Centrists across Europe breathed a sigh of relief this week after a series of elections saw the far-right fall short in France, while incumbents in Denmark and Slovenia looked set to cling to power. But voters in all three of those countries, as well as those in Germany and Italy, sent a message of discontent that should set alarm bells ringing.
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally failed to take control of its key targets of Marseilles, Toulon and Nîmes in France’s municipal elections on Sunday. But the party made unprecedented gains, winning dozens of mayoralties in its strongholds in the southeast and northeast of France.
Elections in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate saw the far-right Alternative for Germany double its share of the vote to almost 20 per cent. The Social Democrats lost power in the state, which they have governed for the past 35 years, to Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats.
Slovenia’s prime minister Robert Golob’s Freedom Movement suffered a sharp drop in support in Sunday’s election, leaving the party neck and neck with the right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party under Janez Janša. Golob, who has aligned Slovenia’s foreign policy with the mainstream in the EU since taking office in 2022, needs the support of smaller parties if he is to remain in power.
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Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen also hopes to cling to power after her Social Democrats emerged as the biggest party in Tuesday’s general election, despite receiving their lowest share of the vote since 1903. Her hardline immigration policy, which has been copied by centrists elsewhere in Europe, did not prevent the far-right Danish People’s Party from making major gains while support for her own party plummeted.
Italy’s right-wing prime minister Giorgia Meloni suffered a humiliating defeat on Tuesday when voters rejected by 54 per cent to 46 per cent her proposal to increase political influence over the judiciary. It is the first setback for Meloni since she took power three years ago and it largely reflects her lack of progress on key economic issues.
Voters in all of this week’s elections appeared to have been motivated more strongly by economic discontent than by cultural issues and while the far-right made some gains, so too did parties of the left. In Denmark, the Green Left made bigger gains than any other party while the French Socialists won major victories, including the mayoralties of Paris and Marseilles.
The economic shock caused by the war in Iran is set to translate into higher prices across Europe with the risk of recession growing with each week that the conflict continues. With tight public finances under the added strain of big increases in defence spending in many European countries, few governments enjoy as much fiscal room for manoeuvre to ease the pain as Ireland’s does, though this does rely on volatile corporate taxes.
