As reaction to the new Austrian government captures the headlines across Europe, the current focus on Jorg Haider and his Freedom Party (FPO) is understandable. But it should not distract from the broader picture across western (and, for that matter, eastern) Europe, where far-right extremist and neo-populist parties have made significant gains in recent decades.
The success of the French National Front (FN) and other sister parties in the 1980s prompted the European Parliament to set up monitoring committees on racism and xenophobia and the European Union institutions to take racism and xenophobia more seriously. Following the FN gains, far-right movements have also made advances in Germany, Belgium, Italy and parts of Scandinavia, on the level of both ideas and votes. The ascendancy of the FPO and its obvious bargaining power can, in turn, only provide renewed sustenance to fellow travellers and friends elsewhere. Haider's 27 per cent of the poll represents the high-water mark of far-right electoral success. But the bubble has not yet burst.
There are some points in common among the various far-right parties. First, their electoral returns can be seen as a reaction against mainstream parties.
Uninspiring monopolisation of power by such parties, failure to address adequately the concerns of the electorate, the withering away of significant differences between the left and the right, the whiff or reality of political corruption and the consensus on European integration: all these factors have enabled the extreme right to strike a populist, anti-establishment vote-winning note.
Central to the far-right programme, of course, is a tough, "no-nonsense" approach to issues of immigration, asylum-seeking and refugee status, all lumped together as threats to national identity.
Identity is at the heart of the extreme right's discourse. But this identity is invariably represented as a narrow, ethnocentric phenomenon, that rides roughshod over the genuine cultural diversity of Europe.
The far-right has achieved legitimacy on three levels: voters have opted for the parties; public opinion has, in part, warmed to their policy platforms; and alliances have been struck with mainstream parties. In short, they are no longer taboo. They have been brought into the mainstream, and this has long-term consequences for the political and value systems of a given country. Once such alliances have been constructed, they have a symbolism and legacy that cannot easily be swept aside once the inter-party agreement breaks down.
A third feature of the extreme right's resurgence is the tendency of such movements to try to reinvent themselves. This means that parties such as the FPO, the Italian Social Movement (MSI, renamed the National Alliance, AN, in the mid-1990s) and the French FN have endeavoured to put some distance between their current public agenda and their origins or former beliefs.
A more reassuring face is presented to the electorate in order to win or retain sympathy. The FPO's declaration (with the People's Party) on Thursday, in support of "spiritual and moral values which are the common heritage of the peoples of Europe", should be seen in this light. It should also fool no one.
There is often an incompatibility between the stated democratic intentions and the actual behaviour, baggage and occasional "slips of the tongue" of far-right parties and leaders.
Haider's infamous eulogy to former Nazi Waffen SS veterans, utterances by the FN leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, on "race" or the Holocaust and the professed nostalgia of the MSI/AN leader, Gianfranco Fini, for the Mussolini era are conspicuous cases in point here.
In effect, seasoned observers of the extreme-right parties and movements have pointed to a dual discourse emanating from such parties: one to reassure the public at large and another to satisfy militants within.
Early indications would suggest there is enough in the new Austrian coalition's programme of government to suggest that immigrants will be the unfortunate target of Haider and Co. From the point of view of EU member-states, here is an opportunity not only to condemn and criticise unacceptable alliances, but also for such states to put their own houses in order. At the very least, this means political parties underwriting the (voluntary) EU common code, that prohibits alliances with extreme-right xenophobic or racist parties.
It also means refusing to steal the extreme right's clothes, by adopting punitive or over-restrictive attitudes and practices to asylum-seekers, refugees and immigrants.
As the EU pushes towards enlargement and the creation of a "common European home"', the Haider phenomenon has provided an opportunity to reflect and act upon the meaning and working of European values.
Paul Hainsworth lectures in European politics at the University of Ulster. He is editor of The Politics of the Extreme Right: from the Margins to the Mainstream, to be published by Cassell/Continuum in March