Katya Adler: What will happen if the far right wins the EU elections?

“The far right is on the march” is something you’ll often hear across Europe right now. “It feels like 1930s Europe.”

With 350 million people across the European Union currently voting for their direct representatives in the European Parliament, it’s no surprise that many Eurocrats in Brussels are scrambling. But are the fears – and the media headlines – overblown?

Millennials and first-time Gen Z voters are predicted to be pulled to the right. Figures compiled recently for the Financial Times show that a third of young French voters and 22% of young Dutch and German voters under the age of 25 support their country’s far-right. This is a significant increase since the last European Parliament elections in 2019.

Far-right parties are predicted to win a quarter of all seats, and if they win big, the optics will be clear. But the finer details of what impact it might have on EU life and policy-making are more nuanced.

Because the nationalist right itself is nuanced – different nationalist right-wing politicians hold different positions in different countries. Some try to tone down former far-right rhetoric and broaden their appeal to voters.

So, what might change in Europe if the European Parliament shifted to the right?

The EU has long nurtured a big ambition – to be ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to the environment. But Europe’s voters are more concerned about the cost of the green transition.

Take the recent farmers’ protests. Tractors from across the EU descended on Brussels and the European Parliament, bringing them to a standstill. Opponents say EU and national environmental laws and bureaucracy are putting them out of business.

Nationalist-right parties in France, the Netherlands and Poland saw an opportunity to claim to be representatives of “ordinary people” against the EU and national “out-of-touch elites”.

The result? The EU has withdrawn or repealed several key environmental rules, including stricter restrictions on the use of pesticides.

Environmentalists are concerned that the EU has now avoided specifying how farmers should contribute to its vision of cutting emissions by 90% by 2040. They believe a rightward shift in the European Parliament will further dilute Green ambitions or mean an indefinite delay.

Most European voters say they do not want to leave the EU, although they have many reservations about how it should work. Instead, right-wing nationalist parties promise a different EU – more power for nation states, less “Brussels interference” in everyday life.

If their voices are heard louder in the European Parliament, it will be harder for the European Commission to take more powers from national governments, such as on health policy.

You would think that this would be an obvious one, and that a swing to the right in the EP would lead to tougher EU legislation on migration.

Take Geert Wilders, the far-right leader of the Netherlands. His PVV party became the largest group in the Dutch parliament this fall after national elections. He has promised the “toughest migration law of all time” and polls suggest the PVV will do well in this election.

But it should be borne in mind that EU migration and asylum policy is already nicknamed Fortress Europe. Keeping people out is a big priority. There is a flurry of economic agreements with non-EU countries such as Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Turkey to crack down on traffickers who send economic migrants or asylum seekers.

A large group of hard-rights in the European Parliament may change the so-called solidarity principles.

Each EU country must take its quota of asylum seekers, or at least pay a substantial contribution, to help fellow EU members like Italy and Greece, where most migrants land by people-smugglers’ boats. But nationalist-right MEPs may refuse to play ball, as we have already seen with populist nationalist governments in Hungary and, until recently, Poland.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has prompted leaders across the EU to talk about making their “neighborhood” more secure.

Not just by spending more on defence, but by speeding up the process – or at least showing more determined enthusiasm – for neighboring countries to join the EU. I’m talking here about Ukraine, Georgia and the Western Balkan countries of Kosovo and Serbia, which have been of great concern to Europeans because of their proximity to Moscow.

But the nationalist right is generally less than enthusiastic. They fear expansion costs. A larger EU with more poor countries would require a bigger budget, with higher contributions from relatively richer member states.

Members of the bloc that receive substantial EU subsidies, such as Romania and Poland, and French farmers (still the EU’s largest single beneficiary of the Common Agricultural Policy) will also not benefit. For example, it’s hard to imagine that Ukraine, nicknamed the breadbasket of Europe – a massively rural, agricultural Ukraine – would get a glimpse if it were to join the EU.

Defense and security are seen as the hobby horse of the right, but in these days of conflict, most agree that defense spending is a priority in the EU. Their hopes have been hardened by the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House as US president.

After World War II, Europeans looked to the United States to have their backs in terms of security. Look at how important Washington is to providing aid to Ukraine.

But in the run-up to the US election in November, if he wins, Mr Trump is clear that Europe should take nothing for granted.

EU leaders are determined to be better prepared.

Ukraine is a clear example of why generalizing about the hard right as a uniform movement is so misleading.

It is true that far-right parties scattered across the EU say they want to change the nest from within. If they win more MEPs this week and form more national governments, it gives them a bigger voice in the European Parliament, key EU ministerial meetings and EU leaders’ summits.