The Maastricht Treaty begins, “Confirming their attachment to the principles of liberty, democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and of the rule of law”. Since 1993, the Union has sought to uphold these principles in practice as a foundational baseline to enable twenty-seven states to make common decisions. When this foundation is weakened, however, Europe’s capacity to respond to external threats weakens with it. As far-right parties gain further prevalence within the European political sphere, the values they bring stand in contrast to the pluralism necessary for the institutions to function as they have done for the last 33 years. Europe’s greatest strategic vulnerability arguably no longer lies solely beyond its borders.

The Breaching of Far-Right Containment

By World War II’s end, fascism had lost all its mainstream credibility. Following the defeat of the Axis Powers, democracy proliferated as the standard form of governance in Western Europe. By the fall of the Francoist Regime in 1975, this new standard appeared to be unbreakable as it spread across the continent, coalescing in the fall of the USSR in 1991 and a belief that we had reached Francis Fukuyama’s End of History. While far-right actors still existed, they were typically small and held little power, such as with Belgium’s Vlaams Blok or Italy’s MSI. More importantly, however, the ideological debate was fought within a window of acceptability where virtually all relevant actors could agree on the base assumptions of liberal democracy and the rule of law.

Entering the 21st century, however, far-right parties began to breach the containment that they had been held within. By 2000, Austria became the first of the EU countries where the cordon sanitaire or Brandmauer began to be chipped away, when the far-right FPÖ entered into government coalition with the Christian-democratic ÖVP. Hungary soon followed, with Viktor Orbán beginning his longer second term in 2010. Sooner or later, the trend would expand across Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, and Slovakia, with far-right movements gaining momentum across the Union. Coalescing along populist lines of anti-immigration, Euroscepticism, ultra-nationalism, and xenophobic rhetoric, these parties grew throughout the mid-to-late 2000s into the landscape we find today.

The reasons for their rise are multifaceted and often mutually reinforcing. Scholars have pointed to concerns such as economic insecurity following the financial crisis of 2008, the de-industrialisation and China-shock to Europe’s economy, concerns around immigration following the spike in the number of refugees and economic migrants since 2015, and a distrust of ‘political elites’ paired with the growing tide of Euroscepticism. The results are evident: many European citizens believe that a democratic deficit has arisen, seeing the European Institutions as disconnected from the ordinary person, unable or perceivably unwilling to address their concerns.

While the 2000s marked the beginning of the rise of the far right in popularity, the global trend of ‘alt right’ ideologies, popularised in the online chatrooms of 4chan and Telegram, has permitted the far right to become increasingly violent in their rhetoric and actions, with the young age of suspects arrested being of particular concern to Member States. It is for this reason that the far right is now of the greatest concern when compared to the other challenges facing the Union; no other shock has had such an impact on the European youth, or shaped their ideology in such a way that we may be dealing with the fallout of this rise for the coming decades.

With nationalism and Euroscepticism forming the cornerstone of these far-right movements, the EU may become fractured in the face of the outside pressures placed upon it.

Fragmentation within the EU

The European project is, at its core, a multicultural and transnational one designed to transcend the horrors of the early 20th century. In fact, the motto of the EU since May 2000 has been United in diversity. The rise of the far right directly attacks this foundation, thereby threatening the Union’s internal stability. Far-right governments and political movements across Europe have systematically challenged judicial independence, media pluralism, and institutional checks and balances. They often frame these core democratic safeguards as existential threats to national sovereignty and traditional values, the twin pillars around which these movements centre their ideology, as Lawrence Britt discusses in his 14 Characteristics of Fascism.

When these movements claim to be the sole representatives of the will of the populace, political opposition ceases to be viewed as legitimate disagreement and is instead framed as a betrayal amounting to treason. This ideology, therefore, replaces the inclusionary foundations of the European project with exclusionary nationalism, a weaponisation of public anxiety, and a conversion of socioeconomic friction into tribal animosity.

As these positions become normalised with the rise of these parties, a shifting of the Overton Window takes place, reshaping the public zeitgeist to accommodate ideas once considered unacceptable. The Italian response to the Ceuta crisis marks a stark example of far-right parties becoming increasingly comfortable in responding with hostility when dealing with other EU countries, while the riots and widespread violence against minorities which took place in Belfast and across the island of Ireland demonstrates the domestic instability which these movements are capable of creating. These episodes weaken public trust in our institutions and consume public attention, creating a “snowball” effect of civil unrest which serves to strengthen the far right’s prevalence in the political sphere and further their Eurosceptic claims.

Furthermore, the political gains of the far right can introduce gridlock into the European institutions and normalise wide-spread Euroscepticism, as was the case with the Hungarian veto of EU sanctions on Russia in February of this year. When these actors attain executive power or hold legislative majorities within EU member states, the result can be a divergence of national policy from the EU line, as can be seen with the Czech response to the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum.

Should the Union become further fractured by internal ideological warfare and social unrest sparked by far-right actors, it will lose its strategic cohesion and any agility in its response to outside threat. A divided EU cannot act decisively, particularly in the cases where a single national veto can block a measure, thereby offering hostile external actors an ideal terrain for hybrid warfare, disinformation, and political manipulation.

Surviving External Threats with Internal Weakness

The internal crisis Europe is experiencing could not come at a more inopportune time. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally altered the European security environment, forcing the Union to confront the reality that the relative peace within the borders of the Union, assumed since the USSR’s dissolution, can no longer be taken for granted. The assumption that the global economic integration of the modern world would make a major armed conflict economically unviable in the Global North has been challenged by the return of military aggression between large global powers.

Moreover, from Iran’s hostage-taking of global oil and gas to an increasingly unaligned security guarantor across the Atlantic, Europe’s vulnerabilities extend far beyond its immediate eastern border. As a result, it is becoming increasingly apparent that Europe does not possess the autonomy required to protect its own interests. The death of FCAS has demonstrated that unity is of the utmost importance, with the inefficiencies brought by competing national interests playing a major role in the death of the programme.

There does exist an argument that nationalist governments do not inherently weaken European security, as Italy’s FdI is championing aggressive defence spending and a confrontational stance towards Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This is contrasted with the reluctance of governments which lie within the traditional Overton Window, such as Spain’s PSOE, to meet NATO spending targets. However, this line of argumentation overlooks the vulnerability that their nationalist approach to defence creates. While their position on Russia aligns with EU security goals in this scenario, this may not be true for the next conflict depending upon national priorities, leaving Europe’s defence too transactional and brittle should a threat arise which divides Europe along national priority lines. When coupled with the ability of Member States to single-handedly block measures which require unanimity, praise for this nationalistic approach is not something to be given lightly.

If every member state views defence through the lens of its own borders, long-term strategic coherence and the development of a unified defence architecture become increasingly difficult. To achieve the efficiency required for ‘strategic autonomy’ objectives and ensure security in the Union, a more centrally planned strategy is required, or we risk repeating the €100 billion waste of FCAS.

Should Europe find itself unable to rely on the United States for military security, the internal fractures that far-right movements have deepened will compound the challenge. A Union divided over its own foundational values is a Union less capable of defending them. External threats do not wait for internal consensus and, by undermining the unity of the Union, the far right may be handing Europe’s adversaries the opportunity they have been searching for. We do not know where the next threat to the Union will come from, whether it be an attempt to annex Greenland, an expansion of Russian ambitions into the Baltics, or a resurgence of paramilitarism from within the EU’s territory. Regardless, any one of these actors, through disinformation campaigns and the dissemination of propaganda online such as in Romania in 2024, would be able to capitalise on the rift created by the far right to cause paralysis in decision making.

Can the Union Survive?

From the financial and migratory crises to Brexit and the pandemic, the very frameworks of European institutions have been designed through the evolution of crisis. Yet, the unique challenge of ideological disagreement over the foundational principles of the Union could prove to be the greatest threat to stability the EU has had to weather. Disagreement over policy is easily survivable for a political system. Value pluralism, in fact, is thought of as one of the greatest achievements of the liberal system. Disagreement over fundamental values, however, is much harder to survive. The EU institutions do not require that every citizen or government share specific views, but they do require a respect for liberal democracy, including individual freedom, judicial independence, and division of powers under the political criteria of the Copenhagen criteria, values which the far right has historically undermined.

Regardless, a fractured Europe cannot defend against external threats. So, to survive against this far-right threat, Europe’s response must be to treat domestic resilience and security as inseparable. The Union will not survive by eliminating political disagreement, but by ensuring that national political movements do not destroy the EU’s capacity to act as a unified bloc in the face of external threat.