The far right has resurged across Europe. Over the past decade, the United Kingdom left the European Union (EU) after a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment; the National Front in France took more than 100 seats in the French parliament; Germany’s right-wing became the second largest party in its parliament; dissatisfaction with mainstream governments surged across the continent; and far-right extremist attacks grew by over 300 percent.
While these statistics represent a startling pattern in recent years, the rise of contemporary far-right political ideology in Europe traces back to the late 20th century, when nationalism started brewing amid the Cold War. In the following decades, political parties tending to xenophobia and anti-globalization started popping up all over Europe. As European institutions formed and consolidated, the far right found its footing.
This year, nearly one-quarter of European voters are likely to back right-wing parties. Their favorability is near or surpassing all-time highs. Mainstream parties throughout Europe are crumbling, and extremist parties on both sides are picking up the pieces. With a far-right populist in charge of the U.S. government, the pressure is off from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, but this meteoric rise wouldn’t be complete without help from the European Parliament.
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Rise of the European Far-Right
The far right has resurged across Europe. Over the past decade, the United Kingdom left the European Union (EU) after a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment; the National Front in France took more than 100 seats in the French parliament; Germany’s right-wing became the second largest party in its parliament; dissatisfaction with mainstream governments surged across the continent; and far-right extremist attacks grew by over 300 percent.
While these statistics represent a startling pattern in recent years, the rise of contemporary far-right political ideology in Europe traces back to the late 20th century, when nationalism started brewing amid the Cold War. In the following decades, political parties tending to xenophobia and anti-globalization started popping up all over Europe. As European institutions formed and consolidated, the far right found its footing.
This year, nearly one-quarter of European voters are likely to back right-wing parties. Their favorability is nearing or surpassing all-time highs. Mainstream parties throughout Europe are crumbling, and extremist parties on both sides are picking up the pieces. With a far-right populist in charge of the U.S. government, the pressure is off from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, but this meteoric rise wouldn’t be complete without help from the European Parliament.
Contextualizing European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is the European Union’s law-making body. It passes EU laws with the Council of the EU and the European Commission, decides on international trade agreements, supervises all EU institutions, establishes an EU budget, and performs other functions.
The European Parliament calls its representatives Members of Parliament (MEPs). Countries receive MEP allocations through proportional representation, and voters select MEPs directly. MEPs cannot be part of the parliament or ministry in a national government of an EU-member state, but they can be part of both a national political party and an EU party.
Eight different political groups currently make up the European Parliament. Political groups are organized ideologically, not nationally, and must be formed by a minimum of 23 MEPs. Although MEPs can act independently of political groups, political groups are key to allotting structural positions in committees, delegations, and other leadership roles. The European People’s Party (EPP) has been Parliament’s largest political group since 1999 and is politically center-right.
The Far Right in European Parliament
Patriots for Europe (PfE) is the largest far-right political group in the European Parliament, with 84 seats. Viktor Orban, former Prime Minister of Hungary and pioneer of “illiberal democracy,” co-founded PfE. PfE’s manifesto centers national sovereignty, rejects EU institutions, emphasizes cultural legacy and tightened borders, and demands political independence from neighboring states. Nevertheless, PfE depends on joint partnerships among far-right actors in Hungary, Czechia, Austria, France, Italy, and the Netherlands and operates within the EU’s main policymaking institution.
The European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) hold 78 seats. Similar to Patriots for Europe, ECR champions national sovereignty, tighter migration rules, and the reversal of EU centralization. ECR claims to be a center-right political group, with participating members from Poland, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Denmark, and Bulgaria. Of these, Nazi members or neo-fascist supporters founded both Brothers of Italy (Fdl) and Sweden Democrats (SD). They are joined by VOX, a Spanish political party that openly advocates for a Reconquista (Reconquest) of Spain and hopes to build physical walls around majority-African Spanish enclaves to stop migration.
PfE and ECR are joined by Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), a far-right political group that holds just 25 seats. ESN rejects the “intrusion of political Islam” and fights the idea of a “European unitary state.” Alternative for Germany (AfD), a political party that Germany’s intelligence service has designated as extremist and that has served as a breeding ground for antisemitism and anti-Muslim rhetoric, founded ESN. AfD works alongside Konfederacja from Poland, whose politicians have desecrated Jewish religious symbols and said “we should cherish xenophobia.” Another of ESN’s members is Vazrazhdane in Bulgaria, whose leader has called for the annihilation of opposition parties and whose high-ranking party members signed an agreement with Russia’s ruling political party.
PfE, ECR, and ESN share a desire to prioritize national interests over international cohesion. Yet, they function within the same groups and operate through the lawmaking body of one of the world’s largest supranational unions – the EU. The Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) tracks the political stance of EU political groups, both internally among their members and externally to other political groups. ELIAMEP’s 2025 study shows that PfE and ECR consistently rank among the lowest politically cohesive groups. These organizations function not as ideological unions but as tactical alliances. However, far-right political groups in the European Parliament do not just serve as a vessel for the wide variety of far-right extremism. They act as agents of normalization and grant far-right groups space to operate and strategize around politically sanitary versions of their otherwise-radical platforms.
Co-Signing the Far Right in Parliament
Far-right parties use their presence in the European Parliament to strategically reframe their message towards wide support. Author and lecturer at Cardiff University Marta Lorimer describes participation in EU institutions as an opportunity for radical and far-right parties to rebrand and make their positions palatable to the public. As a result, Lorimer argues that right-wing parties have an opportunity to grow their audience. Indeed, the National Rally (RN) in France and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands have successfully dropped calls for a “Frexit” and “Nexit” from the EU and now instead rally behind Patriots for Europe’s resolution to “refuse all further transfers of national sovereignty to the European institutions.” The Brothers of Italy party, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, has also shifted rhetoric from intense euroskepticism to pragmatic participation, a move that secured Meloni’s party high-ranking committee leadership positions and partnership with EPP on some legislation.
EU institutions also enable far-right parties to cooperate and find common ground. Manuela Caiani, Associate Professor in Political Science at Scuola Normale Superiore, dubs this the “transnationalization of the Right,” outlining a growing network of communication between leaders at like-minded gatherings and through partner organizations. The ability to network has had a big impact on far-right leaders. In one poll, over 70% of those interviewed said they had “frequent transnational contacts, either with right-wing groups in other countries or at the international level with umbrella federations.” This is exemplified in Meloni’s continued support for Hungary’s Fidesz party despite its suspension from the EPP.
The European Parliament, for its part, plays an unwitting role in normalizing far-right groups. By funding all transnational political groups and individual political parties represented in Parliament, the EP gives far-right political actors resources and helps manufacturer their financial legitimacy. Already, an internal audit revealed how the now-defunct far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) political group misused millions of euros from Parliamentary funding to bolster extremist allies across Europe. Patriots for Europe, ID’s direct successor, is now under investigation for further embezzlement of hundreds of thousands of euros.
Because the European Parliament operates largely through coalitions among political groups, far-right groups can shape mainstream rhetoric. Philipp Broniecki, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo, and a team of researchers mapped ideological overlap among the center-right and the far-right, noting an increase in the potential for right-wing unity. At the tenth European Parliament, elected in 2024, mainstream parties have “moved sharply right” on migration and asylum, reflecting gains in seats by far-right groups who can now serve as tiebreakers on key legislation. The European People’s Party has, under the leadership of Manfred Weber, proudly declared support for the rise of rightwing policy, challenging past allies to meet the needs of the new political environment.
Policy outcomes in the European Parliament have mirrored this rhetorical shift towards the far right. While mainstream European parties have historically emphasized the cordon sanitaire – a quarantine against extremist parties – when creating policy, new legislative partnerships suggest this political quarantine has ended.
In 2025, the European People’s Party knowingly partnered with Patriots for Europe and European Conservatives and Reformists Group for the first time to pass a law weakening regulations on European businesses. PfE celebrated this move as a sign “the old coalition’s deadlock” was ending. Shortly after, the EPP again voted with the far right to delay an EU deforestation law. In the wake of an environmentalist bill called the Nature Restoration Law passing Parliament in 2023 against EPP’s wishes, EPP partnered with PfE and ECR to create the Scrutiny Working Group. According to BLOOM, a France-based NGO, a transnational network of right and far-right groups supported this specialized body set up to scrutinize and raise suspicions about NGOs.
The Impact of Parliament on Domestic Politics
The tension between European Parliament standards and national domestic party rules is most evident in Germany and France. EU mechanisms should, in theory, protect and promote the values listed in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union: “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.” The European Parliament, in tandem, promises to review and expel any European political party or organization in non-compliance with these values.
In practice, however, the German far-right populist party Alternative for Germany long evaded the punishment in the European Parliament that it faced domestically. Germany’s domestic intelligence services started surveilling the party in 2019 and have continued despite a court injunction pending the resolution of an AfD legal challenge to being labeled “extremist.” State officials have pressured AfD politicians over alleged ties to Russia. When Björn Höcke, a prominent AfD politician, used Nazi slogans twice in his speeches, once in 2021, and again in 2023, German courts fined him over $30,000. In European Parliament, when lead European candidate for AfD Maximilian Krah rejected calling all SS members “automatically” criminals, AfD was expelled from its political group but Krah continued to operate as a Member of Parliament. Despite the pattern of behavior by AfD politicians attempting to whitewash Germany’s history of genocide, the party had been allowed to operate without any investigation into its compliance with EU values until July of 2026, seven years after German intelligence began its own investigation. Alternative for Germany, in the meantime, has had ample time to legitimize itself through European Parliament participation and leadership; it now polls as the single most popular party in Germany.
To the west, National Rally (RN) won third place in France’s 2024 parliamentary elections, but faced existential consequences in France for charges that caused only bureaucratic challenges in Parliament. When a French court found Marine Le Pen, then-head of the party, and RN guilty of embezzlement, Le Pen was banned for five years from holding any public office and required to wear an electronic monitor, though this sentence has since been reduced. The European Parliament only requested that Le Pen and the RN recover lost funds; despite violating the rule of law. National Rally partisans still lead the Patriots for Europe political group.
Genocide Watch recommends:
● European Parliament political groups must stop relying on the cordon sanitaire as a bulwark against far-right collaboration and instead counter the spread of far-right ideological rhetoric into mainstream politics.
● EU bodies should work with domestic intelligence agencies to initiate timely and effective non-compliance investigations into far-right extremist political parties in the European Parliament before they can build legitimacy.
● Citizens across the EU should demand stronger accountability measures towards political actors and groups, to close the gap between domestic and EU punishments.
(Courtesy : Genocide Watch)
