Following what Chantal Mouffe described as the ‘populist moment’ in the mid-2010s, the current decade has seen the entrenchment of the far-right as a durable feature of the European political landscape. Though political scientists continue to debate the term, parties that can be reasonably described as far-right are leading governments in Hungary and Italy, make up coalitions in Finland, Sweden, Austria, Slovakia, and (until recently) the Netherlands, and form the largest opposition party in Belgium, Portugal, France, and Germany. The far-right’s increasing electoral force is now a transnational European trend, connected to disillusionment with establishment parties, hardening public discourse on immigration and citizenship, and the dealignment of the traditional alliances that underpinned postwar party democracy in Europe.

How to respond to the resurgent right at a parliamentary level is now a burning question for Europeans of numerous political stripes. The collapse of the governing coalition in the Netherlands offers some insights into this dilemma. Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) won the most seats in the November 2023 election but missed out on a parliamentary majority; Wilders’ agreement not to seek the Prime Ministership during coalition talks enabled the formation of a four-party right-wing majority government in July 2024. Though Wilders rolled back his most extreme proposals, such as a ban on mosques and a Dutch exit from the EU, he was able to fill key cabinet positions (including a newly created Ministry of Asylum) with hardliners, and strike a coalition agreement committed to the Netherlands’ ‘strictest asylum regime ever’. His accusation that coalition partners were stalling these plans led to his withdrawal of the PVV on 3rd June. Wilders announced his intention to become Prime Minister and to drive the issue of immigration during the new elections set for October.

This episode raises questions about the effectiveness of different strategies for neutralising the far-right threat, either through coalitions with centrist parties or through appropriation of the former’s talking points. Common wisdom holds that participation in government exposes the shallowness and incompetence of far-right parties, discrediting them electorally, or else forces them to moderate their radical proposals and rhetoric. Economist leaders on Italy’s Georgia Meloni are cautiously satisfied that the Fratelli d’Italia leader has come round to consensus positions on foreign policy and European cooperation. The FT’s commentary on France’s Rassemblement National argues that the burden of governance would inevitably sap the party’s radical appeal, which is dependent on the luxury of political opposition. Though Wilders’ poll numbers have declined since the election, the PVV’s time in government has allowed it to shift the public debate on asylum considerably to the right, while he uses the collapse of the coalition to feed a narrative of sabotage by elites and technocrats.

Celebrating these thwarted campaign promises and popularity fluctuations within single election cycles can also overlook how the political centre itself gets recomposed during these attempts to contain the far-right. Research has long drawn attention to ‘mainstreaming’ as a key strategy of far-right parties, who wish to normalise their parliamentary presence while politicising issues like asylum, borders, and identity. This altered playing field often sees centrist parties moving sharply to the right to absorb pressure from more radical parties. Studies from multiple national contexts suggest this co-optation does not succeed in stemming the far-right’s radicalism or long-term popularity: declining vote shares for Social Democratic parties are not reversed by sharp rightward tacks, and similar efforts by centre-right parties result more often in a ‘radicalised conservatism’ than a domesticated far-right. What’s more, far-right politicians seem gleefully aware of the strategy’s inefficacy; after CDU leader Friedrich Merz, desperate to underline his party’s rightward shift on immigration, styled his bloc as ‘The AfD, but with substance’, AfD chief Weidel hit back that ‘Even if Mr Merz bends like this, we remain the original’.

These technocratic solutions – containing and co-opting the far-right through formal institutions – are inherently reactive; they work within the new political coordinates created by the right’s radicalisation. A better progressive strategy should engage with the material preconditions of far-right success, tackling inequality, maintaining social infrastructure, and supporting initiatives that foster inclusion and solidarity. It must also engage with people who are directly harmed by far-right rhetoric and violence, who have the sharpest insights into how this politics plays out on the ground. Only this kind of social politics will be able to oppose the far-right threat in the long term.

About the author 

Dr Matthew Varco is a researcher in political ecology and human geography, currently based at Trier University, Germany. He recently completed an ESRC-funded PhD at the University of Manchester, where his dissertation, Political Ecologies of the German Far-right, explored how nature has historically shaped German-language right-wing politics as a symbolic, ideological, and material terrain. His research critically examines the role of nature in far-right and extremist movements, particularly in Europe, engaging with debates around eco-fascism and the politicisation of the environment in the Anthropocene. His postdoctoral project, Fascist Future-Making and Authoritarian Affinities in the Racial Anthropocene, investigates how the global right interprets and navigates socio-ecological collapse.

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