Name
____________________________
For each
country summarize the emerging political party.
Germany
France
The Netherlands
Greece
Hungary
Sweden
Austria
Slovakia
How will the
continued success of these political parties change Europe?
Europe’s
Rising Far Right: A Guide to the Most Prominent Parties
Amid a migrant
crisis, sluggish economic growth and growing disillusionment with the European
Union, far-right parties — some longstanding, others newly formed — have been
achieving electoral success in a number of European nations. Here is a quick
guide to eight prominent far-right parties that have been making news; it is
not a comprehensive list of all the Continent’s active far-right groups. The
parties are listed by order of the populations of the countries where they are
based.
Photo
Supporters of the Alternative for Germany candidate Uwe Junge, center,
celebrated after parliamentary elections in March. Backing for the party shot
up after sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. CreditRoland Holschneider/European Pressphoto Agency
Germany
Alternative for Germany
The Alternative
for Germany party, started three years ago as a protest movement against the
euro currency, won up to 25
percent of the vote in
German state elections in March, challenging Germany’s
consensus-driven politics. In September, the party took second
place in the
Legislature in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the home state of Chancellor Angela
Merkel. Support for the party shot up after the New
Year’s Eve sexual assaults in
Cologne. The party attracts voters who are “anti-establishment,
anti-liberalization, anti-European, anti-everything that has come to be
regarded as the norm,” said Sylke
Tempel of the German
Council on Foreign Relations. Frauke Petry,
40, the party’s leader, has said border guards might need to turn guns on
anyone crossing a frontier illegally. The party’s policy platform says “Islam
does not belong in Germany” and calls for a ban on the construction of mosques.
Photo
Electoral posters for Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front,
in Calais, France, in December. She is expected to run for president in 2017.CreditPhilippe Huguen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
France
National Front
The National
Front is a nationalist party that uses populist rhetoric to promote its
anti-immigration and anti-European Union positions. The party favors
protectionist economic policies and would clamp down on government benefits for
immigrants, including health care, and drastically reduce the number of
immigrants allowed into France. The party was established in 1972; its founders
and sympathizers included former Nazi collaborators and members of the wartime
collaborationist Vichy regime. The National Front is now led by Marine Le Pen,
who took over from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2011. She has tried to
soften the party’s image. Mr. Le Pen had used overtly anti-Semitic and racist
language and faced repeated prosecution on accusations of Holocaust denial and
inciting racial hatred. In the first
round of voting in regional elections in December, the National Front won a
plurality of the national vote (27 percent), but in the
second-round runoffs,
the party was denied victory in all 13 regions. Ms. Le Pen is expected to be
her party’s candidate in the 2017 presidential election. Since Donald J.
Trump’s election win, French news outlets, along with Ms. Le Pen’s mainstream
political rivals, have been
repeating the same thing: A victory by Ms. Le Pen could happen in
France.
Photo
Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom, carried a sign
reading “No Hate Imams in the Netherlands” outside a center for Islamic studies
in Utrecht, Netherlands, last year.CreditPeter
Dejong/Associated Press
The Netherlands
Party for Freedom
The
anti-European Union, anti-Islam Party for Freedom has called for closing all
Islamic schools and recording the ethnicity of all Dutch citizens. In early
November, the party was leading in
polls ahead of next
year’s parliamentary elections. The Party for Freedom is led by Geert Wilders,
one of Europe’s most prominent far-right politicians, who is currently on trial for
hate speech for
comments he made about Moroccans in 2014. In a Twitter posting on Oct. 31, Mr.
Wilders wrote that the Netherlands “has a huge problem with Moroccans,” echoing
the statements for which he is being prosecuted. In 2008, as a member of the
Dutch Parliament, he released a
short film that depicted Islam as inherently violent. In 2011, he
was acquitted on
charges of inciting
hatred and discrimination against Muslims. The party holds 15 seats in the
lower house, down from the 24 it won in elections in 2010.
Greece
Golden Dawn
Founded in
1980, the neo-fascist party Golden Dawn came to international attention in 2012
when it entered the Greek Parliament for the first time, winning 18
seats and becoming the
country’s third-largest party. The election results came amid the country’s debilitating
debt crisis and
resulting austerity measures. The party, which the Council of Europe’s human
rights commissioner described in 2013 as “neo-Nazi and violent,” holds extreme
anti-immigrant views, favors a defense agreement with Russia and said the euro
“turned out to be our destruction.” In September 2013, the Greek
authorities arrested dozens
of senior Golden Dawn officials, including members of Parliament and the
party’s leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, who was charged with forming a criminal
organization. Others were charged with murder. Golden Dawn, which again won 18
seats in parliamentary elections in September,
was largely silent as the migrant crisis in Greece began, but in recent weeks, members have
been marching in several areas where migrants are camped. The party hailed Mr.
Trump’s election as a
victory against “illegal immigration” and in favor of “ethnically clean
states.”
Photo
Supporters of the Jobbik party demanded the closing of a reception camp
for migrants in Kormend, Hungary, earlier this year. CreditGyorgy Varga/European Pressphoto Agency
Hungary
Jobbik
Jobbik, an
anti-immigration, populist and economic protectionist party, won 20
percent of the vote in
parliamentary elections in 2014, making it Hungary’s third-largest party. Its policy
platform includes
holding a referendum on membership in the European Union and a call to “stop hushing up such taboo issues” as “the
Zionist Israel’s efforts to dominate Hungary and the world.” It wants to
increase government spending on ethnic Hungarians living abroad and to form a
new ministry dedicated to supporting them. In a 2012 bill targeting
homosexuals, the party proposed criminalizing the promotion of “sexual
deviancy” with prison terms of up to eight years. In September, a reporter for
an internet television channel associated with the party was fired after images
showed her kicking and
tripping immigrants in a makeshift
camp near Hungary’s
border with Serbia. In late April, the party’s leader, Gabor Vona, said Jobbik
would remove half its leadership board; some analysts saw the move as an
attempt to purge the party’s most extremist elements before a bid to become
Hungary’s governing party by 2018.
Photo
Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the Sweden Democrats, at an election
night party in Stockholm in 2014. The party calls for heavy restrictions on
immigration, opposes allowing Turkey to join the European Union and seeks a
referendum on membership in the bloc.CreditAnders Wiklund/Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images
Sweden
Sweden Democrats
The Sweden
Democrats party, which has disavowed its roots in the
white supremacist movement, won about 13 percent of the vote in elections
in September 2014, which gave it 49 of the 349 seats in Parliament.
Because none of the mainstream parties would form a coalition with the Sweden
Democrats, the country is governed by a shaky minority coalition of Social
Democrats and the Green Party. The Sweden Democrats’ platform calls for heavily
restricting immigration, opposes allowing Turkey to join the European Union and
seeks a referendum on European Union membership. The party, led by Jimmie
Akesson, was Sweden’s most popular in some opinion
polls in the winter. A poll on Nov. 16 showed the party vying for
second place, with support from 21.5 percent of voters. In an
interview with Swedish TV after Mr. Trump’s victory, Mr. Akesson said, “there
is a movement in both Europe and the United States where the establishment is
being challenged. It is clearly happening here as well.”
Austria
Freedom Party
Norbert Hofer
of the nationalist and anti-immigration Freedom Party emerged as the clear
front-runner in the
first round of the presidential election in Austria in late April, winning 35
percent of the vote. He lost in the
first runoff against
against Alexander Van der Bellen, an economics professor and former Green Party
leader. Mr. Van der Bellen won 50.3 percent of the vote, Mr. Hofer 49.7
percent, a difference of just more than 30,000 votes. In June the party challenged
the results of the
presidential runoff election, citing “numerous irregularities and failures” in
the counting of votes. In July, Austria’s highest court
ordered a repeat of the runoff election on Dec. 4. This time, Mr. Van der
Bellen won a decisive victory — by 6.6 percentage points. Mr. Hofer had
campaigned on strengthening the country’s borders and its army, limiting
benefits for immigrants and favoring Austrians in the job market. On the social
front, one of the party’s policy points is “Yes to families rather than gender
madness.” The party, whose motto is “Austria first,” holds 40 of the 183 seats
in the National Council.
Photo
A rally for the anti-Roma People’s Party-Our Slovakia in Bratislava,
Slovakia, in 2015. The party’s leader, Marian Kotleba, has said, “Even one
immigrant is one too many.”CreditVladimir
Simicek/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Slovakia
People’s Party-Our Slovakia
The anti-Roma
People’s Party-Our Slovakia won 8 percent
of the vote in March
elections, securing 14 seats in the country’s 150-member Parliament. The
party’s leader, Marian Kotleba, has said, “Even one immigrant is one too many,”
and has called NATO a “criminal organization.” Mr. Kotleba is virulently
anti-American; a banner on the administrative building in the Banska Bystrica
region, where he is governor, reads “Yankees Go Home.” He has also spoken
favorably of Jozef Tiso,
the head of the Slovak state during World War II, who was responsible for
sending tens of thousands of Jews to concentration camps. The party favors
leaving the European Union and the eurozone.
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