Right parties gain ground in EU

Not all gains made by the populist right in elections concluded at the weekend for a new 720-member European parliament, representing the 27 EU nations were as dramatic as Marine Le Pen’s drubbing of Emmanuel Macron. But the success of her National Rally party in winning 32 per cent of the vote, more than double the support for Mr Macron’s Renew party, which only narrowly avoided coming third behind a rag-tag socialist-led coalition, leaves no doubt about the extent of Ms Le Pen’s success and what it portends for France.

Polls in France show Ms Le Pen owes her victory to deepening voter resentment over unwanted immigration, with Europe still unable to absorb the millions of migrants for whom former German chancellor Angela Merkel rolled out the red carpet in 2015. Combined with the related issues of terrorism and crime, Ms Le Pen was also boosted by anger about EU environmental overreach that threatens farmers’ livelihoods and the soaring cost of living. Those concerns were also felt in Germany – where Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling Social Democratic Party suffered setbacks – Austria, Spain and The Netherlands.

Mr Macron displayed his nervousness, immediately calling a parliamentary election for June 30, with a run-off on July 7, two weeks before the Paris Olympics. He hopes the Games will help him turn back Ms Le Pen’s surge. But he shouldn’t count on it. As The Times noted on Monday, Ms Le Pen’s success and the announcement of the snap poll leaves France’s hard right “on the threshold of power for the first time since the Second World War, when it collaborated with the Nazis’’. She and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are at the vanguard of a populist resurgence in Europe. The result has boosted Ms Le Pen’s hopes of winning France’s presidency in three years. If her party defeats Mr Macron’s party next month he faces being a lame-duck President for the remaining three years of his term.

European voters, The Wall Street Journal noted, have had enough of “virtue-signalling flights of fancy such as net-zero carbon emissions at the expense of stagnating economies or skyrocketing energy prices”. Green parties were among the biggest losers in the EU election. Brussels had already begun dialling back some of its more onerous climate rules as it saw the electoral freight train coming. Europe’s parliament in Strasbourg is 16,500km from Australia, but our major parties should not ignore lessons about voter trends in tough times.