The victory of Austria’s hard-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) in the country’s parliamentary election is a shocking result, even in the wider context of Europe’s populist surge over the past decade.
Despite its historic win the FPÖ, founded by former Nazis in the 1950s, might struggle to find coalition partners willing to let its leader, Herbert Kickl, run a government. But it would be disingenuous to downplay its triumph in a country with Austria’s history.
The result was not a shock. The FPÖ had been outpolling the centre-right governing Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) in the weeks before the election, and had been in first place for over a year, according to Politico‘s Poll of Polls. FPÖ had also been a junior partner in government before, most recently after ÖVP’s 2017 election victory under Sebastian Kurz.
What’s different in 2024 is how developed and embedded the hard right has become across the EU. When parties like the FPÖ previously performed well in elections, officials in Brussels would shrug, assuming they would ultimately become fringe movements that could be contained at the European level. There used to be a sense in Brussels that no matter how anti-EU a politician might be, the sheer weight of the European mainstream would force them to fall in line and know their place in the pecking order.
This is not true anymore. As the hard right continues to win local and national elections across the bloc, it has gripped Europe’s elites to such an extent that they emulate their rhetoric and find ways to accommodate them. The most obvious examples come in countries where populists have control of governments. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has for years been able to drag his heels on European support for Ukraine, and block the EU budget, forcing Brussels to give him concessions as he plays fast and loose with the rule of law in his own country.
Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s anti-immigration leader whose Brothers of Italy party has historic ties to fascism, has become so central to the EU’s political agenda that she forced the European Commission executive body to countenance using naval missions to address the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean. For context: naval missions – read blockades – are usually reserved for wars, not preventing people fleeing in small boats.
The more subtle shift in European politics is overlooked – one driven by people who are either not in government or are junior partners in government. To take a recent example, Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), through its recent electoral successes, has transformed the German debate on immigration. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which dominated German politics for most of the 21st century, had been drifting rightwards for years over fears of bleeding support to AfD. And now the CDU’s rhetoric is escalating, asking Brussels to fund fences at its borders with Poland and Greece.
The CDU’s demand gets to the core of how difficult this has become for Brussels. Ursula von Der Leyen, the current President of the European Commission, is a CDU member. At a Brussels level, she is arguably the most powerful member of the pan-national European People’s Party (EPP). Roberta Metsola, the Maltese President of the European Parliament, is also a member of the EPP.
They are powerbrokers in Brussels who must find ways through the increasing mess of European politics, striking deals with smaller parties in order to push through legislation. As the EPP loses its grip on power, it is working more with parties on the right in areas like immigration (and climate goals) to maintain this uneasy coalition.
Centrist EPP politicians are clearly concerned at how this dynamic will play out in light of the Austrian election, with one telling me earlier: “It’s clear that you cannot combat extremism and populism with more Euroscepticism and more populism.”
The source added that the current Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer, “enabled the trivialisation of the extreme right. Pro-European forces have to unite now against the extremist party,” referencing his hard-line stance on immigration. Nehammer had previously called Rishi Sunak a “pioneer” of migration policy in reference to the Rwanda scheme.
This might sound like an alarmist response to one election result in a country that has an established history of hard-right politics. But in 2024, the hard-right has a playbook for squeezing the most out of its victories and dragging Europe in their direction. So, whether he manages to form a government or not, Herbert Kickl could well be right when he said his and FPÖ’s victory in Austria has “opened the door to a new era”.
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