Calling snap parliamentary elections in Spain last week, prime minister Pedro Sánchez said Spaniards would soon have to decide whether to stick with his leftwing government or “join the far-right wave”. The vote on November 29 marks a potential turning point in Spanish politics after eight years of socialist government, with opinion polls suggesting a clear majority for the conservative People’s Party (PP) and its putative partner, the nationalist-populist Vox. It also marks the beginning of an intense election supercycle the likes of which Europe has not seen in a generation.
In the space of 12 months, four of the five biggest EU member states by population will go to the ballot box, as will four smaller ones. This crammed election season will have an impact on the EU by distracting national governments and making leaders less willing to compromise on fraught issues such as the EU budget, for fear of being accused on the campaign trail of betraying the national interest. The common trends are striking.
There is a broad electoral shift to the right and a growing readiness among centre-right parties to share power with far-right rivals, spelling the end of so-called firewall policies of non-co-operation. The far right has itself radicalised with the arrival of new upstart parties such as National Future in Italy and the Confederation of the Polish Crown (KKP). At the same time, more established ones such as Alternative for Germany (AfD) are becoming more extreme or refusing to moderate the closer they get to power.
Nathalie Tocci, professor at the European campus of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, says that if the nationalist right held power in Spain, France, Poland and Italy all at once, “I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say it’s the end of the European Union as we’ve known it.” Spain will kick off the process (Bulgarians vote for their president on October 25 but the role has limited powers) and Italy could theoretically close it with elections due by December next year, although they are likely to come earlier. In between, there are presidential and parliamentary elections in France — potentially the most consequential of them all — and legislative elections in Poland. Estonia, Finland, Greece and Slovakia will hold parliamentary votes next year.
One could even include Germany in this cycle. There are no national elections in the country this year. But three regional ones in April could spell the end for Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who appears to be living on borrowed time after his Christian Democratic Union took a hammering in regional elections in eastern Germany last month.
In Spain, the PP has not ruled out co-operating with Vox, including in a coalition, and already governs with it in several regional administrations. In France, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Rassemblement National, is the clear frontrunner for the presidential election, while her mainstream opponents are divided and unable to find traction with voters. Giorgia Meloni, a nationalist populist who has governed Italy largely as a traditional conservative, is well placed to win a second term, but may be forced to bring National Future, led by a pro-Russian former general Roberto Vannacci, into her coalition.
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