to a relatively stable 40 percent in 2017. The share simi-
larly prioritizing security peaked later and lower, at just over 40 percent
in early 2017, then nosedived to around 20 percent by late 2018.
26 Journal of Democracy

By the time of the run-up to the 2019 European elections, order was
by and large restored. Voters across the continent once again named
socioeconomic issues such as unemployment, healthcare, and inflation
among their main national concerns. That said, immigration still polled
slightly higher than it had before the “refugee crisis”: The percentage
of Europeans who mentioned immigration as “one of the two most im-
portant issues facing our country” was 21 percent in 2018, as opposed
to 18 percent in 2014. Terrorism no longer polled among the national
issues of greatest concern to voters in 2018, but a significant number of
respondents still named it as one of the two most important issues facing
the EU as a whole.
While immigration remains a much more salient topic in Western Eu-
rope, the “refugee crisis” has established it as a highly charged issue in
Central and East European (CEE) political systems as well. The “crisis”
led to only a marginal increase in the number of “migrants” in most CEE
countries, which rejected almost all asylum claims. Yet while just 5.5
percent of Central and East Europeans considered immigration the most
important issue facing their country in 2014, this figure had more than
doubled in 2018. Given that attitudes toward immigrants are far less
accepting on the whole in Central and Eastern Europe than in Western
Europe,10 this has created new electoral openings both for the far right
and for opportunistic mainstream parties.
Far-Right Party Success. In a development directly related to Eu-
ropean voters’ growing focus on immigration and security, support for
populist radical-right parties—and even some extreme-right parties,
such as the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn in Greece or Kotleba–People’s Party
Our Slovakia (¼SNS)—spiked in polls across Europe in late 2015. By
May 2016, almost all established far-right parties were attracting sup-
port from record numbers of Europeans. The Dutch Party for Freedom
(PVV) and the French FN polled around 25 and 35 percent, respectively.
The “refugee crisis” rejuvenated even parties that had been left for dead
by commentators after recent losses, such as Vlaams Belang (Flemish
Interest) in Belgium and the Northern League (now Lega) in Italy.
With the British voting to leave the EU, the Americans electing
Donald Trump president, and the Austrians supporting FPÖ candidate
Norbert Hofer in large-enough numbers that he came within a hair’s
breadth of winning the presidency, it is no surprise that 2016 came to be
called “the year of populism”—although it would have been more ac-
curate to name it “the year of the populist radical right.” Consequently,
the dominant media frame of the key elections in Europe in 2017 was
that of an epic battle between emboldened populist challengers and an
embattled political establishment. Speculation was rife about populist
radical right-parties and politicians winning upcoming elections in Aus-
tria, France, and the Netherlands, even though opinion polls showed that
support for these actors had dropped off significantly since its mid-2016
Cas Mudde 27

Table 2—Major Parties or Coalitions within EU Parliament

Political Groups, by Seats Held in Ninth Parliament
Political Group National Home Country of Seats % Seats
Party or Coalition Party or Coalition in Group
European People’s CDU/CSU* Germany 29 16%
Party (EPP)
Fidesz-KDNP Party Alliance* Hungary 13 7%
People’s Party (PP) Spain 12 7%
Civic Platform (PO) Poland 12 7%
National Liberal Party (PNL) Romania 10 6%
Progressive Alliance Spanish Socialist Workers’ Spain 20 13%
of Socialists and Party/Socialist Party of
Democrats (S&D) Catalonia (PSOE/PSC)*
Democratic Party (PD) Italy 19 12%
Social Democratic Party (SPD) Germany 16 10%
Renew Europe (RE) Renaissance* France 21 19%
Liberal Democrats United Kingdom 16 15%
Alliance 2020 (USR/Plus)* Romania 8 7%
Greens/European Free Greens Germany 21 28%
Alliance (Greens/
Europe Ecology (EELV) France 12 16%
EFA)
Green Party United Kingdom 7 9%
Identity and Lega (LN) Italy 28 38%
Democracy (ID)
National Rally (RN) France 22 30%
Alternative for Germany (AfD) Germany 11 15%
European Conserva- Law and Justice (PiS) Poland 26 42%
tives and Reformists
Brothers of Italy (FDI) Italy 5 8%
(ECR)
Conservative and Unionist United Kingdom 4 6%
Party
European United France Unbowed (FI) France 6 15%
Left–Nordic Green
Syriza Greece 6 15%
Left (GUE/NGL)
United We Can Change Europe Spain 5 12%
(Podemos IU)*
Die Linke Germany 5 12%
*Indicates a national-level coalition of political parties.
Source: The European Parliament, https://election-results.eu/european-results/2019-2024.
Note: Table shows only parties and coalitions holding 5 percent or more of their political
group�s total seats in the European Parliament.
peak. In the end, the far right did not win these contests—but it did make
a much stronger showing than it had in the previous round of elections,
held before the “refugee crisis.”
On the whole, the parties that have traditionally been considered far
right increased their representation in the European Parliament in 2019,
although to a lesser extent than they had in 2014. Moreover, far-right
parties picked up seats to an extent that was disproportionate to their
increase in votes, mainly because these parties for the first time scored
relatively big in the larger EU countries, notably Germany and Italy,
which have a higher number of MEPs (see Table 2).
Some established populist radical-right parties, notably Lega (+28.1
28 Journal of Democracy

percentage points) and Vlaams Belang (+7.4 points) made massive

gains, but other parties in this category—particularly the Danish Peo-
ple’s Party (-15.8 points) and Jobbik in Hungary (-8.3 points)—suffered
major losses. Several newer far-right parties did well too, including two
neo-Nazi parties, ¼SNS (+10.4 points) and the Cypriot National Popular
Front (+5.6 points). The two best-known far-right parties experienced
only a slight drop in vote share relative to their high 2014 numbers.
Haunted by a corruption scandal that broke just before the European
elections, the Austrian FPÖ lost 2.5 points. The National Rally, the re-
named FN, lost 1.6 points but nonetheless managed for the second time
to seat the largest EP delegation of any party in France.
Finally, in some countries the overall seat share of the far right re-
mained relatively constant, but the individual parties represented in the
European Parliament changed. In the Netherlands, for example, Geert
Wilders’ PVV lost all four of its MEPs in an unexpectedly savage elec-
tion defeat. At the same time, the relatively young Forum for Democracy
(FvD) of Thierry Baudet, who had become the new favorite “bad boy” of
the Dutch media upon entering the national parliament in 2017, picked up
three seats in its first European election. In the United Kingdom, the party
changed but the leader stayed the same. The recently formed Brexit Party
of Nigel Farage won 30.7 percent of the vote and 29 seats, eclipsing Far-
age’s former party UKIP, which lost all 24 of its seats.
The Right-Wing Turn of Mainstream Parties. The third and prob-
ably most fundamental transformation took place within established po-
litical parties, most notably those of the mainstream right. Many main-
stream parties had already adopted what they cast as a more “critical” or
“realistic” discourse on immigration and security in the 1990s and had
sharpened this rhetoric in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But the
approach pioneered by Prime Minister Thatcher and French president
Jacques Chirac in the late twentieth century became received wisdom
in the early twenty-first century: “[Multiculturalism] has failed, com-
pletely failed,” as long-serving German chancellor Angela Merkel sum-
marized it in 2010.
Yet Merkel also stressed that Germany should remain “open to the
world” and should not become a country “which gives the impression
to the outside world that those who do not speak German immediate-
ly or who were not raised speaking German are not welcome here.”
Similarly, British prime minister David Cameron (2010–16) had blamed
“state multiculturalism” for failed integration and jihadi terrorism, but
had also proclaimed: “Instead of encouraging people to live apart, we
need a clear sense of shared national identity that is open to everyone.”11
In the wake of the “refugee crisis,” by contrast, mainstream parties in-
creasingly defined immigration explicitly and unequivocally as a threat
to national identity and security. Instead of calling for immigration to
be regulated so as to ensure successful integration of past and future
Cas Mudde 29

immigrants, they urged that it be limited or even abolished in order to

protect the nation.
This sentiment was strongest, and most bluntly expressed, in the
states of Central and Eastern Europe. There virtually all political par-
ties, on the left and right alike, rejected non-European immigrants and
Islam. Czech president Miloš Zeman, who was once a nominal social
democrat but has grown into a radical-right populist, likened the “refu-
gee crisis” to an impending tsunami. In Latvia, right-wing anti-Russian
and left-wing pro-Russian parties found rare common ground in oppos-
ing “immigrants,” in practice meaning Muslim immigrants in particular.
And right-wing MPs in Slovenia tried to impeach Prime Minister Miro
Cerar (2014–18), one of the few prominent prorefugee politicians in the
region, for allegedly abusing his power to help a Syrian refugee avoid
deportation.
The right-wing turn of mainstream-right parties outlived the spike
in asylum seekers, as many parties attempted to fight off far-right chal-
lengers with a misguided copying strategy. Mainstream right-wing par-
ties, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, took restrictive stances
on immigration that were often as extreme as—or even more extreme
than—those of traditional populist radical parties. The immigration is-
sue also grew more salient for right-wing parties, again particularly in
the new member states. While immigration was a minor issue for parties
such as Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) and Slovakia’s Freedom and
Solidarity in 2010, it was the top priority in 2017.12
Across Europe, mainstream-right politicians emphasized their new
harsher stands on immigration and immigrants. Pablo Casado of the
Spanish Popular Party, opportunistically seeking to help his party
bounce back from a massive corruption scandal as well as to fight off an
electoral challenge from populist radical-right newcomer Vox, promised
to “defend the borders” against “millions of Africans.” The British Con-
servative Party adopted authoritarian, nativist, and populist rhetoric in
the wake of the 2016 Brexit referendum; the party promised to “reduce
and control immigration” by bringing net immigrant arrivals back below
a hundred-thousand a year. In the Czech Republic, nominally liberal
prime minister Andrej Babiš declared in June 2018: “I promise our gov-
ernment will fight mainly for the safety of our people. Not only here,
but we will fight against illegal migration, we will fight for our interests
in Europe.”13 Incidentally, the Czech Republic, like several other CEE
countries, has hundreds of thousands of non-Muslim immigrants, most
notably from Ukraine, whose presence is seldom if ever politicized.
The rightward shift was also evident in the election manifestos of
the EU’s main right-wing political groups. In 2014, the “center-right”
EPP had made “controlling immigration into Europe to ensure internal
security” just part of one out of twelve proposals in what was on the
whole an optimistic manifesto. The 2019 manifesto, by contrast, de-
30 Journal of Democracy

voted nearly half its space to two themes very much in line with the
populist radical-right agenda: “A Europe that protects its citizens” and
“A Europe that preserves our ways.” Moreover, the document explicitly
cast “illegal immigration” and “radical Islam” as fundamental threats to
Europe.14
The conservative ECR has undergone even more profound changes,
with several separate but interrelated processes transforming this group
into a hybrid of the populist radical right and the mainstream right. First,
the group’s founding member, the British Conservative Party, veered
sharply to the right following the 2016 Brexit referendum and the ad-
vent of an electoral threat from Nigel Farage’s parties. Second, because
a dismal performance in the 2019 elections cost the Tories 15 of their
19 seats, the Conservatives have been replaced by Poland’s PiS as the
dominant force in the ECR (PiS now holds 26 seats). Third, PiS, like
several other formerly mainstream-right parties, has evolved into a pop-
ulist radical-right party in the wake of the “refugee crisis.” Fourth, to
compensate for the loss of British MEPs, the ECR has accepted several
new member parties, almost all of the far right—notably the Dutch FvD,
the Greek Hellenic Solution, Brothers of Italy, the Sweden Democrats,
and Vox.
Finally, it is important to note that opposition to immigration is not
limited to the traditional right. Most CEE parties—from the nominally
neoliberal ANO 2011 in the Czech Republic to the supposedly social-
democratic Smer-SD in Slovakia—are vehemently opposed to (Muslim)
immigration. While the trend is less pronounced in Western Europe,
several left-wing groups are now taking a harder line on immigration
there as well. From Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party to
Sahra Wagenknecht’s “Stand Up” movement in Germany, left populists
have toughened their stands in a na¦ve attempt to win back or win over
far-right voters. In the most extreme example, the Danish Social Dem-
ocrats have openly adopted the discourse and policies of the populist
radical-right Danish People’s Party.15
The Orbánization of Europe. Viktor Orbán, busy with transform-
ing Hungary from a liberal democracy into an illiberal kleptocracy, had
been a relatively minor player in European politics before 2015. But
after reshaping his country’s domestic politics and consolidating his po-
sition within the EPP (the chosen political group of his party Fidesz),
Orbán turned his attention to Brussels. His first attempt at projecting
influence yielded only embarrassment. As politicians from around the
world locked arms in Paris to commemorate the victims of the Charlie
Hebdo attack, the Hungarian prime minister used the tragedy as a pre-
text to criticize EU immigration policy and demonize immigrants. Com-
pletely misreading the mood of solidarity encapsulated in the slogan “Je
suis Charlie,” Orbán drew condemnations from across Europe.
But half a year later, the mood had changed, and Europe was ready
Cas Mudde 31

for Orbán’s Islamophobic message. Across national and international

media outlets, Orbán declared that (Muslim) immigrants constitute a
mortal threat to Europe’s identity and security. He explicitly linked the
“migrant crisis” to the recent terrorist attacks and argued that even Mus-
lims who were third-generation French were still “immigrants.” Adopt-
ing full-fledged populist radical-right language, Orbán proclaimed:
“What is at stake today is Europe and the European way of life. . . . we
would like Europe to remain the continent of Europeans.”16
Within months, the prime minister of a relatively small EU member
state had become the main challenger to the hugely influential Chancel-
lor Merkel. Orbán successfully torpedoed an EU plan to redistribute the
recently arrived refugees across member countries, and he did so with
the open backing of most CEE political leaders and more tacit support
from many in Western Europe. Challenging Merkel from within the EPP
(of which Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union is also a member), the
Hungarian premier argued that real Christian democracy stands in oppo-
sition to immigration and “Islamization” and that it requires defending
a “Christian Europe.” At the 2015 EPP Conference in Madrid, he gar-
nered significant applause from his fellow EPP members as he argued
that there was no true “refugee crisis,” only “a migratory movement
composed of economic migrants, refugees and also foreign fighters.”17
After his European breakthrough in mid-2015, the Hungarian prime
minister quickly became the most outspoken opponent of Merkel’s pro-
refugee policies and of (West) European “multiculturalism.” Most CEE
politicians agreed with him, even if many did not echo his belligerent
tone or share his growing hostility toward the EU establishment. Or-
bán also widened his circle of friends in Western Europe, most notably
among far-right politicians (who celebrate him as an example of “real
democratic leadership”) but also within the mainstream right. He had
always found loyal supporters in the powerful Bavarian Christian Social
Union (CSU), among them Manfred Weber, leader of the EPP parlia-
mentary faction in Brussels. But by early 2018, Orbán also had gained
explicit backing in the European Council from prime ministers Sebas-
tian Kurz of Austria and Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland.
Yet opposition had grown as well, and fellow members of the EPP were
among Orbán’s critics. On 12 September 2018 the European Parliament
adopted a report on the rule of law in Hungary that warned of a “systemic
threat” to the EU’s fundamental principles.18 With the support of more than
two-thirds of all MEPs, the EP took the unprecedented step of censuring
Hungary and triggering Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union. This
move opened the door to penalties including, in the final instance, the sus-
pension of Hungary’s voting rights within the EU (a de facto expulsion).
Of the EPP’s 199 members, 114—including group leader Weber—voted
for the censure. Orbán’s main support came from far-right and right-wing
Euroskeptics in marginal groups such as the EFDD and ENF.
32 Journal of Democracy

The censure vote did not end the EPP’s internal debate about Orbán, as
its leaders had hoped. Instead, critics from primarily North and West Euro-
pean member parties seized on the opportunity to push for expelling Fidesz
from the group. Weber tried to neutralize this internal division, but ulti-
mately was forced to take a firmer stand against his former ally. In March
2019, the EPP suspended Orbán’s party, stripping its members of their vot-
ing rights and the right to propose candidates for posts. The vote was nearly
unanimous, with 190 EPP MEPs voting for suspension and only 3 against.
Yet in the wake of the 2019 European elections it became clear that
Fidesz’s position within the EPP was still strong. In fact, the elections
had left Fidesz with the second-largest faction within the EPP group in
Brussels (see Table 2). Despite Fidesz’s official suspension within the
EPP, its MEP Lívia Járóka was reelected as one of the European Parlia-
ment’s fourteen vice-presidents. Even the selection of top officeholders
was largely in line with the preferences of Orbán, who withdrew Fi-
desz support for his previous protector Weber’s campaign for European
Commission president. The Hungarian premier had also opposed the
candidacy of Dutch Social Democrat Frans Timmermans, a vocal critic
of Orbán’s authoritarian policies. Fidesz has responded enthusiastically,
on the other hand, to the election of German Christian Democrat Ursula
von der Leyen. (The new Commission president has stated, if rather tep-
idly, her commitment to EU efforts to uphold the rule of law.)

The Center Moves Right

While a focus on EU-level trends can obscure important national and
regional developments, EU elections are nonetheless a critical indicator
of the broader European political climate. In 2009, the European elec-
tions were defined by the first wave of rising Euroskepticism, partly a
(delayed) response to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and the 2004 acces-
sion of CEE countries. The rise of populism, fueled by the Great Reces-
sion, was the story of 2014. While Euroskepticism and populism remain
relevant, it was the rise of the populist radical right in particular that
defined the 2019 European elections.
Populist radical-right parties have been gaining strength in a growing
number of European countries since the 1990s, but it was the “refugee cri-
sis” that brought populist radical-right politics into the heart of European
political life.19 The “crisis” has led to the mainstreaming and normalization
of authoritarian, nativist, and populist discourses and policies across the
continent. In many countries, it has done the same for populist radical-right
parties, most notably for transformed conservative parties such as Fidesz
and PiS. European politics has been moving to the right for decades, start-
ing with the neoliberal turn of social-democratic parties in the 1990s and an
increased emphasis on sociocultural issues in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
The “refugee crisis,” however, introduced a qualitative shift: Mainstream
Cas Mudde 33

parties now openly discuss immigration and multiculturalism as threats to

national identity and security. Moreover, these issues have become politi-
cal flashpoints not only in Western Europe, which hosts the vast majority
of asylum seekers, but in the CEE countries as well.
The 2019 European elections brought the transformation wrought by
the “refugee crisis” deeper into the heart of EU institutions. Not only
did populist radical-right parties—including both the usual suspects and
some newcomer parties—increase their representation in the Europe-
an Parliament, they are now also part of the more powerful European
Council and even the European Commission. So far, populist radical-
right representatives within these two institutions have come exclusive-
ly from Fidesz and PiS. But with Lega polling far ahead of any other
party in Italy, traditional populist radical-right parties might soon have
a voice in the Council as well.
And while both Fidesz and PiS have faced opposition to their can-
didates for committee-leadership positions in the European Parliament,
they are far from isolated within that institution. Fidesz has largely sur-
vived its “suspension” within the EPP, while PiS now dominates the
ECR. Populist radical-right parties remain divided across a plethora of
EU political groups, but mainstream parties from almost all groups have
adopted their frames and policies, particularly concerning immigration
and integration. Mainstream right-wing parties in several West Euro-
pean countries are now proclaiming a “return to the center.” Yet the
“center” that they have in mind lies much closer to the populist radical-
right program than it ever has before.

NOTES

1. While Europe was indeed confronted with an unprecedented number of asylum

seekers in 2015 and 2016, the frame of “refugee crisis” (and even more that of “migrant
crisis”) was a conscious political choice, rather than an objective reality. For this reason,
I use the term in between quotes.

2. See John Pinder and Simon Usherwood, The European Union: A Very Short Intro-
duction, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

3. See Karlheinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt, “Nine Second-Order National Elec-
tions—A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results,” Euro-
pean Journal of Political Research 8 (March 1980): 3–44.

4. Davide Angelucci, Luca Carrieri, and Mark N. Franklin, �Much Ado About Noth-
ing? The EP Elections in Comparative Perspective,� in Lorenzo De Sio, Mark N. Franklin,
and Luana Russo, eds., The European Parliamentary Elections of 2019 (Rome: LUISS
University Press, 2019). Another early take on the 2019 European elections is Niklas Bo-
lin et al., eds., Euroflections: Leading Academics on the European Elections 2019 (Sunds-
vall: Demicom, Mittuniversitetet, 2019), https://euroflections.se/globalassets/ovrigt/eu-
roflections/euroflections_v3.pdf.

5. The main exception to this pattern was the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PA-
SOK) in Greece.
34 Journal of Democracy

6. On the ideology of the populist radical right, see Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right
Parties in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), particularly chapter 1.

7. I draw here particularly on chapter 6 of Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser,
Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

8. See, for instance, Micha³ Krzy¿anowski, Anna Triandafyllidou, and Ruth Wodak,
eds., “Mediatization and Politicization of Refugee Crisis in Europe,” special issue, Jour-
nal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies 16, nos. 1–2 (2018).

9. All public-opinion data are taken from the Eurobarometer, the EU-wide survey con-
ducted under the auspices of the European Commission, unless noted differently. See
https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm.

10. See Julie Ray, Anita Pugliese, and Neli Esipova, “EU Most Divided in World on
Acceptance of Migrants,” 6 September 2017, https://news.gallup.com/poll/217841/divid-
ed-world-acceptance-migrants.aspx.

11. “Deutschlandtag 2010: Rede Angela Merkel,” www.youtube.com watch?v=WaEg8aM4fcc;

“PM’s Speech at Munich Security Conference,” 5 February 2011, www.gov.uk/government/
speeches/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference.

12. This discussion is based on data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, freely avail-
able at www.chesdata.eu.

13. See Robert Muller and Jan Lopatka, “New Czech Government Has Shaky Sup-
port, Strong Anti-Migration Stance,” Reuters, 27 June 2018, www.reuters.com/article/
us-czech-government/new-czech-government-has-shaky-support-strong-anti-migration-
stance-idUSKBN1JN0R9.

14. The EPP manifestos are available at www.epp.eu.

15. See also Cas Mudde, “Why Copying the Populist Right Isn’t Going to Save the
Left,” Guardian, 14 May 2019.

16. “Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Presentation at the 26th Bálványos Summer Open
University and Student Camp,” 25 July 2015, www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/
the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-presentation-at-the-26th-bal-
vanyos-summer-open-university-and-student-camp; Matthew Kaminski, “‘All the Terrorists
Are Migrants,’” Politico, 23 November 2015, www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-inter-
view-terrorists-migrants-eu-russia-putin-borders-schengen.

17. “Speech of Viktor Orbán at the EPP Congress,” 26 October 2015, www.kormany.
hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/speech-of-viktor-orban-at-the-
epp-congress20151024.

18. For the report (by Dutch Green MP Judith Sargentini), motion, and vote results, see
www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2018-0250_EN.html?redirect.

19. The mainstreaming and normalization of far-right parties and policies are not ex-
clusively European phenomena. Three of the world’s five largest democracies (Brazil, In-
dia, and the United States) had a far-right political leader as of July 2019. See Cas Mudde,
The Far Right Today (Cambridge: Polity, 2019). On the “failure of the mainstream,” see
also the article by Anna Grzymala-Busse in this issue.