Is Right-Wing Populism on the rise?
2023 is marked by a massive spike in right-wing populist candidates. Where is this trend coming from and does this look to become continuous?
As of 23rd November 2023, the PVV (Dutch Freedom Party) won 37 seats out of 150 in a surprise upset of the elections. The PVV and many others have formed a new wave of right wing populism that has been hitting Europe following the likes of France’s La Pen, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki and Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán.
There are countless factors that are leading to this enclave of populist movements and are largely resultant of the following:
Anti-immigration Policies
Low Economical Growth
Ukrainian War
I think it is important to note that while this article addresses the reasons for European right-wing populism, the rise in right-wing populism is of a global nature in the recent decades. For example, Maduro, Bolsanaro, Erdoğan, Modi and Duterte provide representation across the globe.
1. Anti-immigration Policies
As a result of conflicts in North Africa and the Middle East, over the recent years have seen mass waves of immigration. Within the EU, the top 5 European countries by number of immigrants taken in were Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK respectively.
The Figure above shows the countries with the highest percentage increase of immigrants from 2013 to 2022. An outstanding outlier is Italy. Due to its cooperation with Libya, restricting of humanitarian visa and closing of reception centres. The journey to Italy across the Mediterranean has been significantly more arduous. While it was one of the top 5 takers of immigrants of the recent decade, Italy’s increase in immigrants have declined to a mere 1%, as a result of domestic pressure on policymakers. The butterfly effect is clear as we look at the spillover onto Spain, France and Portugal.
With a strong surge in anti-immigration sentiment within Italy, Meloni’s populist movement has been empowered by the people and, abled socially conservative policies to come through. These similar policies are what powered Brexit and Le Pen’s movement in France.
A reason for the lower increments of immigrants from the Central European to the Baltic states is due to the paths that these immigrants take, many transition through these countries to reach Western Europe.
2. Low Economic Growth
Due to the Butterfly Effect of climate change activism, the Ukraine war and COVID-19, there is a sharp decline in growth within Europe. Many countries have progressively been forced to take on austerity measures and this has resulted in outcry over welfare towards externalities like the war, immigration and non-traditional foundations.
This applies more for Western Europe who for years have experienced strong growth, post-COVID 2022 was a strong year due to the huge influx of liquidity in the foreign markets, seeing the austerity measures through the year has led to a massive drainage of capital and resources for the economies to expand. It looks like starting a bonfire but running out of wood to continue it.
This is evident through the policies that these countries have taken on. Italy reducing leakage of growth by cutting taxes to local businesses, reducing red tape while providing support for traditional families through tax breaks and subsidies. Poland has implemented several policies aimed at reducing welfare for immigrants such as residency requirements for welfare, a cap on benefit per family and requirement to integration. All of which has significantly cut costs.
3. Ukrainian War
The European Union are the largest donors to Ukraine. The EU has committed €156 billion of both military and humanitarian aid. Due to the nature and proximity of the conflict, the respective governments have had to play a balancing act between committing funds to the war and additional welfares or stimulus growth.
The nature of this has been evident in many countries, granting right-wing populism firewood. For example Slovakia’s PM & Smer-SD party leader has vowed that Slovakia will not send “a single round of ammunition.”
There is strong feeling of resistance from the EU countries closer to the conflict. For example, in a ECFR Poll, about 69% of Hungarians are estimated to oppose providing military aid to Ukraine, these numbers are similar in Serbia at 65% and Bulgaria at 59%. Due the history of these countries and the attitudes towards the war, it is significantly easier to justify against a pro-regional candidate for non-economic reasons over a populist leader with cultural rhetoric.
These are just some factors that have loosely led to a wave in right-wing populism, it isn’t right to put a blanket term over them and use each reason as a justification due to the varying situations each country is in.