Far-right groups made big gains in EU polls. What will they aim to achieve?

A massive surge by far-right groups in the just-concluded European Parliament elections has shaken up the entrenched traditional political establishment and laid bare the deep divisions in the continent’s social fabric.

Far-right groups across Europe fiercely oppose some critical items of the EU agenda, ranging from its migration pact to the Green Deal. As a result, they aim to form a right-wing leadership more aligned with their agenda to slow continental enlargement.

There is also a widespread fear inside the EU that right-wing parties – from France to Belgium, Italy, Austria and Hungary, where they came first – would push for referendums like the UK’s Brexit in 2016, seeking their respective countries’ exits from the union.

While Europe’s centre-right and centre-left parties have lamented Brexit for years, many far-right parties have felt jubilation, seeing Britain’s pull-out as a vindication of their own stances.

Among those delighted parties was France’s Rassemblement National, led by Marine Le Pen, who drubbed President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance Party in the EU elections and triggered snap parliamentary elections.

Le Pen’s initial reaction after the Brexit result suggested that it’s also possible. “Victory for Freedom!”, she hailed Britain’s leave decision. “As I have been asking for years, we must now have the same referendum in France and EU countries,” Le Pen wrote on X then.

However, she might also moderate her stances, like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, who have changed some of their tough positions on the EU agenda after coming into power.

Despite this possibility, far-right victories across the continent have created many uncertainties, raising concerns that they can end the union.

Here is what far-right groups aim to achieve.

Putting pressure on the leadership

First of all, right-wing blocs like Identity and Democracy (ID)—continental alliances comprising leading far-right parties like France’s Rassemblement National—aim to put a lot of pressure on current European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen with the support of non-affiliated groups.

Von der Leyen is a member of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), seeking a second term. After the election, “the centre is holding”, she said, referring to the EPP’s relative increase of its members in the European Parliament compared to 2019.

But she also warned that far-right gains require “the parties in the centre” to act in a “great responsibility”.

According to some senior French officials, von der Leyen is not very popular in the centrist platform Renew Europe, which might back European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, another member of the EPP, who is “liked by everyone”.

For a second term, von der Leyen seeks to garner votes from either leftists like the Greens and Socialists & Democrats, the second biggest bloc in the EU parliament, or turn to right-wing blocs like European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which is led by Meloni, for support.

Meloni, whom some experts call a new kingmaker of the EU, has already moderated her party’s course. Meloni met Von der Leyen before last weekend’s election, prompting experts to argue that the two might find common ground on issues like migration.

Ruining migration pact

The EU has recently reached a comprehensive agreement on migration and asylum-seekers, setting “new rules on managing migration and establishing a common asylum system at EU level, that delivers results while remaining grounded in our European values.”

The pact is “designed to manage and normalise migration for the long term,” which fiercely anti-migrant far-right groups have long opposed and sought more preventive measures to block foreign-born people from coming to European countries.

Some members of von der Leyen’s EPP have also opposed parts of the EU’s migration plan. If she finds common ground with some right-wing groups, then the new parliament might scrap the migration pact, according to Gerolf Annemans, a lawmaker from Belgium's Vlaams Belang party.

Downgrading the Green Deal

Right-wing groups, the main voice of Europe’s rural communities who oppose the EU’s Green Deal also aim to soften the Green Deal, a key item of the union’s environmental policies.

The Green Deal, which targets decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent by 2040, has angered the continent’s farmers, prompting large protests against it since February.

Farmers believe that the EU’s green transition will increase their costs as high inflation hits their earnings. They are also concerned that only a small percentage of farmers can benefit from the EU's agricultural funding programs.

More Islamophobia

With the rise of the likes of Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), who came second in the Dutch election and won six seats in the new parliament, more Islamophobic views will also be visible in the continental assembly.

Wilders has long been a defender of Islamophobia, falsely claiming that Muslim migration will lead to the "Islamisation of the Netherlands".

He has also compared the Quran, Islam’s holy book, to Mein Kampf, Hitler’s controversial book and campaigned to ban it in the Netherlands.