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The left can take on both the center and the right by presenting a unified front, energizing new voters, and resisting the temptation to soften their positions.
The recent European Parliamentary elections went poorly for the region’s leftist parties, to say the least.
All across the continent, socialist, worker, and environmentalist parties—many of which had risen from the ashes of the Eurozone crisis—lost ground as far-right authoritarian parties picked up new support.
The Greens, primary architects of the European Union’s ambitious Green Deal, lost 19 seats of the 70 they had secured in a triumphant 2019 election. And while the Left coalition in parliament actually gained two seats to control 39 of the 720 available, the country-by-country results paint a darker picture.
The left has historically had success mobilizing those that are frustrated with the political system—and they should be unwilling to cede those potential voters to the far right.
In my native Spain, Podemos only managed a meager 3.3% of the vote, down from over 10% at their apex in 2019. Syriza, which briefly turned Greece into an epicenter of the European left, only pulled in 14.7% support, a far cry from their first place finish at nearly 24% in 2014.
And in France, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National party beat the field so badly that President Emanuel Macron called snap parliamentary elections.
The overall results of the European Parliamentary elections—where millions of citizens across the European Union’s 27 member states voted to fill one of the bloc’s three legislative bodies—actually went slightly better than some observers feared. The moderate coalition of the conservative European People’s Party, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, and the weakened liberal Renew Europe party looks poised to maintain leadership, although the far right’s influence over the body undoubtedly grew.
The two far-right groups in parliament—Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists Party and Marine Le Pen’s more eurosceptic Identity and Democracy party—gained a combined 16 seats. Although an alliance is not on the horizon as of now with the two parties differing over the role of the E.U., together their bloc would nearly match the center left coalition.
And that’s not counting Alternative for Germany (AfD) which, despite being kicked out of Le Pen’s coalition after a leader suggested that Nazi SS officers were not necessarily criminals, placed second in Germany ahead of Prime Minister Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats.
After a setback of this magnitude, a period of reflection and restrategizing will no doubt take place. But as they grapple with a rising far right, the last thing Europe’s leftist parties should do is shift to the right themselves.
How can leftists in Europe beat back the rise of the anti-immigrant, ethnonationalist right and wrest power from centrist parties that are already pledging to weaken climate commitments? Present a unified front, energize new voters, and resist the temptation to soften their positions.
The story of the left in Europe over the past decade is one headlined by infighting and fragmentation.
Spain’s Podemos, the left-wing faction borne out of the anti-austerity “15-M protests” starting in 2011, has faced several fractures since performing well enough to form part of the ruling coalition. The split off of Más Madrid, the marriage and subsequent divorce from Izquierda Unida, and the formation of the new progressive coalition Sumar have all resulted in Spanish voters not having a clear leftist option at the ballot.
In Germany, former parliamentary co-speaker and representative from the leftist Die Linke party Sahra Wagenknecht broke away to launch her own party with a more nationalist-populist appeal. That left Die Linke scrambling to survive and opened the door for the AfD to be one of the only viable options for voters outside of the political mainstream.
People can still be motivated to participate in politics when presented with compelling reasons.
There are often legitimate disagreements between leftist parties. But working through those without breaking off into separate factions will almost certainly put the left in a stronger position.
France provides a compelling example for that strategy. Following Macron’s call for snap elections, the country’s Socialists, Greens, Communists, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s progressive La France Insoumise party have come together to form the Nouveau Front Populaire, a coalition that despite internal differences has a common program.
Early returns on that joint bid are promising—although Le Pen’s party is polling in first place on around 31%, the new front is only a few percentage points behind. Macron’s Renaissance party is polling a distant 10 points behind.
The French case also shows that despite poor turnout in the European elections—roughly 50% of the over 400 million eligible voters in the continent cast ballots—people can still be motivated to participate in politics when presented with compelling reasons. Over a quarter million people—or closer to 700,000, according to the labor unions—flooded the streets of France after the elections to make their voices heard against the looming threat of the right.
As Sophie Binet, leader of the left-wing CGT union which helped lead the protests, said, “It’s our responsibility to build the popular wave that will block the far right.”
The left has historically had success mobilizing those that are frustrated with the political system—and they should be unwilling to cede those potential voters to the far right. But neither can Europe’s leftist parties fall into the trap of shifting right themselves to steal a handful of votes from other parties.
As Manon Aubry, the co-chair of the Left group in the European Parliament, toldJacobin, “We spent too much time trying to protect ourselves from the reactionary agenda. We should also be offensive.”
One issue that Aubry suggests leftists could make a bigger wedge out of? Reining in out of control wealth concentration. A “tax the rich” agenda, she explained in the same interview, can inspire “most of the people who suffer from the increase of prices: The superrich have never been so rich, this is time to say stop to that.”
Instead of accommodating the right, Europe’s leftist parties should take their largely disappointing results this month as an opportunity to refocus on the core issues that matter to the working class.
To the contrary, shifting to the right in the face of growing authoritarianism can actually end up boosting that movement.
In a study published in 2022, researchers found that accommodating the far right on an issue like immigration—the unifying enemy of Europe’s right—does nothing to tamper its rise and can even help it grow. “By legitimizing a framing that is associated with the radical right, mainstream politicians can end up contributing to its success,” the researchers wrote in The Guardian.
Even if triangulating could work in the short term, would it be worth it? Seeing as the European Parliament’s center right party, emboldened by the newly more conservative makeup of the body, has already pledged to do away with a key pillar of the European Green Deal—banning the sale of combustion engines starting in 2035—the answer seems to be no.
There are several cases around Europe which show that sticking to positions can pay off electorally.
Take a look at Denmark, where the Social Democrats led by current prime minister Mette Frederiksen have adopted increasingly restrictive immigration policies in the decade since the far-right Danish People’s Party burst onto the scene. They finished behind the first-place Socialist People’s Party in this month’s elections.
France again shows this dynamic of centrist parties tightening their stances on immigration yet failing to break voters away from the far right—the showing of Macron’s Renaissance party was more than doubled up by Le Pen’s party despite Macron signing an immigration bill almost copied from her.
One of the biggest surprises of the election came in Finland, where the socialist Left Alliance pulled in 17.3% of the vote running on a platform that party leader Li Andersson described as combining “ambitious environmental and climate policy with the traditional themes of the Left: workers’ rights, investment in welfare services, equal distribution of income.”
The electoral gains of the Workers Party of Belgium and Austrian Communist Party in this election are further proof of the value of focusing on core working-class issues.
While the rise of the authoritarian right in Europe has been alarming, it is by no means guaranteed. But if the centrist coalition that has held down leadership of the bloc for decades keeps shifting rightward on key issues like immigration and climate, it risks losing—or else helping the far right achieve its goals without even having to win itself.
Instead of accommodating the right, Europe’s leftist parties should take their largely disappointing results this month as an opportunity to refocus on the core issues that matter to the working class. By doubling down on principles and putting aside minor differences to present a unified front, the left can provide a tangible, substantively different answer to the rise of fascism on the continent.
"We live in a Europe where neofascism and absenteeism are on the rise—a combination that allows the oligarchs to plunder," said Yanis Varoufakis.
French President Emmanuel Macron called snap legislative elections on Sunday after his party suffered a major defeat in European Parliament contests, with Marine Le Pen's far-right, xenophobic National Rally scoring twice the support of Macron's Renaissance.
In a nationally televised speech following the elections, which saw the far-right make gains across much of the European Union, Macron said that "the rise of nationalists and demagogues is a danger for our nation and for Europe."
"After this day, I cannot go on as though nothing has happened," said Macron, who dissolved the lower house of France's Parliament and announced elections will be held on June 30 and July 7.
Macron's move was described as an "extraordinary gamble." As the Financial Timesreported, Macron's "alliance could be crushed, which would force him to appoint a prime minister from another party, such as the center-right Les Republicains or even the far-right RN, in an arrangement known as a 'cohabitation.'"
"In such a scenario," FT added, "Macron would be left with little power over domestic affairs with three years left as president."
Preliminary election data shows that the conservative European People's Party (EPP) is set to control around 190 of 720 seats in the European Parliament after Sunday's elections, maintaining its status as the body's largest force. But Politiconoted that "if the far-right were to form a single group it would be the second-largest force in Parliament" behind the EPP.
In addition to Le Pen's National Rally, "Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy similarly soared, with more than a quarter of voters backing the group," Politico reported. "The two groups in the European Parliament on the furthest right of the spectrum, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, will control 131 seats in the chamber. That's not counting the Alternative for Germany's 15 lawmakers, the 10 representatives of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party, the six belonging to Poland's Confederation party, or the three members of Bulgaria's pro-Kremlin Revival party."
Yanis Varoufakis, co-founder of DiEM25, whose political party was unable to secure a seat in the European Parliament, said after Sunday's elections that "we live in a Europe where neofascism and absenteeism are on the rise—a combination that allows the oligarchs to plunder."
"Tonight, I call on all the forces of the Radical Ecological Left that were not with us today to join us so that, while preserving our differences, we can respond to the yearning of the people of the Left and Ecology for united, militant unity on the basis of common values and a common program," said Varoufakis.
In yesterday's European elections, I suffered a crushing personal defeat - along with my comrades in Greece & Germany. Our sick societies, caught up between the radical centre & neofascism, cannot help a dying Palestine, a war-torn Ukraine, our own people. But fight on we must!
— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) June 10, 2024
The far-right did not advance in every E.U. nation. The Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, saw their share of the vote fall, lagging the Social Democrats, the Moderates, and the Greens.
Finland, meanwhile, "bucked a continent-wide trend of rising support for parties on the outer fringe of right-wing politics, with the Left Alliance and the National Coalition winning big at the expense of the nationalist Finns Party," the country's broadcasting company reported.
"Leftist leader Li Andersson received more votes than any other candidate has ever received in a European election," the outlet added.
Christian Christensen, a professor at Stockholm University, wrote on social media Sunday that there's "lots of talk about a far-right wave in Europe, but at least in the three Nordics (Sweden, Finland, and Denmark) it looks like a good night for the left and bad night for the nativist right."