Sweden Democrats' Square Meeting in Umeå. Jimmie Åkesson speaks to the people on the city square where opposition left-wingers have formed a chain and protest in Umeå, Sweden on August 14, 2018. Photo: Shutterstock.

A Speed Bump in the Road or the Start of an Uphill Journey? The Sweden Democrats and the 2024 European Parliament Election Setback

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Please cite as:
Bolin, Niklas. (2024). “A Speed Bump in the Road or the Start of an Uphill Journey? The Sweden Democrats and the 2024 European Parliament Election Setback.” In: 2024 EP Elections under the Shadow of Rising Populism. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS. October 22, 2024.https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0085

 

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Abstract

Leading up to the 2024 European Parliament election, much attention was given to the anticipated gains of populist parties across Europe. While some populist parties made significant advances, the overall outcome was more moderate than expected. Sweden deviated from this general trend, witnessing gains for left-wing parties and a surprising setback for the populist radical right. The 2024 elections marked a historic decline for the Sweden Democrats, the first instance since their formation in 1988 that they regressed in comparison to previous national and European Parliament elections. This decline is particularly notable following their strong performance in the 2022 national elections, where they became Sweden’s second-largest party. This article examines these developments, drawing on existing research, media reports and exit polls, with a focus on the Sweden Democrats’ campaign strategies, election results and voter behaviour. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these election outcomes for both Swedish domestic politics and the broader European political landscape.

Keywords: radical right; populism; Sweden Democrats; European Union; elections, voting behaviour

By Niklas Bolin* (Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden)

Introduction

The expectations for the European Parliament elections among parties to the right of the mainstream right were certainly high. Media forecasts were clear, proclaiming that ‘a populist wave surges’ (Vinocur, 2024) and ‘a far-right takeover of Europe is underway’ (Vohra, 2024). The question was not whether the disparate group of far-right parties would gain influence but how significant that influence would be. However, while the results must be seen as a success for these parties, it is probably more accurate to describe it as moderate rather than a landslide victory. While some parties – for example, the French National Rally, the Brothers of Italy and the Alternative for Germany – made significant gains, the development was more modest elsewhere.

Sweden was one country bucking the trend. Parties on the left made gains while parties on the right generally fared somewhat worse. Most surprisingly, it was a defeat for the populist radical right. The 2024 European Parliament election will go down in history as the first election ever where the Sweden Democrats regressed compared to the previous election. Until this point, the party was unique in the sense that in all national elections – both to the national and the European Parliament – since its formation in 1988, it had advanced compared to the previous election. The decline is even more remarkable given that the general expectation was for the party to continue its trend of success. Instead of repeating the achievement from the national parliamentary election in 2022, when it attracted more than 20% of the votes and became Sweden’s second-largest party for the first time, the party experienced a shock. On election night, it became clear that they were not only far behind the result of the 2022 national parliamentary election but also lost ground compared to the previous 2019 European election. Rather than continuing its surge, the party only managed to secure 13% of the votes, making them merely Sweden’s fourth-largest party.

Against this background, this chapter addresses party-political populism in Sweden in connection with the 2024 European Parliament election. Specifically, it describes and analyses the populist radical right Sweden Democrats, with a focus on the campaign, the results and voting behaviour. The article is based on previous research, media reports and exit polls.

Populist parties in Sweden

In a European comparison, the successes of party-political populism came late to Sweden. Except for the brief presence of New Democracy in the Swedish Parliament (the Riksdag) from 1991 to 1994, populist representation was absent until 2010, when the Sweden Democrats were first elected to the Riksdag. 

Since then, the Sweden Democrats have monopolized the position of the populist party in Sweden. Although it has occasionally been claimed that the socialist Left Party is populist, a consensus has emerged that the Sweden Democrats is the only Swedish party that unequivocally meets the criteria (Meijers & Zaslove, 2021; Rooduijn et al., 2023). Some believed the newly launched People’s List could become a new populist challenger. The movement, which adamantly rejected the designation of being a party, was founded just over a month prior to the election by a former Social Democratic MP known for winning a reality TV show and a sitting MEP from the Christian Democrats who had been removed from the party’s list. With decent name recognition, the People’s List initially received significant media attention. Interest quickly waned, and with only 0.6% of the votes, the People’s List is destined to become a small footnote in Swedish party history. The initiators announced shortly after the election that they would not continue their involvement with the movement (Rogvall & Nordenskiöld, 2024).

As the only relevant populist party, this article thus focuses on the Sweden Democrats. The party was founded by outright racist groups with neo-Nazi links (Larsson & Ekman, 2001). Because of this history, the party was completely shut out from co-operation with other parties on the national stage for many years due to a cordon sanitaire. This began to change before the 2018 election and, more explicitly, before the 2022 parliamentary election, when three of the centre-right parties expressed a more open stance towards the Sweden Democrats (Bolin et al., 2023). Despite an election outcome in 2022 where these parties lost ground, they managed, with the support of the Sweden Democrats, to regain control of the government after eight years of Social Democratic-led rule. With 20.5% of the votes as the country’s now second-largest party, the Sweden Democrats’ support was crucial for the new government. The party was also rewarded through a far-reaching co-operation agreement. Many observers suggested that the Sweden Democrats had significant influence over the agreement (Aylott & Bolin, 2023). The 2024 European Parliament election was thus the first election in which the Sweden Democrats participated while having formal influence over the government, serving as a potential test of how voters viewed the party’s collaboration with former adversaries from the establishment.

The party’s political profile and priorities resemble those of other parties in the populist radical right family (e.g., Jungar & Jupskås, 2014). Its main priorities have been a restrictive immigration policy and a tough stance on crime. Regarding the EU, the party long favoured exiting the EU. However, following the aftermath of Brexit and a surge in pro-EU attitudes among the electorate, the party moderated its criticism. Prior to the 2019 European Parliament election, the party dropped its demand for a referendum on EU withdrawal (Bolin, 2023a). Despite abandoning its hard Eurosceptic position, it remains the most EU-sceptical party in Sweden, possibly alongside the Left Party.

A key issue, similar to those faced by comparable parties in other EU countries, is the party’s stance on Russia. Despite having taken a stance against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, other parties in Sweden have accused the Sweden Democrats of having an ambiguous attitude towards the Russian regime. Such attacks have not prevented the party from adopting, in turn, a critical stance towards several other similar parties, primarily within the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, precisely because they have shown a more openly friendly attitude towards the Putin regime (Bolin, 2023b).

The party succeeded in entering the European Parliament for the first time in 2014. One of the most decisive issues for the party has been how the Swedish public perceives its actions at the European level. This concern is particularly evident in the party’s group affiliation in the European Parliament, as there are fears of being tainted domestically by association with other populist radical right parties with extreme pasts and reputations (McDonnell & Werner, 2018). After the 2014 election, the Sweden Democrats applied for membership in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) but were not accepted. Instead, it was admitted into the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD), which actively recruited MEPs from elsewhere after the Danish People’s Party left to join the more mainstream ECR (Bolin, 2015). However, a few years later, resistance to the Sweden Democrats decreased somewhat, leading the party to join its Nordic neighbours, the Danish People’s Party and the Finns Party, in the ECR just one year before the 2019 election (Johansson et al., 2024). Despite the Danish People’s Party leaving the group to join ID a few years later, the Sweden Democrats remained in the ECR for the remainder of the parliamentary term.

The election campaign

Over time, the Sweden Democrats have built up a highly effective communications department that has successfully attracted media and public attention. The communication has often been controversial. In a TV advertisement ahead of the 2010 election, for example, the party illustrated the need for economic prioritization by showing a group of niqab-clad women with strollers racing against an elderly woman with a walker to reach the benefit payment first (Bolin et al., 2022). And in 2020, when party leader Jimmie Åkesson travelled to the border between Turkey and Greece, he distributed flyers with the text ‘Sweden is full’ (Fridolfsson & Elander, 2021).

The campaign strategy in the 2024 European Parliament election initially followed previous patterns. A year before the election, the party leadership proposed a ‘referendum lock’, a law stipulating that all major transfers of power and demands for larger payments to the EU must first be approved in a referendum (Åkesson & Weimers, 2024). This move was seen by many as a way to assert the party’s position as the most EU-sceptical. The campaign continued to be characterized by opposition to further transfers of power to the EU. However, the main focus was consistently related to immigration, often with connections to crime. The party invested heavily in the slogan ‘My Europe builds walls’, a paraphrase of the former Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s statement during the 2015 refugee crisis that ‘My Europe does not build walls.’ The message appeared on the party’s campaign posters and YouTube channel, where it was accompanied by various dramatic videos showing people with seemingly foreign backgrounds engaging in violent protests or otherwise behaving in a disturbing manner. The message was clear: immigration creates problems, so Sweden and Europe need to close their borders.

The campaign initially had the intended effect of creating media attention around the party. The election campaign soon took a new turn when, about a month before the election, it was revealed that the party’s communications department hosted a so-called troll factory, where anonymous social media accounts spread disinformation and derogatory portrayals of other politicians. The revelation was condemned unanimously by all other parties, including those in the government that the Sweden Democrats were co-operating with. The party responded with a strong counterattack through a five-minute ‘speech to the nation’ on YouTube, where Åkesson claimed that the reporting and the following reactions were ‘a massive domestic influence operation by the collective left–liberal establishment’ (Sverigedemokraterna, 2024). Given the Sweden Democrats’ conventional approach of handling troublesome revelations by downplaying or ignoring the accusations, many were surprised by Åkesson’s strong counterattack. After the election, reports also emerged of rare internal criticism regarding how the party leadership handled the situation. It is plausible that the party’s handling of the crisis also contributed to some voters refraining from voting for the party. 

Possibly facilitated by the party’s increased confidence after being given formal influence for the first time, there were also tendencies to express certain controversial positions more openly than before. The party was, for example, once again criticized for its stance on Russia. This recurring discussion was reignited after Åkesson stated that there is an upper limit to how much support Sweden should give to Ukraine (Carlsson, 2024) and, perhaps even more so, after the party’s top candidate, Charlie Weimers, suggested that their own party group, ECR, should be open to co-operating with parties in the ID group, whose stance on Russia has been characterized as relatively friendly (Nordenskiöld, 2024). 

Åkesson also received criticism when, just days before the election, he claimed in an opinion piece that multiculturalism had led to a population replacement in Sweden (Åkesson, 2024). A reference akin to the well-known ‘Great Replacement’ theory within right-wing extremist and conspiratorial circles (Mudde, 2019), despite Åkesson himself having distanced himself from the concept just a year before the election.

The ‘demand side’ of populism

Unlike many other populist radical right parties, the Sweden Democrats failed to make gains in the 2024 European Parliament elections. As illustrated in Figure 1, this is an exceptional occurrence since the party had never previously lost ground compared to a preceding national election. Despite securing 13.2% of the votes and retaining its three MEPs, the party experienced a decline of just over 2 percentage points compared to the 2019 election. The contrast with the 2022 national parliamentary election, the Riksdag, underscores the magnitude of this setback.

The Sweden Democrats usually perform worse in the European Parliament elections than in the Riksdag elections. But even taking this into account, the result must be seen as a disappointment, especially since pre-election polls indicated a clear success for the party. Before the election, the question was whether the Sweden Democrats would succeed in becoming the country’s second-largest party. The images broadcast from the party’s election night event, when the exit poll results indicated that they had not only failed to surpass the Moderates but had also been overtaken by the Green Party, were almost of a party in shock.

Turning to the question of who voted for the party based on the exit poll (SVT, 2024), no major surprises emerge. The sociodemographic patterns from previous elections reappear. While 18% of men voted for the Sweden Democrats, only 9% of women did so—at the voter level, the Sweden Democrats are as many other similar parties still männerparteien (Harteveld et al., 2015). Age-wise, there is no clear profile even though the party performs relatively well among the youngest voters (18–21 years old), much like in the parliamentary election of 2022. The party is overrepresented among the unemployed (20%) and those receiving sickness or disability benefits (24%). The party’s voters are also relatively strong among those with the lowest education levels. Additionally, the party is underrepresented among voters who grew up outside Sweden. The relatively low voter turnout of 53.4%, a decrease of nearly 2 percentage points since 2019, and the fact that the party is overrepresented in some of the groups that typically vote to a lesser extent provide some indication of why the Sweden Democrats did not perform as well as it did in the 2022 parliamentary election.

Additional clues are given if we focus on voter mobilization and issue prioritization. It appears that the Sweden Democrats failed to mobilize their supporters to the polls. The party stands out from the others in that it had the highest proportion of voters (59 % compared to the average of 38%) who had decided which party to vote for before the start of the election campaign. Consequently, the party performed the worst relatively in mobilizing voters in the week leading up to the election (23% compared to the average of 40%). The impression that the party failed to convince its supporters to turn out is strengthened by the fact that the proportion of voters who actually voted for the party was similar to those who said they would vote for the party if there were a parliamentary election today, while other opinion polls on voting intentions for the Riksdag, both shortly before and shortly after the election, showed significantly higher support for the party. So rather than switching to other parties, some Sweden Democrats sympathizers chose to abstain from voting.

The fact that the party supports the incumbent government might partially explain the problem of mobilizing voters. However, the aforementioned troll factory scandal is likely a more plausible partial explanation for why some voters chose to stay home. Even more likely, it was an agenda effect. While crime prevention, one of the party’s more important issues, was just as important to voters in 2024 as it was in the 2019 European election, the party’s main issue, ‘refugees/immigration’, was less significant than it had been in both the previous European election and the Riksdag election of 2022. In the exit poll, it was only ranked 11 out of 17 when voters were asked about the importance they attributed to different issues in their choice of party. Only 36% of voters indicated that this issue was of very great importance, which can be compared to 67% for ‘peace in Europe’, 60% for ‘democracy in the EU’, and 53% for ‘climate’, issues not highly prioritized by the Sweden Democrats.

Similarly, the issue of ‘national independence’, closely related to the Sweden Democrats’ message of resistance to transferring more power to Brussels, decreased somewhat compared to the 2019 election and ranked low on voters’ priority list. At the same time, the party’s positioning as the most EU-sceptical seems to resonate with voters. Among respondents who want Sweden to leave the EU, a significant 54% voted for the Sweden Democrats, compared to 11% for the Left Party, the second Eurosceptic party. The survey also confirms that the European Parliament election is primarily a domestic issue for Sweden Democrats voters. 59% of the party’s voters stated that the Sweden Democrats’ efforts in Swedish politics were very important in their choice of party. The corresponding figure for other parties varied between 19 and 46%.

Implications for the future

The 2024 EP election was a serious blow to the self-image of the Sweden Democrats as the eternal election winners. The result was surprising. However, there is no overwhelming evidence that this is the beginning of the end. Rather, it is reasonable to consider the vote decline as an indication that the party will now face ups and downs like most other parties. Moreover, in many respects, the election took place during a perfect storm that resulted in the party’s underperformance. The political agenda was dominated by issues not prioritized by the Sweden Democrats. The troll factory revelations also overshadowed the campaign and, perhaps even more importantly, how the party mishandled this crisis. In addition, and most likely due to this mishandling, many potential voters opted for abstention.

For the Sweden Democrats, European elections are still second-order elections. What happens in European Parliament elections and in Brussels is important primarily insofar as it has repercussions on their reputation at home. Despite harsh condemnations from the Swedish government parties following the troll factory revelations, they seemed equally inclined to move on. After all, the government parties are entirely dependent on the support of the Sweden Democrats for their continued survival. Despite the electoral defeat in the European Parliament election, it is important to note that the party still holds three seats in the EP. Most likely, these will be used strategically to join the group that offers the best leverage for their domestic agenda. The party will continue to maintain its position as the most EU-sceptical party in Sweden and express opposition to further transfers of power and money to the EU. At least for now, the most reasonable interpretation of the party’s election results seems to be more of a temporary speed bump in the road rather than the start of an uphill journey.

 

(*) Niklas Bolin is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden. His main research interests include parties and elections, with a specific focus on party organization, leadership, intra-party democracy, youth wings and radical right parties. He has published in high-ranking international journals, including the Journal of Common Market Studies, Party Politics and West European Politics. E-mail: niklas.bolin@miun.se

 

References

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Aylott, N., & Bolin, N. (2023). A New Right: The Swedish Parliamentary Election of September 2022 West European Politics, 46(5), 1049-1062. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2022.2156199

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Bolin, N. (2023a). Continued Absence: A Case Study of EU Salience in the Swedish Parliamentary Election of 2022. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 61(S1), 102-114. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13529

Bolin, N. (2023b). The repercussions of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on the populist Radical Right in Sweden. In G. Ivaldi & E. Zankina (Eds.), The Impacts of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Right-wing Populism in Europe (pp. 303-313). European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0031

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Fridolfsson, C., & Elander, I. (2021). Between Securitization and Counter-Securitization: Church of Sweden Opposing the Turn of Swedish Government Migration Policy. Politics, Religion & Ideology, 22(1), 40-63. https://doi.org/10.1080/21567689.2021.1877671

Harteveld, E., Van Der Brug, W., Dahlberg, S., & Kokkonen, A. (2015). The gender gap in populist radical-right voting: examining the demand side in Western and Eastern Europe. Patterns of Prejudice, 49(1-2), 103-134. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2015.1024399

Johansson, K. M., Jungar, A.-C., & Jupskås, A. R. (2024). The transnational dimension of the Nordic populist radical right. In A.-C. Jungar (Ed.), The Nordic Populist Radical Right. Voters, Ideology, and Political Interactions. Routledge. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429199936

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Mudde, C. (2019). The far right today. Polity Press.

Nordenskiöld, T. (2024, May 31). SD redo för samarbete med ryssvänliga partier. Expressen.

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Rooduijn, M., Pirro, A. L. P., Halikiopoulou, D., Froio, C., Van Kessel, S., De Lange, S. L., Mudde, C., & Taggart, P. (2023). The PopuList: A Database of Populist, Far-Left, and Far-Right Parties Using Expert-Informed Qualitative Comparative Classification (EiQCC). British Journal of Political Science, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123423000431

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Vinocur, N. (2024, June 6). As Europe votes, a populist wave surges. Politico Europe,https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-election-vote-populist-wave-alternative-for-germany-national-rally/

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Flag of Finland and the European Union flag displayed in the European Council offices in Brussels, Belgium, on April 10, 2024. Photo: Alexandros Michailidis.

The Loss of the Populist Radical Right in the 2024 European Parliament Elections in Finland

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Please cite as:

Herkman, Juha. (2024). “The Loss of the Populist Radical Right in the 2024 European Parliament Elections in Finland.” In: 2024 EP Elections under the Shadow of Rising Populism. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS. October 22, 2024. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0069

 

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Abstract

In the 2024 European Parliament (EP) elections, the populist radical-right Finns Party had a disappointing result; it came sixth nationally and lost 6.2% of the vote and one seat compared to the 2019 elections. The centre-right National Coalition (NC) party won the elections with 24.8% of the vote and four seats, but the real winner was the Left Alliance, which came second (17.3%) and gained three seats. The elections revealed voters’ deep distrust towards the government, in which the Finns Party supported significant austerity measures and cuts to public spending through its leader and finance minister, Riikka Purra. People’s fear of the rising far right in Europe was also a salient theme in campaign debates, which diminished the Finns Party’s support, alongside a low voter turnout.

Keywords: Election campaign; populist radical right; Finns Party; antagonism; government/opposition

 

By Juha Herkman* (Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland)

Introduction

In Finland, one political party is commonly referred to as ‘populist’ – the Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset, which was initially called True Finns). However, depending on how populism is defined, other political parties and individual politicians may sometimes be described as being populist when they use provocative language, make unrealistic promises and encourage strong antagonisms (see Herkman, 2022). Therefore, the label ‘populist’ has occasionally been used to refer to liberal green or leftist actors and minor political parties with little or no representation in parliament. Here populism is understood as an affective process in which strong antagonisms are exploited to construct a united political group identity and movement mobilization as ‘the people’ (Laclau, 2005; Herkman, 2022). In this, no other parliamentary party than the Finns Party can be called ‘populist’ as such in Finland.

The Finns Party was established in 1995 as the successor of the Finnish Rural Party, an agrarian populist party created in 1959. The legacy of the Finnish Rural Party (SMP) has made the Finns Party a more normal political player compared to the populist parties of the Nordic countries (Herkman & Jungar, 2021). Under the leadership of Timo Soini (1997–2017), the Finns Party was a rather traditional populist party with an anti-elitist, nationalist and Eurosceptic agenda, as well as left-leaning economic policies. However, in the 2010s, Soini started flirting with actors opposed to immigration, and the party became very popular. Under the leadership of Jussi Halla-aho (2017–2021) and Riikka Purra (2021–present), the party has become a clear example of the European populist radical right, with a strong anti-immigration message and nativist ideology (Jungar & Jupskås, 2014; Norocel, 2016). Regarding economic policies, the party has also turned to the right. During the Soini’s period, the party followed the SMP legacy as a proponent of the disadvantaged groups as the ‘workers’ movement without socialism’, whereas the new leaders have promoted ‘welfare chauvinism’ and attacked the ‘exploiters of the welfare state as the enemy of the real hard-working people’ in the wake of immigration criticism (see Norocel, 2016).

The Finns Party has traditionally been the only openly Eurosceptic parliamentary party in Finland, although the Centre Party has also promoted Euroscepticism, especially in agricultural policies. However, compared to national elections, in which it has been the second or third largest party in Finland with 17.5–20.1% of the vote between 2011 and 2023, the Finns Party has had limited success in the EP elections (see Figure 1). In the 2019 EP election, the party obtained its best result to date, with 13.8% of the vote, coming in fourth among Finland’s parties. After these elections, the party joined the new Identity and Democracy group, but it moved to the more moderate European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in 2023 because they did not want to be identified with such political parties as France’s National Rally or Italy’s Lega, which were seen far too extreme in Finnish public discussions prior to the 2024 EP elections. In 2019–2024, the Finns Party had two members of the European Parliament (MEPs), Teuvo Hakkarainen and Laura Huhtasaari; as a country, Finland had 14 MEPs (as a result of Brexit, Finland now has 15 MEPs).

Because of geopolitics and its high dependence on European markets, Finland has been among the countries with the most favourable disposition towards the European Union (EU) in the twenty-first century. Based on the figure above, it seems that populist anti-immigration rhetoric and Euroscepticism do not take you as far in the EP elections as in national elections in Finland. In opinion polls, two-thirds of Finns have expressed positive thoughts about EU membership; however, only 22% of Finns Party supporters shared this attitude, and 58% of them were negatively disposed towards EU membership (YLE, 2023). In Finland, the voter turnout is much lower for the EP elections compared to national elections, which usually diminishes the share of the Finns Party’s vote because their voters channel the general disappointment and protest at politics and are therefore unsure of voting. In the 2019 EP elections, the turnout was 42.7% of the voter population living in Finland, whereas it was 72% in the 2023 parliamentary elections and 71.6% in the first round of the 2024 presidential elections.

The 2024 EP elections were very interesting in Finland because the Finns Party has been part of the right-wing government with the NC since 2023. Also, in April 2023, Finland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Since entering government, the Finns Party has diminished its populism and promoted very right-wing economic policies based on strong austerity measures and considerable cuts to public spending thanks to its leader, Riikka Purra, who is currently the finance minister. According to polls, support for the Finns Party has decreased remarkably after the parliamentary elections. In the spring of 2024, the relationship between the government and workers became very polarized, with numerous strikes taking place in response to the government’s actions.

The Finns Party has traditionally been the Eurosceptic party in Finnish EP elections, promoting an agenda opposed to the EU, immigration and climate change policies. However, concerning the war in Ukraine and NATO, the party has been in line with the position of the other major parties in Finland because the population strongly supports Ukraine and criticizes Putin’s Russia. On this point, the Finns Party differs from the European far right, which has often supported Putin’s regime and opposed NATO. Among the parties, the NC – which usually comes first in EP elections in Finland – has been the strongest supporter of the EU and NATO. The constellation of the NC and the Finns Party in government and the liberal Greens and the Left in opposition makes the analysis of the 2024 EP elections extremely interesting from the perspective of populism.

Populist antagonism in the election campaign

EP elections are often seen as second-order elections because, in many countries, national and local issues take precedence over European ones during campaigning (see Reif & Schmitt, 1980). This is not completely true in Finland: in the EP elections, European issues are highlighted, even though they are discussed from a national angle (Herkman et al., 2024).

In total, 232 candidates registered to campaign across all Finnish political parties before the deadline of 10 May 2024. The Finns Party fielded 20 candidates, as did the other major parties. In the campaign, the opinion polls ranked the Finns Party third with an estimated 16%–17% of the vote. The time available for campaigning was rather short – no more than three or four weeks. The parties launched their election manifestos about six weeks before the election.

The Finns Party’s manifesto, Päätetään itse (Let’s Make the Decisions Ourselves), was published on 24 April 2024. It was seen as milder compared to the past, as the party abandoned its long-term goal of withdrawing from the EU as ‘unrealistic’. The manifesto recognized the benefits of the EU for Ukraine and the Common Market, even though it saw the euro as damaging for Finland. However, the document contained several familiar themes, such as a strong anti-immigration agenda, according to which asylum seekers should be sent to third countries outside Europe. The manifesto also criticized what it saw as the EU’s unwise expansionism, failed income-transfer politics and eagerness to meddle in matters that are the preserve of the member states.

During the campaign, the Finns Party repeatedly criticized the recent regulation of plastic bottle tops as a striking example of ‘stupid’ EU policies, and it mocked the regulation in several comments, blog posts and YouTube videos. The previous leader and a key figure in the party, Jussi Halla-aho, argued in a campaign video that the EU makes decisions that do not consider national interests because European decision-makers are not interested in them. According to Halla-aho, a vote for the Finns Party would be a vote for the idea of Finland ‘making the decisions ourselves.’

The Finns Party’s status as a populist radical-right actor coloured the whole campaign of the 2024 EP elections in Finland, and an anti-populist struggle took place against them. The Social Democratic Party’s (SDP) campaign slogan and manifesto title was Jo riittää–pystymme parempaan (This Is Enough–We Can Make It Better) in reference to the challenges to European unity, equal rights, the rule of law and the fight against climate change posed by the far right. The Left Alliance and the Greens spoke of the same issues in their campaign manifestos, underscoring their anti-populist and anti-far-right credentials. Interestingly, the NC, the party of the prime minister and one of the companions of the Finns Party in government, chose security as the most important theme in their election manifesto, entitled Oikealla puolella Eurooppaa (On the Right Side of Europe), in addition to their traditional themes of the free market and innovation. In their program, security also meant strict border controls for asylum seekers that aligned with their long-standing Western orientation and support of NATO but also echoed the collaboration with the Finns Party in the governing cabinet.

Online candidate questionnaires have been popular in Finland for several decades, and all major media outlets publish them during an election campaign (Carlson & Strandberg, 2005). The most influential questionnaires are published by the public broadcaster YLE, the leading newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, the oldest national commercial television channel MTV3, and national tabloid papers. The questions posed to candidates vary across the media outlets; however, their results are generally similar to the value map of YLE’s questionnaire (see Figure 2, YLE, 2024a). Even if there is some variation among the candidates in a party, the value map demonstrates the clear differences among the parties in terms of their economic (left–right axis) and value orientations (conservative–liberal axis).

The more a party is on the right of the map, the more it supports the free market, and vice versa. The higher a party is on the map, the more it holds conservative values, and vice versa. By looking at Figure 2, one can see that the Finns Party and the Christian Democrats are the most conservative actors in Finnish politics, as well as the strongest proponents of the free market. Only their companion in government, the NC, is more to the right economically, although this party is more moderate in terms of values, making it a traditional representative of the centre-right. In contrast, the Social Democrats and the Greens are very liberal and economically left-wing, together with the Left Alliance, which is even more to the left regarding the economy. The figure visually demonstrates how far apart the left–green camp and the Finns Party were in the 2024 EP election.

The same chasm was evident in the election debates aired by the major national television channels. Whereas the most important topic in the 2019 EP elections was climate change, which explains the success of the Greens at the time (Herkman et al., 2024: 103), in the 2024 elections, security was the key theme. This was due to the war in Ukraine and Russia’s influence on asylum seekers’ crossings on Finland’s eastern border. As mentioned above, the support for Ukraine in Finland has been almost unanimous among the country’s parties. Stricter border controls as a result of Russian operations have been supported even by the left–green parties, even though they have made some criticism concerning human rights. The focus on security made the Finns Party the agenda setter during the 2024 EP election campaign.

Despite this, the Finns Party was forced onto the defensive in other areas. Due to the predicted victory of the far right across the continent and its consequences for the EU, the media and the left–green parties constantly discussed these issues on the air. The Social Democrats based their campaign on attacking the far right for its damaging influence on European unity, the support for Ukraine, human rights, climate change policies and the principle of the rule of law. The Left Alliance and the Greens attacked the Finns Party on immigration and environmental issues, accusing it of representing the far right. The NC supported the government’s security policies, developed with the Finns Party, but it tried to keep out of the clash between the liberal opposition and the far right. In this situation, the Finns Party remained a ‘fringe populist movement’ (Herkman & Palonen, 2024: xxix).

The leader of the Finns Party, Riikka Purra, who is also the finance minister, had become a symbol of the government’s austerity policies, which created problems for the party during the campaign debates. Even though the party leaders tried to hold back in the debates, some party members had a more aggressive stance. For example, a well-known Finns Party MP, Sebastian Tynkkynen, used much more provocative rhetoric on immigration than Purra. This division of labour, according to which the leaders appear more moderate when there is a large audience while others are more aggressive in their communications with radical supporters, is typical of the populist radical right (Herkman, 2022: 77).

The populist radical right has often been seen as the political force that benefits the most from social media because these tools help them to use the double-speech strategy mentioned above, bypass journalistic scrutiny and appeal to hardcore far-right supporters (e.g., Krämer, 2017). The Finns Party has also been successful in its social media use, from Halla-aho’s and Soini’s blog posts to the more recent use of TikTok and Instagram by its MPs. Tynkkynen has a popular YouTube channel and successfully used Facebook in his campaigning. However, a study of Twitter use during the 2019 EP elections found that the most active tweeters were from the liberal, pro-EU camp and that Finns Party members mostly retweeted other people’s content and commented aggressively on it (Herkman et al., 2024). During the 2024 EP elections, Palonen and Jokinen (2024) systematically monitored social media campaigns. According to them, the Finns Party was not particularly active. Social media debates focused on attacking the government, of which the Finns Party is a member.

Surprising election results

In Finland, the 2024 EP elections were held on 9 June, but there was an advance voting period between 29 May and 4 June. The electoral district was the whole country for the 15 MEPs elected from Finland, who were chosen with the d’Hondt method. Some hoped the turnout would increase from the previous elections, and there was a significant increase in advance voting. However, in the end, the turnout was just below that of 2019, with 42.4% of those eligible in Finland casting their votes. The results surprised everyone because they differed radically from the polls, which are usually very reliable in Finland (see Figure 3).

As predicted, the NC took first place in the elections with 24.8% of the vote, gaining a couple of percentage points more than the polls had predicted and increasing its seats from three to four. The biggest surprise was the Left Alliance, which came in second with 17.3% of the vote and three seats (previously, they had only one). The Social Democrats were third (14.9%). The Finns Party was the most obvious loser, coming in sixth (7.6%), having taken 13.8% of the vote and fourth place in the 2019 elections.

Overall, it seems that the government/opposition divide remarkably affected the election results. Although the prime minister’s party (the NC) came first, the opposition was arguably much more successful. The Left Alliance, SDP, Centre Party and Greens gained nine seats combined, whereas the NC, Finns Party and Swedish Folk Party obtained only six. Therefore, the 2024 EP elections in Finland reflected the voters’ dissatisfaction with the government’s policies. This dissatisfaction was evident not only in the decline of the Finns Party but also in the success of the liberal left–green bloc.

The media made sense of these surprising results in several ways. The main explanation for the victory of the Left Alliance was the remarkable success of its leader, Li Andersson, a 37-year-old female politician who had already attracted positive attention during Finland’s presidential elections in early 2024. Andersson has been a popular figure beyond party lines. In the EP elections, she alone received an astonishing 13.5% of the vote, and she brought two other party members to the EP with their relatively modest percentages. The defeat of the Finns Party was explained by their participation in government, especially that of their leader, Purra, who has become a symbol of painful cuts to public spending. Also, the low voter turnout may harm the Finns Party, whose voters are unsure about voting and prefer voting in the parliamentary and local elections – an effect of the Euroscepticism promoted by the party.

The Finns Party did not have previous MEPs as candidates because Laura Huhtasaari moved from the European to the national parliament after the 2023 parliamentary elections. Also, the party did not accept its previous MEP, Teuvo Hakkarainen, as their candidate for 2024 because he had received significant negative attention for being very passive and incompetent. However, Hakkarainen campaigned as an unaffiliated candidate, and he received a significant number of votes, which also diminished the Finns Party’s share. Interestingly, the party’s most-voted candidate and only MEP for 2024–2029 was Sebastian Tynkkynen, who adopted a more provocative stance during the campaign compared to party leaders.

Finns Party voters’ social and demographic characteristics have changed over the years. Initially, the party was supported by blue-collar workers, the unemployed and the disadvantaged. Today, its voters are mostly middle-class individuals and small entrepreneurs. This change has been due to the party’s shift from the left to the right. In recent elections, its voters have come from average socioeconomic backgrounds, with a clear male preponderance (Isotalo et al., 2024). In the 2024 EP elections, the party received votes from all parts of Finland, but it lost its position as the most popular party in the northern and eastern parts of the country to the Centre Party. Traditionally, the latter dominated these provinces, but it lost them to the Finns Party in the 2023 parliamentary elections (YLE, 2024b).

Conclusion

The 2024 EP elections were surprising in Finland. Despite the predictions, there was no victory for the populist radical right. The Finns Party obtained about half of the votes they won in the 2019 EP elections and only a third of those they received in the 2023 parliamentary election. The real winner was the Left Alliance with its leader, Li Andersson. This result revealed the people’s dissatisfaction towards the government and the Finns Party’s leader and finance minister, Riikka Purra, who has become a symbol of strict austerity and cuts to public spending.

However, even though the populist radical right failed, the overall context of the election was populist due to the strong antagonism between the Finns Party and the liberal left–green bloc (Herkman & Palonen, 2024, p. xxx). The Finns Party was backed into a corner due to its role in government, which all the opposition parties challenged. The most successful Finns Party candidate, Sebastian Tynkkynen, represented the provocative and radical faction of the party. Therefore, it seems that populism lives on in the anti-hegemonic challenger, whose approach did not help the Finns Party in the 2024 EP elections. Tynkkynen will join the ECR group in EP and continue critical activity on his social media channels. He announced that he would recruit assistants for social media campaigns during his MEP career to make the Finns Party voters aware of what is going on in the EU (YLE, 2024c).

 

(*) Juha Herkman (PhD) is Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He has studied, among other things, the relationship between populism and media, and he has published extensively on the topic in academic articles. Herkman is an author of the book A Cultural Approach to Populism (2022, Routledge) and editor of the book Populism, Twitter and the European Public Sphere: Social Media Communication in the EP Elections 2019 (2024, Palgrave) together with Emilia Palonen. E-mail: juha.herkman@helsinki.fi

 

References

Carlson, T., & Strandberg, K. (2005). The 2004 European parliament election on the web: Finnish actor strategies and voter responses. Information Polity, 10 (3–4), 189–204. DOI: 10.3233/IP-2005-0075

Election Statistics (2024a) Vaalien tieto – ja tulospalvelu. Oikeusministeriö. https://tulospalvelu.vaalit.fi/

Election Statistics (2024b). Europarlamenttivaalit 2024. Oikeusministeriö. https://tulospalvelu.vaalit.fi/EPV-2024/index.html

Herkman, J. (2022). A Cultural Approach to Populism. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003267539

Herkman, J., & Palonen, E. (2024). Introduction: European public sphere, populism and Twitter. In J. Herkman & E. Palonen (eds.) Populism, Twitter and the European Public Sphere: Social media communication in the EP elections 2019(pp. xix–xliv). Palgrave. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-41737-5

Herkman, J., Sibinescu, L., & Palonen, E. (2024). Finland: Populist polarisation of the Finnish political communication. In J. Herkman & E. Palonen (eds.) Populism, Twitter and the European Public Sphere: Social media communication in the EP elections 2019 (pp. 85–113). Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41737-5_4

Herkman, J., & Jungar, A-C. (2021). Populism and media and communication studies in the Nordic countries. In E. Skogerbø, Ø. Ihlen, N. Nørgaard Kristensen & L. Nord (eds.) Power, Communication, and Politics in the Nordic Countries (pp. 241–261). Nordicom. DOI: 10.48335/9789188855299-12

Isotalo, V., Sipinen, J., & Westinen, J. (2024). Sukupuolikuilu arvoissa ja puoluevalinnassa. In E.- Kestilä-Kekkonen, L. Rapeli & P. Söderlund (eds.) Pääministerivaalit polarisaation aikana: Eduskuntavaalitutkimus 2023 (pp. 245–274). Oikeusminiteriö. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-400-875-4

Jo riittää – Pystymme parempaan (2024). Sosialidemokraattien eurovaaliohjelma. Sosialidemokraatit. https://www.sdp.fi/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/sdp-n-eurovaaliohjelma-2024.pdf

Jungar, A-C., & Jupskås, A. R. (2014). Populist radical right parties in the Nordic region: A new and distinct party family? Scandinavian Political Studies, 37 (3), 215–238. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9477.12024

Krämer, B. (2017). Populist online practices: The function of the Internet in right-wing populism. Information, Communication & Society, 20 (9), 1293–1309. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1328520

Laclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. Polity.

Norocel, O. C. (2016). Finland: From agrarian to right-wing populism. In T. Aalberg, F. Esser, C. Reinemann, J. Strömbäck & C. de Vreese (eds.) Populist political communication in Europe (pp. 42–53). Routledge.

Oikealla puolella Eurooppaa (2024). National Coalition Party’s EU election program 2024. https://www.kokoomus.fi/national-coalition-partys-eu-election-program-2024/?lang=en

Palonen, E., & Jokinen, H. (2024). HEPPslaining the EP2024 elections. Seminar at the University of Helsinki on 12 June 2024. https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/emotions-populism-and-polarisation/news-events/heppsplaining-the-european-parliamentary-elections-results-in-2024

Päätetään itse (2024). Perussuomalaisten eurovaaliohjelma 2024. Perussuomalaiset. https://www.fsd.tuni.fi/pohtiva/ohjelmalistat/PS/1540

Reif, K., & Schmitt, H. (1980). Nine second-order national elections – A conceptual framework for the analysis of European election results. European Journal of Political Research, 8 (1), 3–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.1980.tb00737.x

YLE (2023). Suomalaisten EU-myönteisyys on yhä ennätystasolla. https://yle.fi/a/74-20030707

YLE (2024a). Näin EU-vaaliehdokkaasi sijoittuu arvokartalle. https://yle.fi/a/74-20090715

YLE (2024b). Eurovaalit 2024: Tulospalvelu. https://vaalit.yle.fi/epv2024/tulospalvelu/fi/

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Several people during a rally calling for the contra la amnistía resignation of Pedro Sanchez, at Plaza de Cibeles, on March 9, 2024, in Madrid, Spain. Photo: Oscar Gonzales Fuentes.

Euroscepticism and Populism on Europhilic Soil: The 2024 European Parliament Elections in Spain

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Please cite as: 
Marcos-Marne, Hugo. (2024). “Euroscepticism and Populism on Europhilic Soil: The 2024 European Parliament Elections in Spain.” In: 2024 EP Elections under the Shadow of Rising Populism. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS. October 22, 2024. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0084

 

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Abstract

This chapter deals with the association between radicalism, populism and Euroscepticism in the context of the 2024 European elections. It first examines the electoral platforms of leading political parties and shows that Eurosceptic ideas, while not highly prevalent, are more common among forces of the radical right. It also suggests that, as second-order theories expect, national issues dominated the electoral campaign for the European Parliament (EP) in Spain. Second, public opinion data is used to describe the general state of attitudes towards the EU and their association with voting for different political parties. The main results from this section are evidence that voters of radical-right parties are more critical of the EU. They also underline a potential reconfiguration of the radical-right space that now includes Vox and a new anti-establishment, outsider formation, The Party is Over (Se Acabó La Fiesta, SALF).

Keywords: Euroscepticism; populism; radical-right; ideology; Spain

 

By Hugo Marcos-Marne* (Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of Salamanca, Spain)

Introduction

The 2024 European Parliament (EP) elections in Spain took place against a backdrop of political polarization and instability. The general elections in July 2023 resulted in a fragmented parliament, requiring the candidate from the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE), Pedro Sánchez, to secure the support of eight different parties and coalitions to be re-elected prime minister. The coalition supporting Sánchez, which included peripheral nationalist parties heavily criticized by right-wing forces, only intensified the existing trends of polarization (Parker, 2022). Political discussions often included accusations of lawfare, insults, and questioning of the government’s legitimacy to a scale not seen before (Jones, 2024). It is no surprise that more than 75% of the population defined the political situation as ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’, according to data gathered in June 2024 by the Spanish Centre of Sociological Research (CIS) (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 2024c).

The number and relevance of ongoing national-level political issues often sidelined European ones during the 2024 campaign. Topics recurrently discussed included the amnesty law applied to events referring to the independentist movement in Catalonia between 2012 and 2023, alleged corruption scandals around Sánchez and the PSOE, and international issues not directly related to the European Union (EU), such as Spain’s recognition of the Palestinian State and a diplomatic incident with the Argentinian president Javier Milei. Analysts widely agreed that the electoral campaign was framed as a referendum against Sánchez by the right-wing Partido Popular (PP) and far-right Vox (Kennedy & Cutts, 2024). Still, European issues appeared during the campaign, and special attention was given to the potential success of the radical right and its influence on EP alliances. Relevant in this regard was the emergence of a new anti-establishment, outsider formation in Spain, The Party is Over (Se Acabó La Fiesta, SALF), led by the former political adviser and alt-right influencer Luís Pérez (known as Alvise Pérez). The Spanish party system, once depicted as immune to the radical right (Alonso & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2015), included two genuinely radical-right contenders for the EP elections in 2024.

Building upon this background, this chapter focuses on the association between Euroscepticism, radicalism and populism before and during the European elections campaign in Spain. For that, it uses secondary sources and public opinion data from the CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 2024b; 2024c). The main results suggest that Euroscepticism was comparatively low in Spain both on the demand and supply side, although it was stronger among radical-right parties and their supporters (see Llamazares & Gramacho, 2007). They also evidence a potential re-composition of the radical-right space with the competition between Vox and SALF, the latter with a more heterogenous voter profile regarding self-positioning on the left–right scale and an even stronger impugning discourse towards mainstream politics.

Euroscepticism and populism in Spain

Spain is depicted as a Europhilic country. Citizens and parties had always had positive perceptions of the EU until 2008 (Powell, 2003; Real-Dato & Sojka, 2020; Vázquez García et al., 2010), and widespread critical positions among the public disappeared with the more negative consequences of the crisis (Gubbala, 2023). In April 2024, the CIS gathered data on attitudes towards the EU (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 2024a). This report showed that Spaniards acknowledged the importance of the EU (more than 82% of the respondents thought that EU decisions matter a lot or quite a lot for the life of the Spaniards) and considered that EU membership had been more positive than not for salaries, employment opportunities, culture, development of less developed regions, business opportunities, and the relevance of Spain in world affairs (this was not the case only for one item, the price of consumption goods). In fact, large majorities supported strengthening EU common foreign policy, creating a European army, having a common policy of migration and asylum, harmonizing taxes, having a common policy of rights and obligations, and economically contributing to creating a European welfare state (Table 1).

Table 1. Percentage of respondents in favour or against key EU policies and actions

  In favour% Against%
Strengthen European common foreign policy  83.3 13.4
Creating a European army  63.5 32.7
Having a European common policy of migration and asylum 78.1 19.2
Harmonizing taxes 62.9 29
Having a common policy of rights and obligations  87.1 9.9
Economically contribute to creating a European welfare state  80.7 16.5

Source: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (2024a)

Nevertheless, post-2008 outcomes included a comparatively more Eurocritical party system with the emergence of Podemos and especially Vox. While Podemos mostly targeted neoliberal policies at the EU level, Vox included more explicit references against the EU as a supranational organization, which could have attracted voters who oppose the European integration process (Marcos-Marne, 2023). Data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) confirm that both PSOE and PP had a favourable/strongly favourable position towards EU integration, Podemos had an opinion between neutral and somewhat positive, and Vox had a somewhat opposed one. The most critical party in Spain, Vox, still ranks higher in EU support than other parties of the radical-right family, such as the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), the French Rassemblement National (RN), or the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) (Hooghe et al., 2024). The position of the recently created SALF remains unclear because the candidature did not present a structured manifesto for the EP elections. Still, the strongly nationalist and anti-establishment discourse of its leader anticipates a critical discourse towards the EU that might take different forms and intensities.

Considering that both Euroscepticism and populism are often found at the extremes of the ideological spectrum (Hooghe et al., 2002; Rooduijn & Akkerman, 2015), it is no surprise that Podemos and Vox have been more frequently studied regarding populism. According to the ideational approach, populism is found in the intersection between anti-elitism, people-centrism, and a Manichean understanding of politics (Hawkins et al., 2019; Wuttke et al., 2020). Following this definition, Podemos has been said to display a more populist discourse than Vox (Marcos-Marne et al., 2020, 2024), but recent analyses signal a decline in the use of populist ideas by Podemos, which has turned more clearly to radical-left ones (Roch, 2024; Rojas-Andrés et al., 2023). As for Movimiento Sumar (‘Unite Movement’), evidence suggests it does not include populist ideas in its discourse (Thomassen, 2022). Regarding SALF, there is little doubt that anti-elitism, especially against parties of the left, is a fundamental part of its electoral platform, but the use of people-centred ideas is much less clear. At the moment of writing, SALF may be characterized as a far-right protest movement that expresses a demagogic/impugning discourse. It must be acknowledged, however, that there is space for SALF to incorporate populist ideas in a more consistent manner.

Overall, the electoral competition in 2024 Spain seemed better explained by where parties sit in the economic, cultural and centre-periphery axes of competition. This does not mean that populist ideas were irrelevant during the electoral campaign, and it certainly does not preclude populism from again becoming a key component of the political competition in the future. However, it helps to understand that most of the electoral claims, including positioning towards the EU, correlated strongly with left–right positioning in the economic and cultural dimensions. For example, in the Spanish public television debate for the EP elections, Jorge Buxadé (Vox) was the politician who most clearly framed his intervention as an opposition between the interest of Brussels and the Spanish people. Candidates from Podemos and Sumar directed criticisms towards the EU due to its (non)response to the Israel attacks in Palestine but also emphasized the importance of a green and fair Europe that considers the welfare of its peoples. This clearly evidences the relevance of the thick ideology to which populist ideas attach when it comes to EU contestation (Massetti, 2021; Roch, 2020).

The EP 2024 elections: Results, trajectories and electorates

The results of the EP elections in Spain (Table 2) resembled general trends at the European level. A movement towards the right was observed, with the PP being the most-voted force (34% of the valid votes) and parties defending radical-right platforms increasing their vote share (Vox and SALF received together almost 15% of the valid votes). Nevertheless, mainstream forces of the left and right retained most of the MEPs (PP and PSOE secured more than 64.2% of the valid votes and 42 out of Spain’s 62 MEPs). In line with aggregate results, parties integrated into The Left group experienced a decline in electoral support, which can also be attributed to a series of public disputes between Sumar and Podemos.

To put these results into perspective, Vox clearly improved its results from the 2019 EP elections (6.21%), but it lost significant support when compared with the 2023 general elections (12.4%). The emergence and success of SALF are likely to have contributed to this, as according to CIS data, more than 50% of its electorate had supported Vox in the past general elections. Podemos, which together with Izquierda Unida (IU) received 20% of the vote in 2016, only gained two seats in the EP (3.3% of the valid vote). The declining electoral trajectory of Podemos can only be explained by referring to multicausal explanations from punishment to internal divisions, organizational disputes, engagement with institutional power, and the recovery of both macroeconomic indicators and mainstream parties (crucially, PSOE).

Table 2. EP electoral results in Spain

Party or coalition  European family Vote share (%) Seats in the EP
Partido Popular (PP) European People’s Party (EPP) 34.2 22
Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) Socialists and Democrats (S&D) 30.2 20
Vox European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) 9.6 6
Ahora Repúblicas  Greens–European Free Alliance (EFA) / The Left 4.9 3
Sumar  Greens–European Free Alliance (EFA) / The Left 4.6 3
Se Acabó La Fiesta (SALF)  Other 4.6 3
Podemos  The Left 3.3 2
Junts-UE Non-attached (NA) 2.5 1
Coalición por una Europa Solidaria (CEUS) Renew Europe 1.6 1

Source: https://results.elections.europa.eu/es/

To explore the central ideological, attitudinal and sociodemographic differences between voters of different parties, I pay attention to voters of the two mainstream parties of the left and right (PSOE and PP) and the four statewide parties that can be clearly associated with the radical left (Podemos and Sumar) and right (Vox and SALF). This section has used CIS data, particularly the 2024 May barometer (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 2024b) (N= 4,013) and the pre-electoral study conducted for the EP elections (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 2024c) (N=6,434). The study conducted in May 2024 incorporates different questions that are important to understand the profile of voters, but it did not include voters of SALF.

Relevant differences can be seen in the positions of voters on key issues that affect the EU, such as climate change or the war in Ukraine and Palestina (Table 3). Podemos and Sumar voters were by far the most concerned about climate change, followed by PSOE voters. The percentage of voters of PP and Vox that were very concerned about climate change did not reach 20%, and it was the lowest for Vox, reflecting general associations between attitudes towards climate change and left–right ideology (McCright et al., 2016). Vox and Podemos voters were the least concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These voters perceive the negative consequences of the war to a similar extent as the average population, but they seem less concerned for different reasons. On the one hand, Podemos voters declared higher levels of sympathy towards Russians. On the other hand, Vox voters declared comparatively lower levels of sympathy towards both Russians and Ukrainians.

Accordingly, it could be that more pronounced preferences for one side and indifference towards both contribute to explaining lower levels of concern about the conflict. In any case, this does not speak of a general perception towards international conflict. Podemos voters were also the most concerned about war in the Middle East region. Overall, voters of left-wing forces were clearly more concerned about war in Palestine than Ukraine. This was particularly visible among Podemos voters and can be explained by the association between left-wing ideologies/parties and the Palestinian people in Spain (Musuruana & Hermosa Aguilar, 2022).

Table 3. Percentage of different parties’ voters very concerned about…

  PSOE PP Vox Sumar Podemos
Climate change  40.9% 19.9% 13.2% 59.7% 61.3%
Russian invasion of Ukraine  32% 26.2% 15.5% 26.6% 13.5%
War in the Middle East  41.6% 25.6% 17.9% 52.3% 53.3%

Source: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (2024b).

Moving to data from the pre-electoral study, Figure 1 shows relevant information regarding voters’ positioning on the left–right scale. Unsurprisingly, voters of Podemos and Sumar were more clearly positioned to the extreme left of the scale. Voters of PSOE were more often situated to the centre-left of the scale, and PP voters were more to the right. Despite the transfer of votes and some attitudinal similarities between Vox and SALF voters, their ideological profiles seemed quite different. Vox voters self-identified with right and especially radical-right positions, but voters of SALF were more numerous at the centre-right of the ideological scale. This raises important questions about the extent to which the voters widely share the radical-right platform of Pérez or whether his electoral success is partially explained by the dynamics of protest voting that is more easily expressed in the European elections (Hix & Marsh, 2007).

Tables 4–6 below show the aggregated sociodemographic and attitudinal characteristics of the supporters of the most-voted parties. Vox and especially SALF had clearly masculinized electorates (only 21% of SALF voters were women), but the profile of their voters differed regarding catholic identification (more Catholics support Vox), level of studies (SALF gathered more support among people with higher education), economic features (SALF was comparatively more popular among employed people and performed the worst among those with the lowest income), and mean age (SALF voters were the youngest in the sample). Voters of SALF were those who more clearly defined themselves as ‘mostly Spanish’ and showed the lowest levels of identification with Europe. Similarly, voters of Vox also thought of themselves mostly as Spanish but showed a comparatively higher level of dual Spanish–European identity. The more cosmopolitan voters were those of Podemos and Sumar (Table 5). Results in Table 6 suggest that voters of Vox and SALF were also the most critical regarding the benefits of EU membership (PSOE voters were the most satisfied).

Table 4. Sociodemographic features in voters for main parties in the EP elections

  PSOE PP Vox Sumar SALF Podemos
Female 55.9% 53.1% 39.4% 48.1% 21.3% 52.2%
Catholic  62.1% 80.1% 72.7% 12.2% 52.9% 14.2%
Higher studies  30% 35.1% 21.4% 49.8% 40.2% 39.3%
Less than €1,100  13.4% 12.5% 18.2% 9.8% 9.2% 10.6%
Employed 44.2% 53.2% 59.4% 66.8% 79.6% 57%
Mean age 55.8 55 42.9 47.5 36.9 49.2

Source: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (2024c).

Table 5. European identity among voters for main parties in the EP elections

  PSOE PP Vox Sumar SALF Podemos
Mostly European 4.7% 2.5% 1.5% 7.4% 0.5% 7.3%
Mostly Spanish 18.2% 31.7% 56.6% 8.6% 64.9% 11.8%
Both European and Spanish  54.7% 55.9% 31.6% 39.6% 20.5% 21.2%
Citizen of the world  21.8% 9.6% 9.1% 43.5% 13.7% 54.7%

Source: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (2024c).

Table 6. Spain mostly benefited from or affected by EU membership

  PSOE PP Vox Sumar SALF Podemos
Mostly benefited 87.8% 79.2% 43.5% 82.5% 33.3% 78.3%
Mostly affected 8.8% 15.9% 50.8% 12.5% 58% 18.4%

Source: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (2024c).

Conclusion and implications

The results of the 2024 EP elections in Spain resembled larger trajectories unfolding at the EU level. Mainstream parties of the centre-left and right were still the most supported forces, but radical-right forces grew both in number and votes. These forces are characterized by more Eurosceptic discourses that also resonate more strongly with their voters. While populist ideas are sometimes present in their discourses, it is essentially the anti-elitist component of populism that they use more often, sometimes combined with demagogy (especially visible in SALF). While there is no evidence to support a short-term electoral earthquake in Spain that would push forward radical-right forces, mainstream parties should reflect on the extent to which normalizing and incorporating discourses of the radical right complicates both their electoral performance and the project of the EU.

 

(*) Hugo Marcos-Marne is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Salamanca and a member of the Democracy Research Unit (DRU) at the same institution. Before joining USAL, he occupied postdoctoral positions at SUPSI-Lugano (Switzerland), the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), and UNED (Spain). His research focuses on public opinion, electoral behaviour, populism and national identities. His work has been published in Political Behavior, Political Communication, Political Studies, Politics and West European Politics, among other journals. He is also a co-author of a book recently published by Cambridge University Press.

 

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Demonstration at Freedom Square in NATO state Estonia in support of Ukraine and against the Russian aggression while Ewert Sundja was singing at Freedom Square, Tallinn, Estonia on February 26, 2022. Photo: Margus Vilbas.

Populism in the 2024 European Parliament Elections in Estonia

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Please cite as:

Jakobson, Mari-Liis. (2024). “Populism in the 2024 European Parliament Elections in Estonia.” In: 2024 EP Elections under the Shadow of Rising Populism. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS. October 22, 2024.
 
 

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Abstract

Although past European Parliament (EP) elections in Estonia have witnessed the success of an anti-establishment candidate, Estonian EP elections are not generally fertile soil for populism. Estonian EP elections tend to be dominated by the liberal and progressive parties and candidates with notable foreign policy track records. The 2024 EP elections generally confirmed this pattern but also witnessed the conservative parties running on a second-order election agenda critical of the government and parties both on the right and left-wing edges of the spectrum tapping into the small but nonetheless committed pool of Eurosceptic voters. Moreover, most parties made use of the stylistic repertoires of populism, attempting to perform various crises. While the election results changed little in the overall composition of the Estonian MEP delegation, the events unravelling immediately after the election suggest that the Estonian populist radical right will become more diverse but also more isolated from its sibling parties on the European level.

Keywords: Estonia, populism, Euroscepticism, sovereigntism, second-order elections, European Parliament

 

By Mari-Liis Jakobson* (School of Government, Law and Society, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia)

Background

In Estonian politics, populism tends to manifest as a discursive or performative strategy or a policy logic rather than an ideological fixture (Jakobson et al., 2012). Only a handful of parties have been dubbed as populist. For example, the Estonian Conservative People’s Party (EKRE) has typically been characterized as a populist radical-right party (Petsinis, 2019; Kasekamp et al., 2019; Saarts et al., 2021). It entered the European Parliament (EP) and joined the Identity and Democracy (ID) group in 2019. Historically, the Centre Party under the charismatic leadership of Edgar Savisaar (1991–1995, 1996–2016) was characterized as left-wing populist (Jakobson et al., 2012). However, since 2016, the party has undergone two leadership changes and substantive shifts in both its political style and program. In addition, populism has been a strategy of new protest parties, but most of them have been relatively short-lived (Auers, 2018).

The limits of populist appeals have applied in EP elections, in particular, as they are characterized by a generally low electoral turnout and lower level of populist performance since, typically, the more highly educated voters with a political preference turn out to vote. The notable exception occurred in 2009, when a protest candidate, Indrek Tarand, scored over a quarter of the popular vote on an anti-partitocracy platform, criticizing the cartelization of (established) parties and neglecting the actual will of the people (Ehin & Solvak, 2012). Hence, the present report will also analyse the use of populist strategies across parties regardless of whether they are mainstream or fringe or where they are placed on the socioeconomic (left–right) or sociocultural (GAL–TAN) spectrum.

The 2024 EP elections took place 15 months after the general election in Estonia, and a liberal coalition consisting of the Reform Party, Estonia 200 and the Social Democratic Party were in power. Unlike in the previous electoral cycle, where stable coalition formation was difficult due to the distribution of parliamentary seats, the liberal parties had a comfortable majority during the 2024 EP elections. Nevertheless, there were notable tensions in the air regarding the national budget. Due to the war in Ukraine, where Estonia has been one of the most generous supporters of Ukraine in terms of GDP, Estonia has raised its defence spending to 3% of GDP and now struggles with a looming budget deficit. These budget tensions prompted the new government coalition to plan cuts and propose new taxes (e.g., a previously non-existent car tax) and raise existing ones (e.g., VAT and income tax from 20% to 22%), which has been politically difficult, especially as the Reform Party and Estonia 200 are economically right-leaning parties. Upon formation, the governing coalition christened itself as the Pain Coalition, forced to take painful decisions.

Due to this, also the EP 2024 election followed the logic of second-order elections to a great extent, where many parties tried to pitch the election as a referendum on the government’s policy, although for a large share of voters, this was outshined by issues related to the Russia–Ukraine War. Second-order elections essentially entail a significant share of anti-establishment politics, with the opposition in the national government criticizing the ruling elites and attempting to position themselves as the true representative of the virtuous people (Mudde & Kaltwasser 2017). Populism’s emphasis on popular sovereignty also entails Eurosceptic attitudes, although, in Estonia, most parties resort to, at worst, soft Euroscepticism (Taggart & Szerbiak 2001), and this remained true in the 2024 EP election.

In total, Estonia elected 7 MEPs in the 2024 election, and a total of 78 candidates on 9 party lists and as individual candidates ran for the mandates. In addition to the six parties represented in the parliament (four of which were also represented in the 2019–2024 EP), four smaller parties and five individual candidates ran. However, none of the challengers managed to win a mandate.

The supply side of populism

Due to the small number of MEPs Estonia elects (just seven), EP elections in Estonia tend to be candidate-centric, where candidates compete not only concerning the ideological platforms of their parties but as individual candidates, with their personal traits and career tracks playing an important part. This tendency means EP elections are more elitist than populist, with former government ministers and foreign policy experts performing well.

In general, Estonian parties also tend to be notably pro-European integration. In 2019, only two parties, the populist radical-right EKRE (ID group) and the right-wing conservative Isamaa (EPP group), ran soft Eurosceptic campaigns (Ehin et al., 2020). In 2024, Isamaa’s campaign was somewhat less Eurosceptic (the party had meanwhile also changed its leadership), but in addition to EKRE, two new parties complemented the Eurosceptic scene, challenging EU integration and accusing it of overregulation or even harming Estonia’s national interests. Furthermore, many parties touched upon migration and asylum policy, human rights, foreign affairs and, notably, environmental policies (a significant and divisive topic in these elections). However, the main emphasis continued to be the Russia–Ukraine War and defence policy.

EKRE (still a member of the ID group during the campaign) continued to be the leading Eurosceptic party in Estonia in the 2024 EP elections, with a core pledge to maintain the EU as a union of nation-states. It called for better representation of national interests on the EU level (especially for smaller and newer member states like Estonia), ‘preserving Estonian national culture and identity from the attacks of woke-culture’ and stated that in case the EU treaties are opened for discussion, a new referendum over EU membership ought to be held (EKRE, 2024). It also challenged the EU for allegedly moving towards ideological control and suppression of individual rights, the overregulation of all domains (especially vis-à-vis the common market) and objected to introducing EU-level taxation. In addition, EKRE’s platform challenged the EU’s Green Deal as environmental extremism that favours only certain businesses and would ‘hurl majority of the people into poverty’ (Ibid). Another core policy topic in their program was immigration. The party warned that ‘immigration propaganda’ would force the public to accept ‘the rapid rise in numbers of Muslim and Eastern Slavic immigrants’ and asserted that devising immigration policy ought to be the sovereign right of nation-states. EKRE proposed returning immigrants to their countries of origin, also urging the return of Ukrainian refugees after the end of the war in order to avert a demographic crisis there.

Overall, EKRE’s campaign focused on the party’s core national–conservative ideology rather than its populist elements. The party emphasized the need to persuade the more conservative voters to participate in the EP elections, which have been, to date, dominated by more liberally minded voters (which is accurate, as liberal parties tend to perform better in the EP elections compared to national ones).

Founded in 2022 by a group of politicians expelled from the Isamaa party, the economically liberal, right-wing Parempoolsed (‘the Right-wingers’), which positioned itself as a potential member of the EPP group, is not a populist party as such (i.e., does not claim to represent the ‘real’ people) but frequently takes a decidedly anti-establishment position in claiming that the ruling elites are incompetent or not interested in dealing with pressing problems, especially from the entrepreneurs’ perspective. Hence, it somewhat resembles certain technocratic populist parties in Eastern Europe (Guasti & Buštíková, 2020). Their soft Euroscepticism also manifested in a similar genre, namely in their criticism toward overregulation, deepening integration (which can harm the interests of nation-states) and the decline in global competitiveness of the common market. In their platform titled “We protect liberty”, the Right-wingers claimed to be the ‘antidote to socialism’ proliferating in Europe (Parempoolsed, 2024). Similarly to EKRE, the party also took a critical stance toward the current EU-level environmental and immigration policy. However, it proposed different solutions, for example, emphasizing the need to attract international talent (but also keeping refugees in screening camps outside of EU borders) or supporting market-based solutions to the climate crisis. Nevertheless, as technocratic populists do more generally, The Right-wingers also emphasized its candidates’ apolitical, expert background, featuring renowned Estonian defence policy experts and entrepreneurs (among others).

Another newly established party, KOOS (Together), ran on a left-wing conservative platform, which also includes a notable pro-Russian note, especially given that the party’s chairman and only candidate in the 2024 EP elections, Aivo Peterson, is currently on trial for treason due to supporting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. In the 2024 EP election, the party’s platform called for neutral foreign policy, strengthening international cooperation (but not mentioning with whom), dropping sanctions which they see as harmful to both the sanctioned and the sanctioning countries’ economies), but also protecting traditional family values and fostering multiculturalism. While the party did not campaign from an explicitly Eurosceptic position, the complete avoidance of even mentioning the EU in their manifesto and proposing a sovereigntist, alternative foreign policy program to Euro-Atlantic integration evidently indicates opposition to EU integration. The party’s rhetoric is notably inclusionary, as the party positions itself as the protector of the interests of ‘all Estonia’s inhabitants’, but also sets itself in a notably anti-establishment position, emphasizing that Aivo Peterson, who was in custody during the election campaign ‘demonstrates his will in practice, which does not bend under the pressure of the state.’

The right-wing conservative Isamaa (EPP group) did not run on a Eurosceptic platform per se, although it also criticized the overregulation on the EU level in passing and cited uncontrolled migration and radical Islamism as threats to the foundations of European values alongside authoritarianism and terrorism (Isamaa 2024). However, as the leading opposition party in the national parliament (according to party ratings at the time of the EP election), it took an anti-establishment stance and attempted to frame the election as a vote of confidence against the national-level ruling coalition government. It borrowed one of its election slogans, ‘Enough of false politics and deceiving people’ from an anti-establishment popular movement of 2012 (although at the time, Isamaa’s predecessor, IRL, was in government and subject to public protests). Hence, it cannot be described as a populist party par excellence, but it still utilized some of its stylistic features.

The other moderate left-wing and right-wing liberal parties (namely, the Reform Party, the Social Democrats, the Centre Party and Estonia 200) did not refer to similar Eurosceptic arguments nor emphasized policy positions that could be considered populist. Even the left-wing Centre Party, considered populist in the past (Jakobson et al., 2012), ran on a notably pro-EU integration platform and did not attempt to gain attention with populist topics. However, virtually all parties utilized populism as a performative style in their campaign tactics. According to Moffitt (2016: 8), one core aspect of populism is ‘emphasising crisis, breakdown or threat’. As a result, populists ‘perform crisis’ by ‘spectacularising failure’ and amplifying the looming threats to the level of crisis (Ibid.: 121–122). In addition to Isamaa and the Right-wingers, who campaigned under slogans like ‘Do not let yourself be deceived by those who gave baseless promises the last time’ or ‘A vote to the Social Democrats and [Marina] Kaljurand is support for the government of [Kaja] Kallas. Don’t let yourself be deceived again. Vote for Isamaa!’, the moderate and liberal parties also utilized crisis performance. For instance, candidates of the Reform Party and Social Democrats warned the voters of the ‘radicals’ who would ‘destroy Europe’s unity’ (Social Democrats) or emphasized the fragility or complexity of the security situation in which the EP elections took place (Reform Party).

The demand side of populism

With the notable exception of Indrek Tarand, who scored a mandate as an individual candidate in both 2009 and 2014, populist candidates tend not to fare very well in Estonian EP elections. While Euroscepticism is not prevalent in Estonia – 77–78% of the population supports EU membership (Eurobarometer, 2024; State Chancellery, 2024) – it thrives in certain societal segments, being associated with lower trust in government and lower levels of economic welfare. Euroscepticism is particularly concentrated in the country’s northeast, where the population is predominantly Russian-speaking (State Chancellery, 2024).

The EP 2024 results reflected the same trend, with five out of seven Estonian MEPs maintaining their mandate after the election. EKRE, which became the first Eurosceptic party in Estonia to win a mandate in EP elections in 2019, also maintained its seat, although after the elections, when an internal schism developed in the party prior to party chairman elections, their MEP Jaak Madison left the party and joined the ECR group.

Foreign, defence and security policy took central stage both in the campaigns and in public opinion, with 55% of Estonians seeing the war in Ukraine as the most important issue facing the EU at the moment, while only 15% viewed immigration as such (Eurobarometer, 2024). While economic insecurities are viewed as of the highest importance on the national level, these were not seen as relevant in EU-level politics (ibid).

While the media coverage of the campaign was relatively low-key in general (campaigning mainly took place on social media and other paid advertisements), it also did not amplify the populist messaging of the parties. Instead, the media resorted more to the moderator role, organizing numerous debates and potentially only sensationalizing the personal branding campaign of former prime minister Jüri Ratas (who ran under the Isamaa banner) on various social media channels.

The biggest winner in these elections was Isamaa, who gained a seat for Jüri Ratas (who scored in total the third-best individual result). At the same time, the Reform Party lost a seat of its incumbent MEP Andrus Ansip (also a former prime minister), who did not run in the election due to differences in opinion with the incumbent prime minister, Kaja Kallas. Overall, while the parties identified here as featuring some elements of Euroscepticism gained somewhat in their share of the popular vote, the pro-integration parties still hold the majority of seats (See Table 1).

As there are no exit polls conducted in Estonia, it is not possible to interpret the results in terms of socio-demographic or attitudinal profiles of the voters. However, what is evident from available data is that Isamaa performed best in almost all counties except for the largest cities, Tallinn and Tartu and the predominantly Russian-speaking Ida-Viru County in the northeast. Isamaa’s success has been popularly interpreted both as a result of its antigovernment campaign as well as the success of Jüri Ratas’ personal campaign. However, pre-election survey data suggests that mistrust in the Estonian government was a poor predictor of support for Isamaa and instead predicted support for KOOS and EKRE (Keerma, 2024). Furthermore, Isamaa was perceived as having ownership in defence and foreign policy by lower educated voters, while more highly educated voters perceived the Reform Party as the issue owner (ibid).

EKRE also scored more votes than in 2019 in almost all counties but lost support among external voters and in the rural county of Jõgeva. Their support was largely predicted by anti-immigrant attitudes and mistrust in government (Keerma 2024). Meanwhile, the Right-wingers party scored its best results in larger towns and most likely not among populist voters, but rather more entrepreneurially minded voters who would favour a more minimal state.

Finally, KOOS performed best in regions with the highest share of Russian-speaking voters, particularly in the Ida-Viru County, where more voters are disposed to its sovereigntist foreign policy and pro-Russia messaging. In Ida-Viru County, KOOS scored 19.6% of the vote and in the capital city, Tallinn, 3.9%. Both regions feature a sizeable Russian-speaking population. The Centre Party experienced losses in all other regions except for Tallinn and Ida-Viru County, where it presumably improved its result with the Russian-speaking voters.

Also, electoral participation rose slightly. While in 2019, 332,859 voters cast a ballot, in 2024, 367,975 (37.6% of the electorate) turned out. Electoral turnout in EP elections tends to be higher in the liberal-leaning larger cities of Tallinn (the capital) and Tartu (a university town) and even lower in the predominantly Russian-speaking Ida-Viru County and the rural regions. In 2024, electoral turnout rose in all electoral districts, most notably in liberal-leaning Tartu and Tallinn.

Discussion and perspectives

As a rule, populism does not play a notable role in Estonian EP elections. Almost all parties use certain features of populist performance. However, the ideological core issues of populism, such as Euroscepticism, sovereigntism or overruling minority rights (on the populist right), do not find overwhelming support. This rule also applied in 2024, when voters still tended to prefer candidates who could be described as belonging to the political or intellectual elites and running on moderate and non-populist platforms. As a result, six out of the seven Estonian MEPs will return to Brussels and Strasbourg. Six out of seven MEPs elected in 2024 belong to the three moderate EP groups (EPP, SD and Renew) and one MEP, Jaak Madison – formerly a member of the ID group and the EKRE party in Estonia – will be joining the ECR group as an independent candidate when the parliament reconvenes. Hence, it is relatively unlikely that Estonian MEPs will engage in markedly populist politics in the EP. While the election campaign of Isamaa (EPP) involved some hints of soft Euroscepticism and anti-immigrant positions, neither of their elected MEPs has a notable track record of supporting such a policy line. Jaak Madison, who, as an ECR group member, was likely to continue his earlier anti-immigration and sovereigntist policy line, surprisingly joined the Estonian Centre Party on 22 August 2024, which may signal either a moderation of his stances or a crystallization of the soft Eurosceptic position of the Centre Party, whose members became represented both in the Renew and ECR groups.

With Madison leaving EKRE, the link between EKRE and the populist radical-right parties in the EP is likely weakened. However, with a new conservative nationalist party – the Estonian Nationalists and Conservatives – being established, it is possible that in future EP elections, Estonia will witness both candidates of the ECR as well as the PfE competing for a seat. Furthermore, the 2024 election demonstrated that there are at least two Eurosceptic pockets in the Estonian electorate – one on the radical right appealing primarily to national– conservative voters (with anti-immigrant attitudes), and another among Russian-speaking voters who favour sovereigntist, antigovernment and pro-Russia messaging, which collides with the dominant policy line of both the Estonian government and the EU. The election results in Ida-Viru County demonstrate particularly well the importance of moderate alternatives (in this case, the Centre Party) but also draw attention to the potentially harmful cocktail of low economic welfare, societal marginalization and receptiveness to Russia’s strategic narratives that sits well with populist sovereigntism.

 

(*) Mari-Liis Jakobson is Associate Professor of Political Sociology at Tallinn University, Estonia. Her research interests centre around populism, politics of migration and transnationalism. She is currently the PI for the project ‘Breaking Into the Mainstream While Remaining Radical: Sidestreaming Strategies of the Populist Radical Right’ funded by the Estonian Research Council, which investigates how populist radical-right parties reach out to atypical supporter groups. Her most recent publications include articles on transnational populism in European Political Science, Contemporary Politics, Journal of Political Ideologies and Comparative Migration Studies, and an edited volume, Anxieties of Migration and Integration in Turbulent Times with Springer (2023). E-mail: mari-liis.jakobson@tlu.ee

 

References

Auers, D. (2018). Populism and political party institutionalisation in the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 11, 341–355.

Ehin, P., & Solvak, M. (2012). Party voters gone astray: Explaining independent candidate success in the 2009 European elections in Estonia. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties, 22(3), 269–291.

Ehin, P., Saarts, T., & Jakobson, M. L. (2020). Estonia. The European Parliament Election of 2019 in East-Central Europe: Second-Order Euroscepticism, 83.

EKRE (2024) Eesti Eest Euroopas! EKRE programm 2024. aasta Euroopa Liidu Parlamendi valimisteks [For Estonia in Europe! EKRE’s program for the 2024 European Union Parliament elections] https://www.ekre.ee/eesti-eest-euroopas-ekre-programm-euroopa-liidu-parlamendi-valimisteks-2024/

Eurobarometer (2024). EP Spring 2024 Survey: Use your vote – countdown to the European Election. https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3272

State Chancellery (2024). Avaliku arvamuse seireuuring. 18. seire, 21.-25. märts 2024 [Public opinion monitoring. 18. round, 21.-25. March 2024] https://www.riigikantselei.ee/sites/default/files/documents/2024-04/Avaliku%20arvamuse%20seireuuring%20%2821.%20-%2025.%20m%C3%A4rts%202024%29.pdf

Guasti, P., & Buštíková, L. (2020). A marriage of convenience: Responsive populists and responsible experts. Politics and Governance, 8(4), 468–472.

Isamaa (2024). Isamaa’s program for the European Parliament elections in 2024 https://isamaa.ee/ep24-program-eng/

Jakobson, M. L., Balcere, I., Loone, O., Nurk, A., Saarts, T., & Zakeviciute, R. (2012). Populism in the Baltic States. Tallinn University.

Kasekamp, A., Madisson, M. L., & Wierenga, L. (2019). Discursive opportunities for the Estonian populist radical right in a digital society. Problems of Post-Communism, 66(1), 47–58.

Keerma, K. (2024). EP valimised on välispoliitika küsimus [EP elections are a question of foreign policy] https://salk.ee/artiklid/epvalimised/

KOOS (2024). Hääl rahu eest Euroopa Parlamenti [A Vote for Peace in the European Parliament]. https://www.eekoos.ee/articles.php?n=98

Moffitt, B. (2016). The global rise of populism: Performance, political style and representation. Stanford University Press.

Mudde, C., & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

Parempoolsed (2024). Parempoolsete väärtusprogramm “Kaitseme vabadust!” [The value program of The Right “We protect liberty!”] https://parempoolsed.ee/vabadust/programm/

Petsinis, V. (2019). Identity politics and right-wing populism in Estonia: The case of EKRE. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 25(2), 211–230.

Saarts, T., Jakobson, M. L., & Kalev, L. (2021). When a right-wing populist party inherits a mass party organisation: The case of EKRE. Politics and Governance, 9(4), 354–364.

Taggart, P., & Szczerbiak, A. (2001). Parties, positions and Europe: Euroscepticism in the EU candidate states of Central and Eastern Europe (pp. 5–6). Brighton: Sussex European Institute.

 

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Protesters advocating for freedom of the press in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on July 15, 2020. Photo: Igor Kupljenik.

Digital Strategies of Political Parties in the 2024 European Elections: The Case of Slovenia

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Please cite as:

Oblak Črnič, Tanja & Koren Ošljak, Katja. (2024). “Digital Strategies of Political Parties in the 2024 European Elections: The Case of Slovenia.” In: 2024 EP Elections under the Shadow of Rising Populism. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS. October 22, 2024. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0083

 

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Abstract

This report offers a systematic analysis of Slovenian political parties in online campaigning during the 2024 EP elections. It draws on a dataset of political parties and their online representations, selected from official party websites and dominant social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, in May 2024. The results show that Slovenian parties’ communication during the 2024 EP campaign was quite self-referential, accompanied by images of the candidates, indicating a high degree of personalization of politics. Moreover, the results show the “non-European orientation” of the campaign, as domestic issues dominated the parties’ social media profiles and websites. Furthermore, the content analysis of the parties’ websites revealed five issues where some cross-party differences in attitudes were observed: 1) agreement in party attitudes towards the environment; 2) on Ukraine and Palestine, parties on the right took different positions; 3) the centre-left coalition supported the government’s domestic policy the most; 4) right-wing actors tended to frame migration and minority rights in a restrictive way; actors with a left-wing orientation took a more humanitarian approach; and 5) left-wing actors were most tolerant vis-à-vis gender and reproductive rights. The results, therefore, imply a clear distinction between Slovenian parties of the left and right during the 2024 EP campaign.

 

By Tanja Oblak Črnič* & Katja Koren Ošljak* (University of Ljubljana)

Introduction

Many studies over the last two decades have confirmed how the internet and social media have changed the conditions of political communication (Blumer and Kavanaugh 1999). Some argue that media changes are radically shaping the conditions of political communication (Chadwick, 2023; Kreiss, 2023). Chadwick (2023: 21) argues that a hybrid media system is a more fluid and contested space than previous mass media systems. These shifts are evident during election campaigns, which are characterized by computational politics (Tufekci, 2014).

The data collected during the formal campaign for the 2024 European elections describe the primary digital strategy of Slovenian political parties and a brief comparison of the selected strategies during the EP campaign. The question is, therefore, how candidates and their parties present themselves in these digital presentations, how they address their potential voters, what messages they use to occupy the digital channels they manage, and with what degree of communicative responsibility they engage with citizens.

First, we analysed their landing pages to identify ideological identifiers and several other issues that could indicate the national or European orientation of the parties. We then focused on identifying the main issues included in their campaign as potential indicators of a propensity towards populism and the attitudes of the observed parties towards selected public issues such as climate change, rights of the LGBTQ+ community, human rights of migrants and other minorities, national government policies, violence against women, abortion and reproductive rights, and gender and sexual identity. In addition to these “identity policy orientations”, we also looked at the extent to which each party focused on the wars in Ukraine and Palestine. The main findings are placed in the context of the critical role of social media in so-called data-driven campaigning (Chadwick and Stromer-Galley, 2016).

Research design, methods and sample

The analysis of the online presence of Slovenian political actors has a long history (see Oblak, 2003; Oblak and Željan, 2007; Oblak and Ošljak, 2013; Oblak, 2017). For this report, we have chosen a quantitative approach with mainly descriptive aims regarding the communicative characteristics of the selected political actors within a case study: the 2024 European elections. The data were collected using the content analysis method: an extended set of variables was constructed, in which we revised the instrument used in the Digital Citizenship project (see Oblak, 2016). The data, which was collected on the websites of political parties and social media profiles, allowed for the relatively easy identification of several pieces of information. The data collection was part of the assignments within the undergraduate course on Politics and Digital Culture at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences.

We have analysed the websites of the six Slovenian parties that officially entered the 2024 European elections: three of them – Gibanje svoboda (GS), Levica (LP), and Socialni demokrati (SD) – belong to the ruling coalition government, while Nova slovenija (NS) and Slovenska demokratska stranka (SDS) were political parties in opposition. Thus, the majority of analysed parties were campaigning as Slovenian parliamentary parties. In addition, we analysed the online presence of Vesna–zelena stranka (green party), which competed as a nonparliamentary party. Regarding their associations with political groups in the European Parliament, 38% belong to the European People’s Party (EPP), 15% to the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), another 15% to the liberal Renew Europe and 15% to the Left.

Table 1: Results of the 2024 EP elections in Slovenia

National political parties Vote share (%)
[Right] SDS–Slovenska demokratska stranka 30.59
[Centre] Svoboda!–Gibanje svoboda (GS) 22.11
[Centre] Vesna–Vesna–zelena stranka (green party) 10.53
[Left] SD–Socialni demokrati 7.76
[Right] N.Si–Nova slovenija – Krščanski demokrati (NS) 7.68
SLS–Slovenska ljudska stranka 7.21
[Left] Levica–Stranka levica (LP) 4.81
Resni.ca–Državljansko gibanje Resni.ca 3.97
DeSUS–DD–Coalition DeSUS–DD (Demokratična stranka upokojencev Slovenije, Dobra država) 2.22
ZS–Zeleni slovenije 1.61
Druge stranke–Druge stranke 1.52
Total 100
Source: European Parliament (2024).

Political actors’ online presence during the EP election campaign

According to preliminary data, our analysis of the online presence of parliamentary parties and selected nonparliamentary candidates for the European elections (e.g., Vesna) shows that all actors were present on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, while some of them also promoted themselves on X/Twitter and TikTok (see figure 1). However, their activity and visibility on these networks varied considerably. For example, on average, the number of followers or subscribers to the most present social media was highest on X, followed by Facebook and TikTok (see figure 2).

However, the online political landscape during the 2024 EP election campaign was more diverse in terms of the forms of participation on social media and the thematic focuses they gave their attention to. The data shows (see figure 3) that while direct invitations to vote dominated, immediately afterwards, the focus shifted to candidate presentations and information about their visits “on the ground”. This trend is a long-standing one in conventional digital campaigns, and it would be hard to call the 2024 campaign an outlier. It is also evident that Slovenian political parties were not very well placed in the European context, nor did they provide information on which EP group they belong to and with whom they are aligned.

Such “self-referential coverage”, regularly accompanied by photos and videos of the candidates, is another familiar step towards a strong personalization of politics, which is at the same time distinctly local and pragmatic: rather than a concrete commitment to something, the focus is mainly on a specific political figure and his or her activities. As a result, we looked at what kind of symbols are most present in social media profiles, especially to see if there is a common logic in such election campaigns (see figure 4).

The main topics and political parties’ attitudes towards political issues

The data suggest that the “non-European orientation” of the campaign was at least partly reflected in attitudes to pressing issues: the parties’ social media profiles and websites were dominated by domestic issues, followed by ecology and climate change; there was also a strong presence of referendum issues and issues related to women’s reproductive rights (see figure 5).

In order to explore the attitudes of Slovenian political parties in their campaigns for the 2024 EP elections, the websites of the six political parties were also monitored. We were interested in whether and how they positioned themselves on the nine selected issues, which we used as indicators of potential biases. We also observed and coded cases where a particular issue was not present on the website.

In the analysis, the six campaigning parties were paired into three general categories of the political spectrum: 1) the right (Nova Slovenija and Slovenska demokratska stranka), 2) the centre (Gibanje Svoboda and Vesna–zelena stranka) and 3) the left (Levica and Socialni demokrati). In cases where the attitudes of two parties from the same part of the political spectrum were coded in different categories, both categories were marked (see table 2).

Table 2: Attitudes of Slovenian political parties towards the political issues

1) Ecology. When the topic of ecology or climate change appears on the website, how is it addressed?
Parties Denial Neutral Awareness Not present
Right +   +   
Centre     +   
Left     +   
2) Ukraine. When the topic of the war in Ukraine comes up on the website, how is it handled?
Parties Pro-Russia Neutral Pro-Ukraine Not present
Right     + +
Centre     + +
Left     + +
3) Palestine. When the topic of Palestine appears on the website, how is it addressed?
Parties War, genocide Neutral Israeli defence Not present
Right     +   
Centre +      + 
Left +       
4) Government. When the government of the Republic of Slovenia topic appears on the website, how is it treated?
Parties Critically Neutral Supportively Not present
Right +       
Centre     +  + 
Left     +   
5) Human rights. When the topic of human rights (i.e., minorities or migrants) is raised on the website, how is it addressed?
Parties Restrictive Neutral Supportive Not present
Right +       
Centre     +   
Left     +  + 
6) Abortion. When the topic of abortion rights or reproductive rights is raised on the website, how is it addressed?
Parties Against Neutral Pro Not present
Right +       
Centre     +   
Left     +   
7) Violence against women. When the topic of violence against women appears on the website, how is it addressed?
Parties Not a problem Neutral As a problem Not present
Right     +  + 
Centre     +  + 
Left     +   
8) LGBTIQ+. When the topic of the LGBTIQ+ community appears on the website, how is it addressed?
Parties Restrictive Neutral Supportive Not present
Right +     +
Centre     +   
Left     +   
9) Gender equality. When the topic of gender equality or gender identities is raised on the website, how is it addressed?
Parties Restrictive Neutral Supportive Not present
Right +       
Centre       + 
Left     +   
Source: Compiled by the authors based on original data collected as part of Project P5-0136 (https://www.fdv.uni-lj.si/en/research/institute-of-social-science/national-research-projects/P7516)

What can such results tell us about the parties’ attitudes to a selected set of public and political issues?

  1. Environmental issues: According to the results, political actors seemed to be most united in their attitudes towards environmental crises or ecological issues. However, one of the actors from the right differed significantly in this respect, expressing the irrelevance of environmental problems.
  2. War and conflict: Regarding the war in Ukraine, there is no dilemma that Slovenian political actors expressed pro-Ukrainian positions during the election campaign, or in this case, Russia was seen as the war aggressor. However, it is worth noting that the war in Ukraine was not an issue on 50% of the parties’ websites during the same period. Although Palestine is also an armed conflict, the results suggest a different picture: right-wing parties raised the issue of Israel’s right to self-defence. Left-wing parties, on the other hand, reported more on the war and genocide against the Palestinians.
  3. Domestic politics: Given the centre-left government coalition, the attitude of the political parties towards the government’s work is not surprising: the right-wing actors were critical, while the left and centre were supportive. The only exception was the Green Party Vesna, which is not part of the current coalition and did not comment on the government’s work on its website during this election campaign.
  4. Human rights and minorities: Human rights, especially in relation to minorities and migrants, were also a divisive issue for political parties during the European election campaign in Slovenia. Right-wing actors framed the issue of migration and minority rights in more restrictive terms, while centre-left and left-wing parties adopted a more humanitarian approach in their reports.
  5. Gender and reproductive rights: The issue of gender and women’s reproductive rights draws an even sharper line between the anti-abortion right and the rest: the political centre and the left defend women’s right to decide about their bodies. A different picture emerges in the case of violence against women, which is addressed as a problem by actors across the political spectrum: here, one centre-right and one right-wing actor did not address the issue on their websites during the 2024 election campaign. However, positions on gender justice and (non-binary) gender identities shifted this logic again: The websites of the right-wing political actors were similarly restrictive, while the left explicitly supported gender equality; the political parties of the centre seemed to avoid such issues on their websites during the EU election campaign.

Attitudes of young citizens towards the personalization of politics during the EP campaign

Based on the preliminary results of our datasets on the online presence of Slovenian political parties in the run-up to the 2024 European elections, we found a marked personalization of the campaign, where candidates’ personal profiles can have a significantly higher reach than parties’ profiles. We also found that parties often resort to populism, either based on the othering of minorities and foreigners and the division between ‘us and them’ or on the glorification of tolerance and inclusive discourse.

The analysis also shows a strong tendency for parties to use a more personalized campaign, where candidates’ personal profiles can have a much wider reach than party profiles. Furthermore, reflecting on the analyses from the perspective of the students who collected the data as part of the course, their reflections were quite common: they strongly agreed that political parties do not adequately address them in the campaign. For example, they noted that the parties mainly appealed to young people to participate in the elections, while at the same time, there were very few young people on the lists of candidates, who were also mostly placed at the back of the queue.

Students also criticized the patronage of political parties that do not communicate transparently during election campaigns. They added that their publications were not informative, their positions were not sufficiently argued, etc. Among the issues that were very important to young people but not well covered by the parties, students highlighted the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Palestine, human rights, migration and climate change.

 

(*) Tanja Oblak Črnič is professor of Communication Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana and a member of the research program Political Research (J5-036). Contact: tanja.oblak@fdv.uni-lj.si. 

(**) Katja Koren Ošljak is an assistant and researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. She is also finalizing her PhD in the reconceptualization of media education in the context of mediatized childhood. Contact: katja.osljak@fdv.uni-lj.si.

 

References

Blumler, J. G., & Kavanagh, D. (1999). The third age of political communication: Influences and features. Political Communication 16(3): 209–230, https://doi.org/10.1080/
105846099198596

Chadwick, A. (2013) The hybrid media system: Politics and power, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Chadwick, A. and Stromer-Galley, J. (2016) Digital media, power, and democracy in parties and election campaigns: Party decline or party renewal? International Journal of Press/Politics 21(3), pp. 283–294. DOI: 10.1177/1940161216646731

European Parliament (2024), Slovenia – Official results. Accessed 8 October 2024 from https://results.elections.europa.eu/sl/nacionalni-rezultati/slovenija/2024-2029/

Oblak Črnič, T. (2002) Dialogue and representation: Communication in the electronic public sphere. Javnost, 9(2): 7–22

Oblak Črnič, T. (2003) Boundaries of interactive public engagement: political institutions and citizens in new political platforms. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 8(3): 1–21. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue3/oblak.html

Oblak Črnič, T. (2017). Neglected or just misunderstood?: The perception of youth and digital citizenship among Slovenian political parties. Teorija in praksa: revija za družbena vprašanja 54: 96–111

Oblak Črnič, T., & Koren Ošljak, K. (2013). Politically un-interactive web: Transformations of online politics in Slovenia. International Journal of Electronic Governance 6(1): 37–52.

Oblak Črnič, T., & Željan, K. (2007) Slovenian online campaigning during the 2004 European parliament election: Struggling between self-promotion and mobilisation. In: Kluver, R., Jankowski, N., Foot, K., and Schneider, S.M. (eds.), The Internet and national elections: A comparative study of web campaigning (pp. 60–76). London and New York: Routledge. 

Tufekci, Z. (2014). Engineering the public: Big data, surveillance and computational politics. First Monday 9(7), https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v19i7.4901

 

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Denmark’s Populism at the Crossroads: Insights into the 2024 European Parliament Election Results

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Please cite as:
Meret, Susi. (2024). “Denmark’s Populism at the Crossroads: Insights into the 2024 European Parliament Election Results.” In: 2024 EP Elections under the Shadow of Rising Populism. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS. October 22, 2024. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0067

 

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Abstract

The populist moment that defined Danish politics from 2001 to 2019 has recently transitioned into what can be described as mainstream populism. Two concurrent developments drive this shift: first, the Social Democrats’ strategy to reclaim (white) working-class support by adopting populist right-wing stances on immigration and integration, and second, the existential crisis confronting the Liberals (Venstre, V) and the Conservative party (Det Konservative Folkeparti, KF), whose electoral support reached historic lows. The 2024 European Parliament elections differed significantly from those of 2019, marked by the emergence of new political entities and pressing global issues such as the Russia–Ukraine and Israel–Hamas conflicts, along with the existential threat of climate change and the lingering effects of the post-pandemic time. Traditional populists are exploiting these issues to regain support, advocating for greater national sovereignty and cohesion in the face of perceived global threats. This paper examines the evolving dynamics of Danish politics, focusing on how the intersection of domestic and international changes is reshaping EU-related positions and the role of populism.           

Keywords: populism, European Parliament elections, Danish People’s Party, Denmark Democrats, Socialist People’s Party

 

By Susi Meret*(Department of Politics and Society, Aalborg University, Denmark)

Background

Electoral campaigning for the European Parliament in Denmark is usually characterized by a slow start, with an agenda focusing more on national issues than European ones. Moreover, voter turnout for European elections is notably lower than for parliamentary elections. Historically, Danish turnout has ranged between 50–60%, which is relatively low for a country renowned for its high political participation and robust civic engagement.

The lower interest in European elections is influenced by different factors, including the limited understanding of the European Parliament’s composition and EU decision-making processes, various degrees of EU scepticism, the relatively short campaign period and the perception that these elections are less impactful on people’s daily lives, leading to reduced participation. At the 6 June 2024 European Parliament election, 58% of the electorate voted, an 8 percentage-point decrease from the 66% turnout registered in 2019.

The higher participation at the previous European Parliament election was influenced by different factors. Chief among these was the heightened mobilization around climate issues, which significantly boosted the voting turnout among younger voters, who are generally less likely to cast their vote, particularly in European elections. The 2019 national parliament election, held just ten days later, contributed to increasing the overall political interest and engagement, influencing the result of an election generally considered to be second order. Participation in the 2024 election was lower than in 2019; nonetheless, it registered the third-highest turnout recorded so far at a European election. The result outdid most of the predictions by polling institutes and experts, and it could be interpreted as a sign that Danish voters are recognizing the importance of European elections for European and international matters. The impact of global health challenges post-COVID-19 and the uncertainties stemming from the Russia–Ukraine conflict and Israel–Hamas tensions have kept the interest high in Denmark’s role within the EU, motivating voters to participate, albeit the elections lacked high-profile candidates and are still viewed as less impactful and crucial than national ones.

The shifting landscape of populism in Denmark

Over the past five years, Danish politics, especially on the radical right wing, have become increasingly fragmented and prone to radicalization. This trend is partly driven by the mainstreaming of anti-immigration and nativist positions, which were once primarily supported by the populist parties on the radical right (Meret, 2010). These views have now permeated the mainstream right-wing and also the centre-left political discourse and programs (see e.g., Meret, 2021: Rathgeb & Wolkenstein, 2022). The Danish People’s Party (DF) is the most renowned among the radical right-wing populist parties in Denmark and within the Nordic context. The DF has existed since 1995 and for about two decades, it has served as a textbook example of a successful and influential radical right-wing populist party in Western Europe (Meret & Siim, 2013). Its sustained electoral growth and political influence since the turn of the century seemed to provide the Western European radical and populist right-wing parties with the successful case and political ‘winning formula’ (Kitschelt, 1997) merging nativism with welfare chauvinist positions and a good portion of “heartland” (Taggart, 2000) and nostalgia (Elgenius & Rydgren, 2022; Meret, 2018).

In recent years the DF has lost significant electoral support (Meret, 2021; Etzerodt & Kongshøj, 2022; Meret forthcoming). The DF has since 2019 been in opposition under the governments led by the Social Democrat prime minister, Mette Frederiksen. Since its peak in 2014, when the DF came first in the European Parliament elections and its candidate Morten Messerschmidt received the highest number of personal votes ever recorded in Denmark, the party has experienced a striking decline. At the 2019 European Parliament and national elections, the DF support was slashed by half compared to 2014 and 2015. The endeavours of the party leadership to regain terrain and electoral support remained unsuccessful. This failure signalled an end to the DF’s golden epoch, triggering deep-rooted interparty disagreement and conflict among the ranks and files and igniting personal conflicts about who should follow Kristian Thulesen Dahl into the party leadership. The choice of hardliner and former MEP Morten Messerschmidt in January 2022 came after intense lobbying for him by party founder Pia Kjærsgaard, who exerted concerted pressure on Thulesen Dahl to step down. At the time of the DF leadership shift, Morten Messerschmidt was still under investigation for fraud in the so-called ‘MELD and FELD’ case concerning the misuse of EU funds. In August 2021 he had been sentenced to prison, but the verdict was later declared a mistrial, following complaints about the judge’s ability to rule in the case. In December 2022, Messerschmidt was then acquitted of all charges. Yet all this took place while the DF was in deep crisis and after his appointment, several high-profile DF members of parliament exited the party to join a new party, the Denmark Democrats (Danmarksdemokraterne, DD), led by former Liberal MP Inger Støjberg, who had been strongly encouraged to take over the DF leadership but declined.

The Danish People’s Party has only one MEP, Anders Vistisen, who was re-elected for the 2024–2029 period. The party was one of the cofounders of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European Parliament in 2019. Vistisen also participated in the rally organized by Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s Lega in Milan in 2019, which launched a new radical right-wing coalition within the European Parliament. From 2015 to 2019, the DF was affiliated with the European Conservatives and Reformists, a group it had previously sought to join but was turned down (primarily due to the determination of Britain’s Tories). Before that, the DF was part of the Eurosceptic European Freedom and Democracy group (2009–2014) alongside the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and Lega Nord.

Today, the DF advocates for a complete halt to asylum and migration, particularly from the Middle East and Africa, seeking also to put ‘an end to all special demands by Muslims’. Besides making use of the slogan ‘Danish First!’, the party wants Denmark to withdraw from the Schengen Agreement (and eventually from the EU), reinstate permanent and effective border control, and put a stop to further EU enlargement, particularly in the case of countries with large Muslim population, such as Turkey, Albania and North Macedonia. The party claims the EU needs to be strongly downsized to safeguard national sovereignty. This stance would entail keeping all Danish opt-outs and eventually adding a new one concerning the welfare state if Denmark continues to be part of the EU. On gender equality issues, the party opposes what it calls ‘gender ideology’ and ‘woke-ness’, supporting the heterosexual family as the cornerstone of Danish society and reproduction (Meret & Siim, 2013). However, the party does acknowledge the rights of homosexual individuals, as long as these rights do not include further demands, such as the right for homosexual couples to be married in the Church. Also, the party does not oppose abortion rights, although it disagrees with the recent and widely supported proposal to increase the period a woman can legally get an abortion from 12 weeks of pregnancy to 18. In several respects, the DF is among the most progressive on such issues among the parties that belong to the brand new Patriots for Europe (PfE) group and, before that, the ID group in the EP (like the DF, many from the latter have now joined the former).

The formation of the DD brought another notable right-wing populist party into Danish politics. Established in 2022 by former Liberal party and MP Inger Støjberg, who was convicted in 2021 for illegally separating underage asylum-seeker couples – the party is firmly based on the profile and populist charisma of the leader, who promises further hardline stances. DD, which now includes several former high-profile members of the DF, compete directly with the latter for support on the radical and nativist right, particularly in rural areas where voters feel neglected and left behind.

The DD shares several political issues with the DF, contending, for instance, that all spontaneous asylum seekers coming to Europe should be transferred to a non-Schengen third country, even if this means reviewing the content of the existing international conventions. Also, the party asks for ‘less EU’ and more national sovereignty and is against any further enlargement and political integration within the EU. Yet the party does not ask for Denmark’s exit from the EU. Both the DF and the DD want to scale down EU environmental policies, advocating that Denmark has already contributed sufficiently to carbon reduction efforts and should not pursue further aggressive climate actions that could adversely impact the national interests and economy. These positions reflect broader concerns among radical right and nativist groups in Denmark, besides issues concerning EU integration, asylum and migration policies, including the plans for further enlargement.

Another topic is the economic and military aid to Ukraine. In contrast with some of their European allies, who may hold pro-Russian views, the DF and the DD are declaredly pro-Ukraine and also pro-Israel and do not question the military support to the Ukrainian government. However, the situation gets less limpid when it comes to justifying the cohabitation with parties that are questioning the support given to Ukraine or even more overtly against it, which was the case with the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) before the party was expelled from the ID group (but currently, it could also be argued in the case of Hungary’s Fidesz). When asked about how the party copes with this, Vistisen’s standard reply is that ‘foreign policy should be defined and conducted nationally. In every group in the European Parliament, there is someone who is too close to Putin and Russia and does not provide enough support for Ukraine’ (Thomsen, 2024), but this is also a subject that should be dealt with nationally and is therefore not a matter of concern for the European Parliament groups.

More generally these positions suggest the preparedness of the DF today to support more radical stances, indicating the overall increase of competition on the Danish far right, which is also an effect of the populist mainstreaming of positions in relation to migration, asylum and integration within the country (see Rytter et al., 2023). Recently, for instance, plans to transfer asylum seekers to third countries, effectively outsourcing their reception and management overseas, have gained widespread political support from both the centre-right and left-wing. This, despite the clear humanitarian, legal and political concerns that have emerged in relation to the accomplishment of such plans, as shown by the attempts made in other countries (see Meret, 2024).

The 2024 European Parliament campaign

The European Parliament party campaign focused primarily on national and European security issues, emphasizing the need to increase investments in the armed forces and enhance cross-border cooperation on cybercrime and military security. These concerns were fuelled by national politics (the Danish government is to significantly increase the defence expenditures in the years 2024–2028) and by international events that also generated alarm among the public. Notably, the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosion in the Baltic Sea near Bornholm in September 2022 (which Danish authorities attributed to sabotage) heightened security discussions and fears. Additionally, a Nordic investigative documentary titled Shadow War revealed how Russia is conducting hybrid warfare in the Nordic countries using spies, troll farms and advanced underwater programs, posing serious threats to energy supplies and other critical infrastructure in the northern region of the country. The Hamas terror attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the subsequent escalation of the conflict in the Middle East further contributed to the general perception of a situation of international instability and uncertainty. Unsurprisingly, the most frequent words used during the EP campaign were ‘global transformations’, ‘security’, ‘insecurity’, and ‘safety.’

Another very prominent topic on the political agenda was climate change and the EU’s decarbonization policies. This is one of voters’ priority issues, and several political parties have highlighted these issues to emphasize their positions. The Socialist People’s Party (Socialistisk Folkeparti, SF) spearheaded the call to accelerate decarbonization efforts and to implement policies that can achieve concrete results quickly, given the urgency of the climate crisis. In recent years, the SF has shifted towards more socially liberal positions on redistribution, migration and asylum policies. The party is now much less critical of the government’s stern stance on these issues, and the years the party supported the Social Democrats in government (2019–2022) influenced these choices.

The SF has significantly enhanced its green profile, aligning with the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament. This strategy has attracted voters who prioritize environmental issues and are less convinced by other parties’ agendas. While most parties agree on the main climate objectives, the competition has in fact been limited. Danish politics lacks a strong Green Party, especially since the party Alternative has lost substantial electoral support and has also failed to get representation in the European Parliament. According to polls, nearly 70% of left-wing voters consider climate change one of the most important questions politicians must address. In contrast, among supporters of one of the governing parties, only 46% cited climate change as a priority (see Flinch 2024). The Social Democrats, burdened by the declining popularity of the broad government coalition, lost ground. The party struggles to stand out on major issues like climate change since it also collaborates closely with parties that downplay the importance (and speed) of decarbonization policies.

The political divide on climate change in this European Parliament election was primarily centred on reducing agricultural emissions by taxing CO2 production. The left, including the SF and the Unity List (Enhedslisten, EL), along with the Social Liberals (Det Radikale Venstre, RV), advocated for more decisive and impactful measures. In contrast, the populist right (the DF and the DD) opposed environmental regulations, which they believed harmed the competitiveness of Danish agricultural products in the European market. They argue that Denmark is a small country that has already made significant efforts to protect the environment, whereas others, more polluting EU member states lag behind.

Compared to the previous election round, EU migration policies were less prominent on the agendas of parties and voters. This is partly because most established parties running for election agreed on a strict immigration policy. When the MEP candidate for the Moderates, Stine Bosse, suggested that Denmark could take in 7,000 refugees to comply with the migration solidarity pact, most mainstream parties on both the left and right rejected the idea. The Moderates eventually withdrew the suggestion, emphasizing that the party does not support relaxing existing rules and standards. Denmark still has an opt-out on Home and Justice, including asylum and migration policies. There are occasional discussions about holding a referendum to convert the opt-out into a case-by-case opt-in or abolish it altogether. This was considered in 2015 but was rejected by 53% of voters, closing the book on the issue. In contrast, the early summer 2022 referendum to put an end to the Danish defence opt-out saw over 66% voting in favour, highlighting greater concerns among the electorate over international security and defence issues, particularly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the same year. This referendum marked the largest difference between yes and no votes in any Danish EU opt-out referendum to date. 

Despite this, there remains EU scepticism among swaths of the Danish electorate concerning immigration and asylum, as well as debates about the minimum wage and the EU neighbourhood policy with potential future EU enlargement. These issues are still capitalized on politically by the populist right to gain electoral support.

Populist party performance in the 2024 Danish European election

The biggest surprise at this 2024 European Parliament election was undoubtedly the result for the SF, which secured 17.4% of the vote, making it the biggest party in this election round. The Social Democrats garnered only 15.6%, a drop of almost 6% compared to 2019. The poor electoral outcome prompted the Social Democrats to acknowledge the party’s significant (and indeed historical) losses. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen recognized this as ‘a clear signal’ from the party electorate, adding to these words that ‘from a Social Democratic perspective, it was definitely not good enough’ (Tofte, 2024). The broad government coalition with the Liberals and the Moderates does not convince part of the Social Democratic traditional electorate, who sought elsewhere. Most of them cast their vote for the SF (Nørgaard & Refsing 2024), which is not in government, although still ideologically and politically near to the Social Democrats.

Additionally, the Social Democrats’ lukewarm stance on climate change and the party’s right-wing turn on asylum and migration policies (Meret, 2021; McManus & Falkenbach, 2022) may have contributed to the party’s poorer result in this European election. The SF has moderated its profile and program, especially since exiting the centre-left government in 2014, shifting towards a centre-left stance (Augustín & Jørgensen, 2016: 78–79). The party employs populist rhetoric and positions to appeal in particular to (rural) constituencies, who feel neglected and betrayed by Copenhagen politics. It gains votes by staying outside the government, either in opposition or as a government supporter. Remembering the negative experience during its first time in government (2011–2014), the SF has managed to regain electoral support but still needs to demonstrate its reliability when in power. Revealingly, the party’s leader, Pia Olsen Dyhr, toured the country with the DD’s Inger Støjberg at so-called ‘CO2 rallies’. They performed together, boasted about their friendship when on stage, and praised Danish democracy and consensus politics, demonstrating that political competitors can collaborate despite differing political positions.

Established parties on both the right and left have generally experienced a decline in electoral support at these European Parliament elections. Notably, the Liberals recorded another historic drop in the voters’ support, garnering only 14.7% of the votes, a loss of nearly 9 percentage points compared to 2019. The Moderates and the DD, both led by former high-profile Liberal members of parliament, appear to have gained from this, along with the Liberal Alliance, whose electoral gains continue to surprise.

Overall, the populist right received 13.8% of the votes: the DF garnered only 6.4% of the support, losing 4.4% of the votes compared to 2019. These results indicate that the decline of this party since 2019 does not necessarily reflect a decreased demand for populist and nativist politics in Denmark. On the contrary, new political organizations and groups have emerged to meet the existing demand, despite the efforts of the established parties from both the right and the left, to contain it by adopting some of the branding issues. These strategies seem in fact to have contributed to further radicalizing and polarizing the electorate, particularly on asylum, immigration and integration policies, but also on issues that have to do with the discontent of the periphery/countryside towards the centre/city.

Recently, the DF joined the new group, the PfE, launched by Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister and Fidesz leader. Within this new radical right-wing European Parliamentary group, Vistisen has been designated as the ‘chief whip’ (Wax, 2024). He ran a highly critical campaign against the EU and Ursula von der Leyen’s tenure, directly confronting her during a public event attended by representatives of all European Parliament groups. He accused her of lacking democratic legitimacy, stating that ‘No one has ever voted for you, and that is not worthy of a European democracy. Therefore, you will be the first one we fire’. He further asserted: ‘Brussels has become a swamp, and we need to put a stop to it’ (Jorsal, 2024).

The 2024 election also marked the first time the DD reached the European Parliament with an agenda focusing on reducing EU influence and safeguarding national sovereignty. The party garnered 7.4% of the votes, which allowed their leading candidate, Kristoffer Hjort Storm, to join the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group. Storm had previously served as the DF representative on the Aalborg municipal council for several years. Notably, the slogan supporting Storm’s DD candidacy for the European Parliament was: ‘Trust [Inger] Støjberg. Vote for Storm’, complemented by a video in which party leader Inger Støjberg spoke while Kristoffer Storm listened. Yet, this year’s MEP candidates were relatively unknown to the Danish electorate. To bolster their credibility and visibility, many required direct endorsements from their party leaders on billboards, in political advertisements and at events; an indication that European Parliament elections are still not considered crucial enough to the country’s politics.

Discussion

The Danish political landscape is today more fragmented, including at the European Parliament level, where party groups exhibit variations in their positions on key issues. For example, there is a wide range of stances on the support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, with parties like the DF and the DD advocating for strong military and financial aid while others call for diplomatic solutions to put an end to the war, or even express scepticism about European involvement. The role of the EU is another area of divergence. While some of the parties accept the EU as a regulating entity for market integration purposes, others ask for the country’s withdrawal from the EU.

On LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, the spectrum of opinions is broad among the radical and populist right. The DF and the DD view homosexual and reproductive rights as achieved and indisputable rights in contemporary societies, and they rather make use of these to attack what they deem to be Islam’s backwardness among the Muslim minority (see Farris, 2017). This stance positions them in uncomfortable company, sharing the ultraconservative and traditionalist views held by parties that belong to their European Parliamentary groups, such as Spain’s Vox, the Fratelli d’Italia, Portugal’s Chega party and Hungary’s Fidesz. Political internal and intra-group divergences were little addressed by the MEP candidates during the electoral campaign, both on the right and left of the spectrum. However, as these issues come to the forefront during the upcoming parliamentary activity within a political landscape that, after the elections, has tilted more to the right, they will need to be addressed, inevitably impacting party relationships within their respective groups and activities. Political tensions, conflicts and new alliances may arise as the populist right – but also the left– navigates internal differences and degrees of extremeness within the European Parliament.

 

(*) Susi Meret is an Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and Society at the University of Aalborg, Denmark. Her main research interest is with radical right-wing parties and movements in Europe, populism, political extremisms and civil society reactions. She has conducted studies on the radical and populist right in Denmark and beyond, on anti-gender and anti-feminist movements, on the role of Islam in the West and the civil society responses to growing ethno-nationalism and anti-gender/anti-feminist mobilizations. For more info: https://vbn.aau.dk/en/persons/100658/publications/ Email: meret@dps.aau.dk

 

References

Augustín, García O., & Jørgensen, M.B. (2016). ‘Uplifting the masses? Radical left parties and social movements during the crisis’. In: March, M. and Keith D. (eds.) Europe’s Radical Left. From Marginality to the Mainstream, London-New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 71–88.

Betz, H.-G. (2017). ‘Nativism across time and space’. Swiss Political Science Review, vol. 23(4), 335–353. https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12260

Elgenius G. and Rydgren, J (2022) Nationalism and the politics of nostalgia’, Sociological Forum, vol. 37, issue S1. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12836

Etzerodt, S., Kongshøj, K. (2022). The Implosion of Radical Right Populism and the Path Forward for Social Democracy: Evidence from the 2019 Danish National Election. Scandinavian Political Studies, 45(3), pp. 279–300. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9477.12225

Farris, S. (2017). In the Name of Women’s Rights. The Rise of Femonationalism. Durham: Duke University Press.

Flinch, F. (2024). ‘Ny måling afslører vælgernes vigtigste dagsorden til EU-valget’, Altinget, 24, February 2024. Available at: https://www.altinget.dk/artikel/maaling-klima-og-miljoe-er-vigtigst-for-danskerne-op-til-ep-valget

Jorsal, T. (2024). ‘DF-spidskandidat gik til angreb på Ursula von der Leyen under EU-debat: ‘Du er den første, vi vil fyre’. 29 April 2024. Available at: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/udland/df-spidskandidat-gik-til-angreb-paa-ursula-von-der-leyen-under-eu-debat-du-er-den

Kitschelt, H. (1997). The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.14501

McManus, I. and Falkenbach M. (2022). ‘A hollow victory: understanding the anti-immigration shift of Denmark’s Social Democrats’, Journal of Contemporary European Research, vol. 18, no. 1, DOI: https://doi.org/10.30950/jcer.v18i1.1161

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Meret, S. (2021). ‘Duties First, Rights Next! The Danish Social Democrats’ Right Turn on Migration Politics. In: N. Brandal, Ø. Bratberg, & D. E. Thorsen (Eds.), Social Democracy in the 21st Century, vol. 35, Emerald Group Publishing, pp. 223–244. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0195-631020210000035010

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Thomsen, P.B. (2024). ’Socialdemokratiet går i kødet på Dansk Folkeparti: I er med til at gå Putins ærinde’. 15 May. https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/politik/ep-valg/socialdemokratiet-gaar-i-koedet-paa-dansk-folkeparti-i-er-med-til-gaa-putins

Tofte, L.R. (2024). ‘LIVE: Mette Frederiksen i første interview efter overfald og dårligt resultat til EU-valget’, 11 June 2024. https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/politik/live-mette-frederiksen-i-foerste-interview-efter-overfald-og-daarligt-resultat-til#!/

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Protesters hold signs during an anti-government demonstration demanding a change in government in Bratislava, Slovakia on March 16, 2018. Photo: Ventura.

Slovakia: Mixed Results of Populist Parties in the 2024 EP Elections

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Please cite as:

Rybář, Marek. (2024). “Slovakia: Mixed Results of Populist Parties in the 2024 EP Elections.” In: 2024 EP Elections under the Shadow of Rising Populism. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS. October 22, 2024. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0082

 

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Abstract

Since Slovakia’s EU accession in 2004, populist parties have dominated national politics, although they are less influential in European Parliament (EP) elections. While Smer–Slovak Social Democracy led five national elections and Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) triumphed in 2020, populist parties performed weaker in EP elections. Progressive Slovakia (PS) won in 2019 and 2024, signalling different electoral dynamics. The rise of populism in Slovakia reflects a shared narrative of a virtuous people vs. a corrupt elite, although each party incorporates populism differently. Smer, led by Robert Fico, has shifted towards far-right nationalism, while OĽaNO evolved into Movement Slovakia (MS), with a focus on anti-corruption. The neo-Nazi Kotlebists (ĽSNS), initially successful, has splintered, losing its foothold in national politics. The 2024 EP elections, held amid an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Fico, reflected the political tensions. Smer placed second with 24.8%, while MS and ĽSNS underperformed. These results highlight the varied impact of populist parties on national and EU politics in Slovakia.

Keywords: populism; Slovakia; European elections; Smer; Movement Slovakia

 

By Marek Rybář* (Department of Political Science, Masaryk University, Czech Republic)

Background

Since Slovakia’s accession to the European Union (EU) in 2004, populist political parties have largely dominated the national political landscape. In countries with proportional electoral systems, electoral success is typically determined by the ability to form interparty alliances that command a majority in the national parliament. Nevertheless, in Slovakia, it has consistently been a populist party that has secured the largest share of parliamentary seats. Direction–Slovak Social Democracy (Smer) achieved this outcome in five elections, while the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) – rebranded as ‘Movement Slovakia’ (MS) in late 2023 – emerged as the leading party in 2020. In five out of six cases, the victorious populist party also became the largest party controlling the government.

However, populist parties are notably less dominant in EP elections. While Smer emerged victorious in two EP elections (2009 and 2014), the now-defunct Slovak Democratic and Christian Union won the first EP elections in 2004, and Progressive Slovakia (PS) secured wins in both 2019 and 2024. These results demonstrate that the electoral dynamics in EP elections differ from those in national contests. The second-order status of EP elections contributes to this difference, with lower voter turnout and opposition parties effectively mobilizing voters against the incumbent government. However, mainstream opponents of populist parties tend to be more supportive of European integration, and their supporters are generally more motivated to express this stance at the ballot box, with consequences for the results of EP contests.

Populism is an elusive concept, often used not only to describe political phenomena but also as a value-laden term to discredit opponents. For the purposes of this briefing, I define ‘populist’ parties as those identified in the authoritative PopuList 3.0 database (https://popu-list.org/applications/). The latest edition identifies Smer, OĽaNO (now MS), We Are Family (SR), and Kotlebists – People’s Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) as the party-political embodiments of populism in Slovakia. The four parties differ in their ideologies, degree of popular support, stances on the European integration and many other important aspects. What they have in common is their depiction of society as being divided into two opposing groups: the virtuous people and the corrupt political elite, with the latter seen as betraying the interests of the former.

It is also worth mentioning that none of the populist parties analysed here has ‘populism’ as the sole defining characteristic feature. In fact, populism is understood as a thin ideology that can coexist with a host of other ideologies and may play only a secondary role in the party’s profile.

Smer is a case in point. Established in the late 1990s as a left-leaning statist party, it has transformed into a far-right party. Smer managed to return to power in 2023 after three years in opposition, during which its popular support plummeted and its parliamentary caucus suffered a break-up, after which the Voice-Social Democracy (Hlas), led by the former prime minister, Peter Pellegrini, formed as a separate entity. Although Smer has always featured nationalist, Eurosceptic and illiberal standpoints, from 2021 onward, Fico focused on building alliances with ‘alternative media’, extra-parliamentary opposition and far-right groups. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine crisis fostered a critical public sentiment (such as anti-vaxxers and pro-Russian authoritarians) that was opposed to the government, which Fico effectively harnessed. By collaborating with far-right politicians and organizing joint anti-government rallies, he further strengthened the nationalist elements of Smer’s message (Haughton, Cutts and Rybář, 2024). Although nominally social democratic, Fico has effectively moved the party towards the illiberal far right.

In contrast, OĽaNO (now Movement Slovakia) began as an openly populist party, positioning itself as the voice of ‘the ordinary people’ against a self-serving and corrupt political establishment. Since it entered the national parliament in 2010, the party has centred its political agenda on anti-corruption rhetoric. Initially a loose coalition of anti-corruption and pro-life activists, it evolved into a Christian conservative populist movement with a fluid organizational structure centred around its leader and founder, Igor Matovič. In a surprising outcome, the party won the 2020 national elections, capitalizing on the disillusionment of voters drawn to its sharp criticism of corruption and clientelism associated with the Smer-led government. Following its electoral success, the party managed to form a four-party coalition government, with Matovič assuming the role of prime minister. However, the new government, composed of mostly inexperienced ministers, encountered significant governance challenges, including managing the global COVID-19 pandemic and responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Matovič’s unpredictable governing style, characterized more by performance and sensationalism than well-considered policymaking, further exacerbated the government’s declining popularity. His approach led to numerous personal conflicts, not only with the opposition but also with his coalition partners. After one year, Matovič swapped positions with Finance Minister Eduard Heger, becoming the new Finance Minister himself. However, this move eventually failed to prevent the withdrawal of support from one of the coalition partners, resulting in a successful vote of no confidence in parliament. Consequently, the OĽaNO-led cabinet was replaced by a caretaker government appointed by President Zuzana Čaputová to lead the country toward early elections in September 2023.

Finally, the Kotlebists (ĽSNS) started as an extreme-right party that has used anti-establishment populist appeals combined with radical nativist ideology from its inception. The party managed to enter the Slovak parliament in 2020 and the EP a year earlier. However, the party caucus broke up in 2021, and the breakaway faction established a new party called Republika (Republic). It elected MEP Milan Uhrík as the party leader and distanced itself from what they portrayed as increasingly autocratic practices of the ĽSNS leader Marian Kotleba. Since then, popular support for ĽSNS has sharply declined; most former voters of the party turned to Republika, as did other far-right supporters, leaving ĽSNS out of the national parliament in 2023.

The political context of the 2024 EP elections

The campaign and the results of the EP elections in Slovakia in 2024 were significantly shaped by two factors. Firstly, the elections took place just weeks after the direct presidential elections (held at the turn of March and April 2024) and several months after the national parliamentary elections of September 2023. Because of their temporal proximity, all three electoral contests were related. Secondly, the elections were organized in the shadow of the assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico of Smer that took place in May 2024. The assassination attempt shook the country and impacted the campaign and elections both directly and indirectly.

In the national parliamentary elections of September 2023, Smer emerged as the leading party, securing a plurality with 22.9% of the votes. The party formed a coalition government with Hlas, a splinter faction from Smer, and the Slovak National Party (SNS), which managed to re-enter the national parliament after being absent in the previous electoral cycle, with Robert Fico appointed as prime minister. The socially liberal PS finished second, securing 18% of the vote. During post-election negotiations, PS made an unsuccessful attempt to dissuade Hlas from aligning with Smer, offering its leader Peter Pellegrini the position of prime minister in exchange for joining a government with other opposition parties. However, Smer provided a more favourable offer: Hlas would receive an equal number of ministries as the significantly larger Smer, and Pellegrini would gain Smer’s backing for his bid in the directly elected presidential race. As a result, the presidential election effectively became a second round in the contest for control over national institutions.

The former governing parties faced a devastating defeat: two failed to secure any parliamentary seats, while OĽaNO, led by former prime minister Igor Matovič, saw its vote share diminish to less than one-third of its 2020 result. Only Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), an economically liberal junior coalition partner of OĽaNO, maintained its performance from 2020. Additionally, the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) succeeded in winning parliamentary seats for the first time since 2012.

Shortly after its formation, the new government embarked on a political course that, in many respects, starkly contrasted with that of the 2020–2023 administrations. The official Government Program included, among other things, plans to dismantle the national public broadcaster RTVS, abolish the Special Prosecution Office responsible for investigating the most serious criminal cases (including high-profile corruption cases), and overhaul the penal code, which would directly affect dozens of ongoing investigations. It also suggested preparing a special law targeting ‘foreign agents’, namely non-governmental organizations receiving grants from international donors.

Internationally, the new government pledged to halt all military assistance to Ukraine in its defence against Russian aggression and adopt a more neutral stance toward Russia. Significantly, many of these changes were set to be implemented not only without consultations with relevant stakeholders but also by using a special legislative procedure to fast-track the measures through parliament in a very short timeframe. The opposition criticized these plans and legislative proposals, arguing that they would obstruct the investigation and prosecution of corruption cases during the previous Smer-led administration. Furthermore, some measures appeared to enable the new government to bypass existing legislative safeguards and take control of independent public bodies.

In an effort to counter these legislative moves by the new parliamentary majority, opposition parties appealed to the European Commission and their partners in the EP to urge the Slovak government to reconsider its plans. However, the government made few changes and instead accused the opposition of damaging the country’s reputation internationally. Consequently, the period following the parliamentary and presidential elections was marked by intense confrontation between the governing parties and the parliamentary opposition.

Although the opposition-backed independent candidate won the first round of the presidential elections, Pellegrini ultimately prevailed in the runoff and was elected president. His victory had two significant consequences for the dynamics of interparty competition. First, since Slovak presidents traditionally renounce their party membership and strive to maintain a non-partisan role, Pellegrini’s departure as its founder and most trusted representative weakened the Hlas party. Second, it provided additional impetus for the opposition, particularly PS, to mobilize its supporters in the EP elections with the slogan ‘they cannot have everything’, a reference to the governing parties. Boosting its electoral prospects, PS ‘recruited’ Ľudovít Ódor, the former prime minister of the 2024 caretaker government and former Vice-Governor of the Central Bank, to lead its party list in the EP elections.

Assassination attempt on Robert Fico and the campaign

Just before the most intense phase of the campaign was set to begin, the trajectory of domestic politics was dramatically altered by a failed assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico. On 15 May, while Fico was addressing a crowd of his supporters in the small town of Handlová, a 71-year-old man fired five shots at him, four of which struck Fico, causing gunshot wounds to his abdomen. Shortly afterwards, several leading representatives of Smer and SNS blamed the opposition and independent media for the attempt, claiming it resulted from a polarized political environment they allegedly created. They further suggested that unspecified measures were necessary to increase government control over the media and regulate the right of assembly to enhance public safety. While there were moderate voices within the government advocating for de-escalation, the coalition parties’ primary message was to blame their political opponents. Although the assassin had no record of links to any political party, some government representatives attempted to associate him with PS, alleging he had attended opposition rallies in the months preceding the attack.

In response to the assassination attempt, PS and other opposition parties suspended their election campaigns and proposed a meeting of the highest representatives of all parliamentary parties, but the governing parties rejected this proposal. Similarly, President Čaputová and President-elect Pellegrini jointly suggested a national roundtable involving all major parties, but some government representatives also rejected this initiative.

Whatever campaign strategy Smer had prepared for the EP election was eventually reduced to two slogans: ‘For Peace in Europe’ and ‘For Robert Fico’. The party sought to promote the narrative that the previous government had falsely criminalized Fico and his associates, and upon Smer’s return to power, justice needed to be restored. Furthermore, Smer conveyed to its voters the message it had promoted in the 2023 national campaign: peace in Europe is endangered because previous governments (and the EU) supplied weapons to Ukraine. According to Smer, Slovakia should remain neutral, and such neutrality would restore peace. The Smer manifesto stated: ‘We want to be the extended arm of Robert Fico’s government, which will face increasing attacks from Brussels’ warmongers for striving for peace and refusing to send weapons to Ukraine’ (Smer 2024). Additionally, Smer attacked what it called ‘extreme progressive gender ideologies’ and sought to associate them with PS. Following the assassination attempt, Smer leaders and candidates attempted to rhetorically link ‘progressivism’ with ‘extremism’ to discredit their primary opponent.

Although PS, along with other opposition parties, initially suspended its campaign, it soon resumed its activities. The party sought to mobilize its supporters by arguing that the Smer-led government had undermined Slovakia’s position within the EU and that its policies could lead to Slovakia’s isolation or even result in the suspension of EU funds due to non-compliance with rule-of-law criteria. It also contended that achieving national reconciliation after the assassination attempt should not imply that the opposition would abandon its primary role of holding the government accountable for its actions and proposals.

The main campaign issues and stances of populist parties

Smer, as the leading representative of party-based populism, produced a five-page manifesto summarizing its central positions concerning several crucial EU policies. It consistently promoted the key manifesto stances in public rallies, media interviews and on social networks. As mentioned, Smer blamed the EU for ‘prolonging war in Europe’ by supporting Ukraine. As in the past, the party questioned the rationale of sanctions against Russia and has been critical of the EU foreign policy against other authoritarian regimes by calling it ‘a patronizing approach’ and ‘the imposition of the European liberal model’ towards countries that ‘have the right to their own historical path’ (Smer 2024).

The party also rejected the recently adopted EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, particularly the scheme that includes the relocation of asylum seekers among the EU countries. It proposed no concrete measures but only generally stated that the EU external border should be protected more and that illegal migration should be dealt with in the country of origin. The opposition to compulsory relocation schemes has been central to the party’s stance since the mid-2010s. Smer also claimed it would initiate reopening the European Green Deal, which was labelled as an ‘extreme environmental initiative’ and claimed it was pushed through by ‘Eurocrats with no accountability’. It specifically rejected the target of reducing emissions by 55% by 2030 (Smer 2024).

Smer linked the EU’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic to control by supranational elites, particularly ‘multinational corporations and pharmaceutical companies’, leading to the ‘imposition of experimental vaccinations’ and the ‘criminalization of people for their opinions’ (Smer 2024). Since first gaining representation in the EP, Smer’s Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been part of the leading Socialist group (Socialists & Democrats, S&D). However, in the previous parliament, their membership was suspended due to their alliance with the far-right Slovak National Party (SNS) (Euronews 2023). The examples above demonstrate that Smer itself has shifted towards the far right.

It is instructive to compare Smer’s position with that of another populist party, the far-right neo-Nazi Kotlebists – People’s Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS). Although now electorally marginal, ĽSNS was represented in both the national (2016–2020) and European (2019–2024) parliaments. The party did not produce an official EP election manifesto in 2024 but instead promoted its views on various social media platforms.

The primary difference between the two populist parties in 2024 was their stance on Slovakia’s EU membership. Smer claimed to support EU membership despite its many shortcomings. In contrast, ĽSNS argued that what it sees as the drawbacks of EU membership are inherent to how the EU operates and that the EU cannot be reformed. Consequently, it advocated for Slovakia’s exit from the EU (ĽSNS 2024). The party leader stated that, if elected to the EP, ĽSNS would ‘lay the groundwork for Slovakia’s exit from the European Union and break the EU from within’ (ĽSNS 2024).

However, the positions of Smer and ĽSNS were quite similar regarding their assessment of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Green Deal and the COVID-19 pandemic. While their reasoning differed, their objectives overlapped:

ĽSNS opposed any military support for Ukraine, claiming it ran counter to efforts to achieve peace. It further argued that the ultimate goal of the EU was to escalate the conflict, with the final aim of full and open participation of European countries in the conflict (RTVS 2024). ĽSNS also blamed the West for the conflict, citing its overall unfair stance towards Russia and its legitimate interests.

Regarding their opposition to the Green Deal, Smer argued that it would harm Slovakia’s automotive industry. In contrast, ĽSNS contended that the proposed measures were misguided: strict protection of water, soil and forests should occur at the national level. However, a clear nativist tone was evident in their proposed measures, suggesting that ‘the fundamental solution was to prevent the purchase of land by foreigners’ (Hlavný denník 2024).

Finally, ĽSNS’s rejection of the EU’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic was similar to Smer’s, but its reasoning was more extreme and conspiratorial. The party suggested that vaccination campaigns and deals with pharmaceutical companies were part of a broader plan to transform Europe. ĽSNS claimed that the EU was attempting to destroy the Christian tradition in Europe by promoting mandatory vaccinations that would prevent young Europeans from having their own children. This move, they argued, would align with the EU’s alleged goal of ‘replacing the original inhabitants of Europe with migrants brought in from all corners of the world’ (ĽSNS 2024).

The positions of the third populist party, MS (formerly OĽaNO), differed most significantly from those of Smer and ĽSNS in the area of international politics. MS argued that the conflict in Ukraine was a result of Russia’s imperial ambitions and that it was the duty of European democracies to help Ukraine defend itself. The party claimed that Ukraine was also fighting for ‘our freedom and democracy’ (Hnutie Slovensko 2024).

MS was also critical of the Green Deal but proposed a revision that would involve postponing the timeline for key targets, arguing that ‘reckless and hasty implementation of electromobility will lead to greater poverty and reduced mobility for vulnerable groups’ (Hnutie Slovensko 2024). The party’s positions on other contentious issues, such as immigration and the COVID-19 pandemic, were vaguer. Instead, its manifesto prioritized the need to combat disinformation and corruption at the EU level in an attempt to link its opponent, Smer, to these issues.

The results and implications of the EP elections

The elections were held on a single day, 8 June and their results were remarkable in several respects. The turnout of 34.4%, although the fourth lowest among all EU countries, was the highest ever recorded in EP elections in Slovakia, an increase of nearly 12 percentage points compared to 2019. Of the three populist parties, only Smer managed to gain parliamentary representation, finishing a close second after PS with 24.8% of the vote, thereby expanding its EP representation from three to five MEPs. The other two populist parties failed to cross the 5% threshold, receiving just 2% (MS) and 0.5% (ĽSNS), respectively.

In the absence of exit polls or other opinion data, it is difficult to determine the factors that led to these results. As discussed, the outcomes were decisively influenced by the fact that this was the third nationwide electoral contest within nine months and by the assassination attempt on Robert Fico, the leader of Smer. The two electoral defeats of the parliamentary opposition and the polarizing effects of these losses likely bolstered support for PS, whose electoral base is strongly aligned with Slovakia’s EU membership (Haughton et al., 2024). The assassination attempt likely increased sympathy for Fico and his party, prompting some voters of non-parliamentary opposition parties (other than Smer) to support Smer in the EP elections. Smer’s two coalition partners performed poorly, with SNS failing to gain any seats despite its party list featuring all major figures, including the party leader. Since a sizeable share of their supporters view Fico favourably, they likely voted for Smer (Hopková 2024). In contrast, ĽSNS was electorally weakened by the departure of Republika, its breakaway faction, which performed well in the EP elections. Finally, Movement Slovakia’s low support probably reflected disappointment with its performance in the 2020–2023 government.

The election results put the Slovak government in an awkward position, as none of its six MEPs (five from Smer and one from Hlas) are likely to sit in a major faction in the EP. In contrast, the parliamentary opposition parties will join the Renew (six from PS) and European People’s Party (EPP) (one from KDH) groups in the EP. This constellation is likely to further alienate the Slovak government from its European partners.

Table 1: Results of the most recent national and EP elections

Party  EP 2019 (%) EP 2019 (seats) NR SR 2023 (%) EP 2024 (%) EP 2024 (seats)
PS 20.1 4 17.96 27.8 6
Smer 15.7 3 22.94 24.76 5
Republika – – 4.75 12.53 2
Hlas – – 14.7 7.18 1
KDH 9.7 2 6.82 7.14 1
ĽSNS 12.1 2 0.84 0.48 0
SaS 9.6 2 6.32 4.92 0
MS (OĽaNO) 5.3 1 8.89 1.98 0
SNS 4.1 0 5.62 1.9 0
Source: www.statistics.sk. Electoral threshold of 5% applies for a single party in both types of elections. All parliamentary parties represented in at least one parliament are listed

 

(*) Marek Rybář is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Studies and the International Institute of Political Science, Masaryk University, Brno, the Czech Republic. He has written numerous journal articles and book chapters on political parties, politico-administrative relations and executive political institutions in Central Europe. marek.rybar@mail.muni.cz, ORCID: 0000-0001-5242-2895

 

References

Euronews 2023. https://www.euronews.com/2023/10/13/slovak-meps-to-be-suspended-from-eu-parliaments-socialist-group-over-far-right-government-

Haughton, T.; Cutts, D.; Rybář, M. 2024. A Narrow Path to Victory: Robert Fico, Smer-SD and the 2023 Elections in Slovakia (unpublished manuscript).

Hlavný Denník. 2024. https://www.hlavnydennik.sk/2023/07/31/lsns-ponuka-radikalny-krok

Hnutie Slovensko. 2024. Čestne za vás na Slovensku aj v Bruseli (volebný program do EP 2024).

Hopková, D. 2024. Šéf Focusu Slosiarik: Eurovoľby priniesli tri prekvapenia (rozhovor). Available at: https://www.aktuality.sk/clanok/cTAjiLY/sef-focusu-slosiarik-eurovolby-priniesli-tri-prekvapenia-rozhovor/

Rybář, M. 2020. Slovakia. In V. Hloušek and P. Kaniok (eds.) The European Parliament Election of 2019 in East-Central Europe. Houndmills: Palgrave, pp. 229–251.

Smer. 2024. Program strany SMER–SSD do volieb do Európskeho parlamentu 2024.

RTVS. 2024. Predvolebná diskusia politických strán vo voľbách do EP, available at http://kotlebovci.sk/2024/06/marian-kotleba-v-rtvs-ideme-rozbit-europsku-uniu-zvnutra/

ĽSNS. 2024. Rogel a Kotleba k vlastencom: S Európskou úniou urobíme krátky proces! available at http://kotlebovci.sk/2024/06/rogel-a-kotleba-k-vlastencom-s-europskou-uniou-urobime-kratky-proces/

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A demonstration against the Czech government, high energy prices, the Green Deal, and the EU took place in Prague on September 3, 2022. Protesters demanded a change of government amidst the crises. Photo: Helena Zezulkova.

The Race of Populists: The 2024 EP Elections in the Czech Republic

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Please cite as:

Havlík, Vlastimil & Kluknavská, Alena. (2024). “The Race of Populists: The 2024 EP Elections in the Czech Republic.” In: 2024 EP Elections under the Shadow of Rising Populism. (eds). Gilles Ivaldi and Emilia Zankina. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS. October 22, 2024. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0066

 

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Abstract

The chapter analyses the performance of populist political parties in the 2024 EP election in the Czech Republic. The election ended with a significant increase in support for several populist parties: Action of Dissatisfied Citizens, Freedom and Direct Democracy and the Oath and Motorists. All populist parties used radical-right rhetoric before the election, expressing different levels of criticism of the European Union, strong anti-immigration attitudes and negative attitudes toward the Green Deal. The preliminary data show that the electoral support for the populists was based on a higher level of mobilization in so-called peripheral areas of the Czech Republic, potentially affected by recent inflation and austerity policies pursued by the government. All in all, the 2024 EP election in Czechia significantly increased support for populist political parties.

Keywords: populism; Czech Republic; Euroscepticism; far right; radical right

By Vlastimil Havlík*  (Department of Political Science, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic) & Alena Kluknavská** (Department of Media Studies and Journalism, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Introduction

The EP election took place three years into the Czech Republic’s four-year parliamentary electoral cycle, making it an important test of support for both governing parties and the populist opposition. After the 2021 general elections, five political parties built two electoral coalitions, both of which advanced an anti-populist platform: the right-wing Spolu (Together) and the centrist coalition between the Pirates party and Mayors and Independents (Starostové a Nezávislí, STAN). They agreed to form a new government, effectively ending eight years of governments with a significant populist presence.

Yet populists made a comeback in the 2024 EP election. The campaign leading up to the 9 June polls was dominated by the issues of immigration and the European Green Deal, and all the populist parties tried to frame the election as a referendum on the incumbent government’s performance. Historically, in line with the second-order elections theory (Reif & Schmitt, 1980), Czech voters have often taken elections as an opportunity to punish the government by voting for the parliamentary opposition or even for new political parties (Charvát & Maškarinec, 2020). The 2024 election did not depart from this trend, and populist parties came out on top: besides two ‘established’ populist parties – Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) and Freedom and Direct Democracy (Svoboda a Přímá Demokracie, SPD) – the electoral coalition of the populist ‘Přísaha a Motoristé’ (Oath and Motorists, AUTO) gained representation in the European Parliament. While many voters may have voted for populist parties out of frustration with national politics and the incumbent government’s performance (Mahdalová & Škop, 2024), the message to the European Parliament from the Czech Republic is unequivocal: populist voices are stronger and more radical than ever before.

Background

Similarly to other European countries, the Czech Republic has witnessed a proliferation of populist political parties over the past 15 years. This expansion has been precipitated by the 2008 economic crisis and a series of political scandals, which have resulted in a decline in support for the established political parties (Havlík, 2015). The largest populist party, consistently polling around 30% of the vote, is ANO, founded in 2011 and led by the billionaire industrialist Andrej Babiš. The party is typically characterized as a technocratic or centrist populist party lacking clearly defined ideological foundations. The party initially gained traction by appealing to voters through an emphasis on communicating expertise and the ability to run the state effectively while blaming the established political parties for incompetency and corruption (Havlík, 2019).

However, it has recently shifted both rhetorically and electorally towards the economic centre-left combined with nativist and authoritarian attitudes, moving closer to the programmatic formula typical for other far-right political parties in contemporary Europe (De Lange, 2007).

ANO initially became part of the coalition government in 2013 as a junior partner to the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Christian Democrats. Following the 2017 election, it became the leading government party in a minority coalition with the SD, which was supported for the majority of the term by the communists (Komunistická Strana Čech a Moravy, KSČM). After the 2021 general election, ANO assumed the role of the leading opposition party. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the party adopted a stance of ambivalent support for Kyiv while simultaneously advancing a criticism of Ukrainian policies as well as welfare-chauvinist arguments (i.e., the idea that welfare benefits and social services should be reserved primarily or exclusively for the native population of a country, rather than being extended to immigrants or non-citizens) (Havlík & Kluknavská, 2023). Additionally, it has taken a pro-Israel stance during the Israel–Hamas conflict.

Concerning its position towards the EU and EU policies, ANO has shifted from a mildly pro-European stance (Havlík & Kaniok, 2016) towards soft Euroscepticism over time. Initially, the party defended Czechia’s membership of the EU, and Babiš even offered lukewarm support for the country adopting the euro. Subsequently, ANO began to emphasize the need to safeguard Czech national sovereignty vis-à-vis the EU, utilizing anti-elitist populist rhetoric targeting ‘European elites’ and attributing the EU’s ineffectiveness in migration policy to incompetence in Brussels. The party’s stance towards the EU became increasingly aligned with that of populist radical-right parties in other EU member states.

In its manifesto for the 2024 European Parliament election, ANO adopted a clear intergovernmentalist position, presented in a populist manner. It called for the ‘need to restore the decisive role of the national states in the EU’. It also opposed decisions taken by European institutions and ‘non-elected bureaucrats’ who are ‘disconnected from the reality of everyday life’ (ANO, 2024). The party criticized the EU Pact on Migration, framing it as a security concern and warning the Czech Republic not to ‘take the path of Western Europe, where no-go zones have sprung up in many cities, where people are afraid to go out at night, and women are at risk of violence’ (ANO, 2024). ANO also promised to reform the European Green Deal passed ‘in defiance of common sense’, claiming that ‘Brussels has decided to commit ritual suicide’ (ANO, 2024). ANO rejected the idea of the ban on combustion engines and even dedicated a chapter in its manifesto to the issue, contributing to the high salience of the issue in the electoral campaign. ANO also criticized the EU for the supposed ‘restrictions on freedom of expression that are now taking place under the guise of fighting disinformation. In reality, however, this term often masquerades as the EU’s desire to regulate and restrict the publication of alternative opinions’ (ANO, 2024). Even more, ANO blamed ‘both domestic and Brussels elites’ for ‘wanting to control, dominate and re-educate people in various ways’ (ANO, 2024), comparing it to the oppression of human rights and freedom during the communist regime before 1989.

SPD is a populist radical-right party led by Tomio Okamura. The party, along with its predecessor, Dawn of Direct Democracy (also founded by Okamura), has been represented in the national parliament since the 2013 general elections, consistently garnering around 10% of the vote. The party’s initial success was tied to Okamura’s popularity as a TV personality (he was president of the Czech Association of Travel Agencies, performed in a reality show, and gained media attention with his project of a toy travel agency). The party has capitalized on its potent anti-establishment appeal and, with the onset of the immigration crisis, adopted xenophobic, uncompromisingly anti-immigration and hard Eurosceptic rhetoric. SPD has become one of the most vocal anti-Ukrainian voices following Russia’s 2022 invasion (Havlík & Kluknavská, 2023). Due to its anti-Islam stance, SPD has been a stalwart defender of Israel during the Israel–Hamas conflict. Unlike ANO, SPD has never been part of the government.

In mid 2023 SPD formed an electoral alliance with Tricolour, another populist radical-right outfit, ahead of the 2024 EP elections. The two parties continued to co-operate in the run-up to the polls. A first glance at SPD’s EP manifesto reveals a striking similarity with ANO’s rhetoric. The major difference lies in SPD’s more radical language, a generally more sceptical attitude towards the EU (including a demand for a membership referendum), and a stronger emphasis on immigration policy. SPD was highly critical of the EU, describing it as a ‘dictatorship in Brussels’ dominated by ‘non-elected bureaucrats’ who produce ‘directives that are against the interests of our state and our people’ (SPD, 2024).

The party framed the issue of migration primarily in security terms, rejecting the EU Pact for Migration, claimed that the EU supports ‘mass migration and multiculturalism’, and stated that ‘[m]any Western European cities have already been Islamised, resulting in huge crime, terrorism, and the domination of Sharia law in so-called no-go zones’ (SPD, 2024). SPD also rejected the Green Deal, vehemently opposing ‘any attempt to reduce car transport and combustion engines’ (SPD, 2024). The party criticized political correctness, accusing the EU of censorship and a disingenuous campaign against disinformation. Overall, among the Czech political parties represented in the EP, SPD was closest to ‘hard Euroscepticism’, challenging the current trajectory of the EU and even questioning the Czech Republic’s membership.

In addition to the existing populist political parties with representation in the Czech parliament, several new populist radical-right parties have emerged since the 2021 election. These parties have capitalized on discursive opportunities related to the high level of inflation (at times the highest among EU member states), the government’s austerity policies, and, to some extent, the war in Ukraine. In 2022, Jindřich Rajchl, a former member of Tricolour and an organizer of anti-COVID-19 measures demonstrations, founded the Law, Respect, Expertise (Právo, Respekt, Odbornost, PRO) party. Rajchl co-organized several anti-government demonstrations, the largest of which drew around 70,000 participants. However, he and his party lost momentum as the Czech economy gradually recovered and public support for pro-Russian stances remained limited.

Conversely, the political party Oath, founded in 2021 by former police chief Róbert Šlachta, whose anti-organized crime unit led a corruption investigation that toppled the right-wing cabinet in 2013, stabilized its support. Despite receiving 4% of the votes in the 2021 general election and polling below the 5% electoral threshold, the party saw an uptick in support before the election, according to some opinion polls. One reason for the increasing support was the electoral coalition Oath formed with Motorists for Themselves (formerly named Referendum on the EU, later the Party for the Independence of the Czech Republic).

The coalition leveraged the opportunity to campaign against the government, took an anti-immigration position and strongly criticized the European Green Deal, especially the planned ban on cars with combustion engines. Although many political parties made similar claims, the coalition gained credibility in the fight to preserve combustion engines by placing Filip Turek, a former racing driver, luxury car collector and social media influencer, at the top of its electoral list. Despite consistently polling around 5%, the coalition saw a growth in support shortly before the election. Some analysts attributed this boost to Turek’s increased media visibility, which included allegations of his use of Nazi symbols (which Turek downplayed) and the fact that the party and Turek himself became a target of negative campaigning from some of the government and opposition parties. For instance, the electoral leader of Mayors and Independents, one of the government parties, challenged Turek to a TV debate, framing him as a major threat to Czech democracy. This debate, which took place just a few days before the election, recorded significant viewership and may have impacted the result of the party in the election.

Electoral results

Populist parties gained 10 of the 21 MEP seats allocated to the Czech Republic. ANO took poll position with 26.1% of the vote (electing seven MEPs), increasing its support by 5 percentage points compared to the 2019 EP elections. The SPD and Tricolour list secured 5.7% of the votes and one seat, a decline of more than 3 percentage points compared to 2019. The biggest surprise of the election was the 10.3% of the votes and two seats won by AUTO. By including the votes received by other protest parties, such as the coalition Stačilo (Enough) led by the KSČM, with those received by populist parties, the protest camp secured a majority of 55% of the votes.

Despite the government’s low popularity, the incumbent parties scored relatively well, collectively gaining almost 37% of the votes (compared to 43% in the 2021 general election). The right-wing Spolu coalition (22.3% and 6 MEPs) achieved a fair result, and Mayors and Independents (STAN) met the expectations set by the public opinion polls (8.7% of votes and 2 MEPs). Among the governing parties, only the Pirates performed poorly (6.2% and 1 MEP). The election did not signal a revival for the SPD, once a defining pole in the party system. Having remained just below the electoral threshold in the 2021 general election and losing parliamentary representation after more than 30 years, the SPD received less than 2% of the votes, continuing their decline into irrelevance.

As with the previous EP elections in Czechia, the results were marked by low electoral turnout. However, turnout increased significantly to 36%, the highest in the history of EP elections in the Czech Republic (up from 29% in 2019). According to an analysis of aggregated data published shortly after the election, the increase in turnout was likely linked to mobilization in peripheral areas, including the so-called inner peripheries (Grim, 2024). These are less developed areas with lower levels of infrastructure, higher unemployment and a higher proportion of low-educated people. It should be noted that peripheral status is not defined exclusively by economic factors; it also has vital historical, social, and cultural dimensions (Bernard & Šimon. 2017). Previous studies have shown that people living in peripheral areas are more likely to hold populist attitudes (Dvořák et al., 2024), and populist parties tend to be more successful in areas characterized by economic hardship or an ageing population (Dvořák & Zouhar, 2022; Lysek et al., 2021). Early analyses of the aggregated data indicate that the 2024 EP election followed this pattern. ANO, AUTO, SPD and Stačilo were most successful in the peripheral areas. The notable results of ANO, which benefited the most from increased turnout in these areas, confirm the transformation in the character of support for the once-centrist populist party (Havlík & Voda, 2018). The success of populists in the areas may stem from the harsh impact of the recent inflation and austerity policies introduced by the government on the people living in peripheral areas. However, historically, the peripheral regions have always been more critical of the EU, and their Euroscepticism may also have played a notable role (Plešivčák, 2020).

Data from opinion surveys conducted a few weeks before the election reveal important similarities and some differences in the socio-demographics of the electorates of the three populist parties that crossed the electoral threshold. Support for ANO spanned various socio-demographic groups but primarily relied on voters without high school diplomas (37% declared they would vote for ANO) and those aged 60 or older (34%). Conversely, only 9% of voters with a university degree and 11% of those aged 18–29 supported ANO. SPD supporters were mostly men and individuals with elementary education, with younger voters less likely to support SPD compared to those aged 45–59. Due to the small number of respondents supporting AUTO, identifying a clearer voter profile is challenging, although there was slightly higher support among men and younger voters (STEM, 2024).

Despite the lack of data on the ideological profiles of populist party voters, it is evident that, on average, populist parties were more attractive to less educated voters and were more successful in peripheral areas. The spatially uneven growth of electoral turnout suggests that the overall rise of populist parties can be attributed to higher mobilization in areas favourable to them. Nevertheless, the differing changes in support for various populist parties (notably the growth of AUTO and Stačilo versus the decline of SPD) indicate limited spillover across government and opposition camps. The ‘populist race’ is further evidenced by data from another pre-election opinion poll, where voters were asked to cast votes (preferences) for two parties. Only a limited number used ‘split votes’ in the sense of supporting one populist (opposition) party and one governing party. This finding relates to the high level of political polarization between populist and anti-populist forces recently observed (Hrbková et al., 2024). In other words, the results of the EP election in Czechia point to the ongoing transformation of the party system from a relatively stable unidimensional competition between the left and the right into a contestation between populist and anti-populist forces (Havlík & Kluknavská, 2022).

Discussion

The EP election in Czechia has resulted in a majority of votes for populist (and protest) parties. Despite their ideological differences, all of these parties share a critical attitude towards the supranational principles underpinning the EU’s functioning and call for strengthening the role of national states in the EU decision-making process. SPD even advocates a reconsideration of Czech membership in the EU. Consequently, Czech populist parties will likely oppose any attempts to strengthen the powers of supranational EU institutions. Similarly, their criticism of the Green Deal and the regulation of cars with combustion engines suggests they will seek to revise the legislation or at least slow down its implementation.

However, the success and real impact of the Czech populists at the EP level will be affected by their membership in EP groups. Given ANO’s ideological shift and the departure of its former liberal pro-European MEPs, ANO decided to leave the liberal Renew group and initiated the formation of a new populist radical-right Eurosceptic group, Patriots for Europe (PfE) alongside Fidesz and the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). Despite AUTO expressing their willingness to join the European Conservatives and Reform group (ECR), the governing Civic Democratic Party (ODS), one of the ECR’s founders, did not support its inclusion, and AUTO eventually joined PfE. Although ANO and AUTO have become members of the third-largest EP group, which includes parties such as France’s far-right National Rally (RN), the Flemish Interest (Vlaams Belang, VB), Spain’s Vox or Italy’s Lega, the first votes in the EP have already indicated that the PfE’S influence on policy in the current legislature will be constrained. For example, PfE representatives have been excluded from the allocation of posts in EP committees). SPD, the most radical populist party, formed a new far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations group (ESN) alongside the Alternative for Germany or the French Reconquest. ESN is the smallest of the EP groups in the 2024–2029 legislature, and – similarly to PfE – the EP majority has applied a cordon sanitaire to the group, significantly reducing the effective power of ESN in the EP.

The results of the 2024 election in Czechia indicate a strengthening of the populist radical-right and Eurosceptic voices in the EU. First, AUTO gained representation in the EP as a new populist radical-right party. Second, the share of MEPs held by populist parties increased compared to the previous EP elections. Third, given the radicalization of ANO’s ideology and its elected MEPs, the populist voices from Czechia will be more Eurosceptic and generally more radical than ever before. Although their membership in EP groups outside the mainstream of EU politics may tone down the volume of these voices significantly, the 2024 EP election delivered a clear message of a strengthened position of populist political parties in Czechia.

 

This research was supported by the NPO ‘Systemic Risk Institute’ project number LX22NPO5101, funded by the European Union–Next Generation EU (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, NPO: EXCELES).

 

(*) Vlastimil Havlík is associate professor at Masaryk University and the National Institute for Research on Socioeconomic Impacts of Diseases and Systemic Risks (SYRI) (https://www.syri.institute/). His research focus includes populism and political parties in Central and Eastern Europe. He is also editor-in-chief of the Czech Journal of Political Science (czechpolsci.eu). [ORCID: 0000-0003-3650-5783]

(**) Alena Kluknavská is assistant professor at Masaryk University and the National Institute for Research on Socioeconomic Impacts of Diseases and Systemic Risks (SYRI) (https://www.syri.institute/). Her research focuses on political communication and public and political discourses on migration and minority issues. She is also interested in understanding the communication strategies and successes of the populist radical-right parties and movements in Central and Eastern Europe. Recently, her work has focused on truth contestation and polarization in political discourse, particularly on social media. [ORCID: 0000-0002-3679-3335]

 

References

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Bernard, J., & Šimon, M. (2017). Vnitřní periferie v Česku: Multidimenzionalita sociálního vyloučení ve venkovských oblastech. Czech Sociological Review, 53(1).

Charvát, J., & Maškarinec, P. (2020). Volby do Evropského parlamentu v Česku v roce 2019: stále ještě druhořadé volby?. Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury.

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Dvořák, Tomáš, and Jan Zouhar. (2022). Peripheralization processes as a contextual source of populist vote choices: Evidence from the Czech Republic and Eastern Germany. East European Politics and Societiesi, 37(3), 983–1010. https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254221131590

Dvořák, T., Zouhar, J., & Treib, O. (2024). Regional peripheralization as contextual source of populist attitudes in Germany and Czech Republic. Political Studies, 72(1), 112–133.

Grim, J. (2024). Kde uspěli Turek a Konečná? ‚Noví populisté‘ mobilizovali v krajských zákoutích a u lidí se základním vzděláním, Český rozhlas. https://www.irozhlas.cz/zpravy-domov/novi-populiste-turek-a-konecna-bodovali-na-hranicich-kraju-a-u-lidi-se-zakladnim_2406110500_jgr

Havlík, V. (2015). The Economic Crisis in the Shadow of Political Crisis: The Rise of Party Populism in the Czech Republic. In Kriesi, H. & Pappas, T. S. (Eds.), European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession. ECPR Press: 199–216.

Havlík, V., & Kluknavská, A. (2022). The Populist Vs Anti‐Populist Divide in the Time of Pandemic: The 2021 Czech National Election and its Consequences for European Politics. Journal of Common Market Studies, 60(S1), 76–87.

Havlík, V., & Kluknavská, A. (2023). Our people first (again)! The impact of the Russia-Ukraine War on the populist Radical Right in the Czech Republic. In Ivaldi, G., & Zankina, E. (Eds.), The Impacts of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Right-Wing Populism in Europe. European Center for Populism Studies: 90–101.

Havlík, V., & Voda, P. (2018). Cleavages, protest or voting for hope? The rise of centrist populist parties in the Czech Republic. Swiss Political Science Review, 24(2), 161–186.

Hrbková, L., Voda, P., & Havlík, V. (2024). Politically motivated interpersonal biases: Polarizing effects of partisanship and immigration attitudes. Party Politics, 30(3), 450–464.

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Former U.S. President Donald Trump and vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance at a rally in Atlanta, GA, on August 3, 2024. Photo: Phil Mistry.

Anticipating the Trump Effect: Strengthening the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum Amid Populist Pressures

by ArticlesECPS YouthEditor’s ChoiceHomeMigrationPolicy Papers

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Please cite as:
Bottura, Beatrice; O’Keeffe-Johnston, Paris; Gkampeta, Pinelopi; Malai, Ludmila; Lynch, Matt; Park, Joon & Gräf, Leon. (2024). “Anticipating the Trump Effect: Strengthening the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum Amid Populist Pressures.” Policy Papers. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). October 24, 2024. https://doi.org/10.55271/pop0001

 

This policy paper analyzes the potential effects of the 2024 US presidential election on EU politics, particularly the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. A Trump victory may intensify Euroscepticism and lead to more restrictive migration policies among his European allies. Conversely, a Trump defeat could fuel distrust in electoral processes, potentially triggering events similar to the 2021 Capitol attack. The paper recommends regular in-depth country reviews (ICRs) to develop tailored migration strategies, anticipating that either election outcome could increase fragmentation and populist influence within EU member states, though with varying degrees of impact.

Authored by Beatrice Bottura, Paris O’Keeffe-Johnston, Pinelopi Gkampeta, Ludmila Malai, Matt Lynch, Joon Park & Leon Gräf

Edited by Beatrice Bottura & Paris O’Keeffe-Johnston

Executive Summary

As the “Common Implementation Plan” for the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum was adopted by the European Commission in June 2024 (European Commission, 2024a), the European and international political landscape was changing. The results of the EU 2024 parliamentary elections revealed a rise of Right-wing populist parties (RPP) on the European scene, a trend which mirrors recent national electoral results (Europe Elects, 2024; Europe Politique, 2024). This right-wing shift is causing a tightening of migration policy across EU countries and affecting the viability of the EU Pact on Migration, with almost half EU countries openly contesting its initiatives and some countries even considering an opt-out, following the Netherlands’ recent opt-out request (Carlson, 2024; Liboreiro, 2024). Simultaneously, former president Donald Trump is running for office once again. 

This policy paper examines how the results of the 2024 presidential election might affect EU politics, especially in regard to the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. Though a horizon scanning methodology, the paper found that Trump’s previous presidency coincided with a period of increased Euroscepticism within member countries (Langlois, 2021; Löfflmann, 2019). Additionally, Trump has built strong connections with RPP leaders which, in the past, have become more vocal as Trump gained power (Fusiek & Marconi, 2021). Given Trump’s stance on political elites, supra-national organizations and migration, the paper predicts that:

– in the case of Trump’s victory: Eurosceptic sentiments and restrictive migration policies might increase across the EU, especially among Trump’s European supporters

– in the case of Trump’s loss: events similar to the 2021 Capitol attack might occur (Abramowitz, 2024) which could further distrust in electoral processes both in the US and the EU. This could be leveraged by populist actors, which, to a lesser extent compared to a Trump victory, could still increase fragmentation across EU member states

Finally, given these findings, the paper provides policy options for the European Commission to take into consideration for a successful implementation of the plan. Among these, the paper focuses on the introduction of regular in-depth country reviews (ICRs) which are aimed at creating country-tailored implementation strategies for the Pact. In practice, by shedding light onto nation-specific issues when it comes to migration and asylum, these ICRs would allow national leaders to have more control over the actual implementation of the Pact. This should increase the willingness to cooperate of RPPs as it brings together both national sovereignties, an important value to these parties, and European policy.

 

1. Introduction

Migration is one of the most discussed political and security challenges today. Worsening conflicts, natural disasters, and the hopes of better economic opportunities bring people from across the world to migrate to other areas that are deemed more prosperous or can offer something their homeland cannot. The nature of migration is transboundary, often exacerbating geopolitical issues among countries that are expected to share the burden. This can be illustrated by Trump’s abandonment of the EU during the refugee crisis, leaving Europe alone in dealing with the issue (Koppa, 2017). 

As of 2022, there are 46.1 million migrants in the US (Geiger, 2024). Anti-migration and its link to nationalism are core aspects of Trump’s political campaigns and of his past presidency (Löfflmann, 2019). Indeed, during his past campaigns, Trump had made promises for stricter migration policies. Quotes such as “America First” and “Make America Great Again” were commonplace in his speeches and rallies (Lacatus, 2021; Löfflmann, 2022; Magcamit, 2017; Mirza et al., 2021). Unlike other populists, Trump succeeded in passing several anti-migration policies while in office (Table 1).

Europe has also faced difficulties controlling the increasing numbers of its migrant population. According to the International Organization for Migration (McAuliffe & Oucho, 2024), there are approximately 87 million migrants living in Europe. In the context of migration crises, which often disproportionately impact EU member states, balancing European cohesion has fragmented the Union. Additionally, in recent years, Western politics has witnessed a trend of a right-wing shift (see Figure 1) and increased support for populist leaders, which exacerbates this fragmentation (Europe Elects, 2024; Europe Politique, 2024).

Trump’s US presidency coincided with a period of EU instability which saw the rise of right-wing populist parties (RPP) in Europe and the significant decision for Britain to leave the EU, with migration a core topic for the Leave campaign (Langlois, 2021; Löfflmann, 2019). Authors such as Fusiek & Marconi (2021) argue that the popularity of a nationalistic populist in the US gave confidence to populist political actors in Europe to become more vocal and gather support. In the face of EU fragmentation, the Union must be prepared for leniency with its Pact on Migration and Asylum if it wishes to maintain cohesion. 

Note: Data sourced from European parliament election 2024, by Europe Elects, 2024 (https://europeelects.eu/ep2024/). Data sourced from Parliament Européen (2019, 2014, 2009, 2004, 1999, 1994, 1989, 1984, 1979), by Europe Politique, 2024.(https://www.europe-politique.eu/parlement-europeen.htm).

This paper delivers policy suggestions for the successful implementation of the Pact, especially in the context of the 2024 US Presidential elections and of its possible repercussions. To do so, the paper briefly delves into the 2024 EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, focusing on its strengths, its weaknesses, and how it is perceived by EU member states. Following, the paper conducts a horizon scanning methodology to discuss the possible outcomes of the 2024 US elections and how they could affect international politics and the implementation of the Pact. Finally, the paper provides recommendations to the European Commission to ensure readiness and resilience in the implementation of the Pact in any scenario deriving from the result of the upcoming US elections.

2. The EU and Migration

The EU has faced difficulties in dealing with migration, especially as the issue disproportionately affects certain member states. In dealing with this issue, the EU has developed the EU Pact on Migration, for all EU member states to adhere to.

2.1 The Pact on Migration and Asylum

The 2024 EU Pact on Migration and Asylum establishes a comprehensive and flexible framework that addresses border management, asylum processes, and migrant integration while introducing a mandatory yet adaptable solidarity mechanism (European Commission, 2024b). This framework, as shown in Figure 2, aims to distribute responsibilities more fairly among member states, allowing contributions through relocations, financial support, or alternative measures (Ibid.). However, the Pact faces significant challenges, including bureaucratic complexity, varying political will, and potential conflicts with member states resistant to migration, such as those of the Visegrád Group (V4: Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary), which will be discussed in section 2.2 of the paper. 

Note: From Pact on Migration and Asylum, by European Commission, 2024b. (https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asylum/pact-migration-and-asylum_en). Copyright 2024 by the European Union.

A SWOT analysis of the Pact (Figure 3) was made by the authors which found that the resource-intensive nature of the Pact may strain member states’ capacities, particularly amid shifting political priorities. Nonetheless, it offers opportunities for enhanced cooperation, stronger external partnerships, and economic benefits through managed migration. These potential gains are counterbalanced by threats such as geopolitical instability, rising anti-immigration sentiment, legal disputes within the EU, and the risk of migrants resorting to more dangerous routes due to increased border controls. The success of the pact will depend on its ability to navigate these complexities while ensuring the protection of human rights and fair distribution of responsibilities.

Note: Authors’ creation.

2.2 Backlash from Member States

The Pact has received severe backlash from a number of actors within the EU for very different reasons. On the one hand, due to its attempt at regulating and partially restricting immigration, many on the political left view the Pact as giving too many concessions to the far right, and failing to protect fundamental rights (Griera, 2024). For example, the German Left MEP Cornelia Ernst called the pact “a pact of shame and disgrace,” while other MEPs from Left and Green parties considered the Pact to be a model for a fortress of Europe and a victory for the far-right (Ibid.). Many NGOs also criticized the Pact, with Amnesty International attesting a “surge in suffering” for asylum seekers, if the Pact was to enter into effect (Nattrass, 2024). On the other hand, right-wing governments and parties across the EU also greatly criticized the Pact.

However, contrary to the above-mentioned examples, their main concern is that the Pact is not strict enough on immigration regulation and forces every EU member state to contribute and show solidarity, hence overruling national sovereignty (Nattrass, 2024). The Visegrád countries in particular – namely: Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary – heavily criticized the Pact and its solidarity mechanisms, with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk promising that Poland will “find ways so that even if the migration pact comes into force in a roughly unchanged form, we will protect Poland against the relocation mechanism” (Nattrass, 2024), while the Hungarian government also pledged to find ways to avoid taking in immigrants and called the Pact “another nail in the coffin of the European Union” (Nattrass, 2024). 

In addition to the Visegrád Group, an increasing number of member countries is expressing its discontent with the Pact, a trend tied to the rise of RPPs throughout Europe (Vinocur et al., 2024). In particular, this is manifesting through a push for tighter deportation and border control measures across Europe (Vinocur et al., 2024). 17 countries in the Schengen area – Austria and the Netherlands and endorsed by Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovakia and Sweden. Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein – have recently signed an appeal to the EU executive to toughen return policies when asylum applications are rejected as well as increasing European coordination when it comes to deportations (Carlson, 2024; Liboreiro, 2024). Additionally, numerous countries in the Schengen area – i.e. Austria, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Slovenia, and Sweden (Dell’Anna, 2024) – are increasing border controls, which hinders the right to freedom of movement. In addition to these general trends, in countries where RPPs are gaining executive positions, the stance on migration policy is toughening even more (Carlson, 2024; Stekić, 2024; Vinocur et al., 2024). Recent examples of this trend – including the extreme example of the Netherlands’ request to opt-out of the Pact – are shown visually in Figure 4 and a full table is available in Appendix A.

Note: Authors’ creation.

This restrictive stance appears also at the European level where, as illustrated in section 1, right-leaning groups have gained more influence (Vinocur et al., 2024). In particular, members of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and of the European People’s Party (EPP) support the toughening of deportation mechanisms, the increase of asylum-seeker reception centers outside of the EU, and the funding for extra EU border control (Ibid.). 

In sum, the Migration Pact, which is supposed to offer a compromise, is seen negatively by both sides of the political spectrum for respectively leaning too much into the opposite political spectrum, a trend that has led countries to push for a re-draft of the pact (Vinocur et al., 2024). In this context, the main challenge to the successful implementation of the Pact remains to satisfy parties and voters on the left-wing and pro-immigration side and on the right-wing anti-immigration side concurrently. This challenge will be addressed in section 5 of this policy paper, where policy options and recommendations are provided. 

3. Methodology

Horizon scanning is used by building on early warning signs and predictions based on current events, by analyzing political discourse. Geopolitical issues are increasingly complex and interconnected. With such challenges, the use of horizon scanning is crucial to prepare and inform policymakers and decision-makers about potential opportunities and threats (Amanatidou et al., 2012). There are two core aspects of horizon scanning: alerting and creating. Alerting includes the early identification of emerging issues, whereas the creative aspect refers to the reassembly of current issues into a prediction for what might develop into a policy problem. Current political discourse in Europe has centered around a migration debate and discontent towards failing solutions to handle the issue, simultaneously the US Presidential debate has Donald Trump potentially returning for a second term. 

4. Examinations of Findings: The US 2024 Presidential Elections

As a two-party system, there exists only two possible results of the US Presidential election – a Trump victory, or a Harris victory. Regardless, there shall be a possibility of outcomes in either scenario. Having conducted horizon scanning, there are two possible scenarios that may impact European politics on migration: whether Trump should achieve victory, or whether Trump reacts poorly and encourages disruption in the event of a loss.  

4.1 A Trump Victory

In the event that Trump achieves victory, there are two core aspects that will shape the political landscape around migration. Trump has demonstrated an ability to influence and encourage populists in the EU to be more vocal and gather support, as illustrated in Figure 5 (Fusiek & Marconi, 2021). In this regard, it can be expected that the political landscape in Europe will continue to favor populism during a revival of right-wing shift while Trump would have his second term. A second Trump presidential term would likely embolden European populist leaders such as Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini, Jarosław Kaczyński, and even populist parties such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) or Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ) by validating their nationalist, anti-EU, and illiberal policies (Naughtie, 2024). During his first presidency, Trump openly praised some of these leaders, especially Viktor Orbán, Trump was quoted saying “Let me just say about world leaders, Viktor Orbán, one of the most respected men, they call him a strong man” and undermined multilateral bodies, sending a clear signal that illiberal governance and nationalist policies are able to thrive without any significant repercussions from the US (Euractiv, 2024).

Note: Authors’ creation. Purple shows the Visegrád Group countries and yellow shows Western European states.
Politicians who have a direct link or friendship with Trump are highlighted in red.

Trump’s alignment with right-wing ideologies would also likely embolden these leaders to promote policies that further marginalize minority groups, restrict immigration, and consolidate political power by undermining judicial independence and press freedoms. In a second term, Trump’s open disdain for international organizations like NATO and the EU would likely reduce pressure on these populist leaders to adhere to democratic norms (Stekić, 2024). By downplaying concerns over democratic backsliding and encouraging isolationist policies, Trump would create an EU environment where these leaders and parties continue to push their nationalist agendas further, almost completely free from the fear of diplomatic or economic consequences. 

Further issues that may surface from a Trump victory is the implementation of Project 2025: a Republican policy mantra with strict consequences for migration (The Heritage Foundation, n.d.). Core proposals of the project include continued and increased funding of the ‘Border Wall’, the deportation of migrants, and the removal of visa categories for victims of crime and human trafficking (Wendling, 2024). The project calls for the dissemination of the Department of Homeland Security to be replaced with stronger immigration enforcement bodies for stricter border control (Ibid.). Legal migration would also face stricter measures, through increased fees for visa applications (Ibid.). Donald Trump, as a form of populism, has been linked to the Brexit debate and fueling the “politics of anger”, a concept which some believe has contributed to euroscepticism across the Union (Smorag, 2020; Wind, 2017). If Trump were to be re-elected, it could be expected such sentiments may become prevalent in European political discourse again.

Should Trump win and implement Project 2025, the EU could mirror a restrictive stance again. This prediction is increasingly plausible (Vinocur et al., 2024), especially given the latest trends highlighted in section 2b. Overall, Trump’s influence has the power to destabilize democracies through the use of disinformation which causes greater distrust. Trump may prompt RPP leaders and their parties to entrench their power through policies aimed at curbing media freedom, overhauling the judicial system and the rule of law both at the national and supranational level, and even denouncing opposition parties.

4.2 Reactions to A Trump Loss

On the contrary, should Harris be elected as the first woman President, implications will lead to different roads. It is possible that the post-election events of January 2021 – i.e. the Capitol attacks – could have a sequel (Abramowitz, 2024). Many EU leaders took to the media to condemn the attack on the Capitol, denouncing the use of violence in any form of democratic process. Most were outright with their criticism of Trump’s handling of the situation and the consequences of his words. Common responses from RPP leaders and members – i.e. Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, and Victor Orbán- were to include a condemning of violence, protecting democracy, whilst simultaneously illustrating Trump in a positive light, often as a ‘peacemaker’ for his limited calls to avoid violent attacks during the protest, whilst others excused Trump of any wrongdoing (Herszenhorn et al., 2021). Should a similar situation arise, where Trump would instigate a protest after losing the election, it is expected that the previously mentioned EU leaders would follow similar actions as before. In this scenario, European leaders are likely to hold a consensus view that democracy is the forefront of our political system, not to be undermined. Likewise, it is expected that Harris would share the same sentiments for democracy and condemn his final attempt at power.

Regardless of the outcome of the 2024 US presidential election, Europe is undeniably fragmented politically, which significantly impacts the practical implementation of the EU Migration Pact. In recent months, in Germany, the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been vocal about its opposition to migration. It further supports a “remigration” implementation (Hockenos, 2024) that has surged in federal elections. In Austria, the Freedom of Austria Party (FPÖ) won in the recent election. The FPÖ is expected to push a hardline stance on immigration and resist EU-level initiatives. The FPÖ will likely join forces with other mainstream populist parties (Cameron & and Goldstein, 2024). 

In addition to the success of far-right parties across Europe, the ongoing war in Ukraine continues to drive a wedge between nations more friendly and dependent on Russia to take a harder line on accepting Ukrainian refugees, let alone migrants from the Middle East or North Africa. Nations such as Greece and Italy continue to deal with the Mediterranean migration crisis, which is expected to continue for years. These existing crises continue to be a launch pad for far-right populist parties’ rhetoric. 

5. Policy Options 

At the time of writing, there was around one month remaining until the 2024 US Presidential election would be held. Three policy options were created for the European Commission to consider for a smooth and coherent implementation of the 2024 EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. 

  1. The European Commission must organize a commonly managed and coordinated European asylum system centered around the wellness of human beings: the EU should work on the defense of fundamental human rights, immigrants’ safety and dignity. It is also suggested that the Union ought to use the reservation of migrants as a last resort and try to create other effective solutions, like open reception centers, since prolonged detention results in devastating effects on migrants’ mental health (International Rescue Committee, 2023).
  2. The European Commission should strengthen the resettlement of refugees in the Union Resettlement Framework (URF): this includes timely and just handling of the reception and integration of refugees and immigrants from day one. More specifically, the Union must offer decent reception conditions throughout the EU, such as providing education and healthcare. Moreover, the Union ought to worry about the progress with an organized and transparent mechanism for monitoring the fundamental rights of asylum seekers. 
  3. The European Commission should fund and conduct regular in-depth country reviews (ICRs) to track the impact of the Pact on Migration and Asylum at a national level and allow for country-tailored implementation strategies:similar reviews are already conducted by the Commission such as European Semester reports, the Environmental Implementation Review and economic IDRs annually. These reviews would provide a mechanism for member states to detail the impact of migration in areas that are core concerns for countries. Each country review should conclude with action points and priorities at the member state and EU-level. 

Though all three policy options are of equal importance to ensure the successful and coherent implementation of the plan, this paper proceeds to focus on the last policy option as a strong recommendation to the European Commission, in order to ensure preparedness for the ongoing implementation of the Pact in this time of political uncertainty. The reasons and specifics behind this recommendation follow in the next subsection. 

5.1 Recommendations

The recommendation of ICRs within the context of the implementation of the Pact acts as a preventative method which focuses on three areas and values that are important for European RPPs with the aim of ensuring their increased cooperation in the implementation of the Pact. First, the country-specific analyses yielded by the IDRs would allow national leaders to suggest implementation strategies tailored to each nation’s socio-economic needs and capabilities. These tailored solutions will preserve national sovereignty. Second, through these country-specific analyses and implementation strategies, it would be possible to put a specific attention on a proper cultural integration of migrants, ensuring their wellbeing within society whilst preserving national traditions. This possibility could strengthen social cohesion, hence appeasing any anti-immigration sentiments that are likely to be strengthened by Trump’s influence. Finally, IDRs would strengthen national agency and allow for national interests to be at the heart of policy implementation whilst EU’s core objectives and values are upheld.

In particular, to ensure their above-mentioned purpose, we envision ICRs to present key sections as follows. First, an Economic Contributions and Challenges of Migration section of the review would report statistics relating to the economy, workforce and their welfare states. This will allow member states to further detail shortages in the job market where migration of people with work experiences related to the field are required. For example, countries experiencing shortages of agricultural workers, healthcare, or otherwise may request that their migrant quota includes those able to contribute to those sectors. Migration is often talked about as a burden by RPPs, highlighting the skills and benefits migrants can bring to suffering industries should mitigate this issue.

Second, a section dedicated to reporting on Social Dynamics and Community Integration would allow states to report statistics related to socio-cultural data, such as attendance to language courses, educational attendance, and integration into society through work or social programmed. This would address the common concerns of RPP tied to the erasure of national identity and traditions due to immigration. It is hoped that providing member states an avenue to report on socio-cultural impacts of migration will demonstrate an effort to protect national identity whilst promoting integration  

Finally, a section for Impacts Not Otherwise Stated is proposed. This would allow member states to flag any additional issues they are facing in the implementation of the Pact to EU institutions. Such issues could include difficulties in processing of incoming migrants, including manpower, biometrics, and service availability. Overall, this should help with national governance for the Pact.

All ICRs ought to conclude with a plan for the future. Plans should enable co-working between the Commission and Member States to come up with priorities and action points for each stakeholder going forward with the Pact, as similar EU reports conclude with. With this recommendation, member states can agree with the EU on what is most important and applicable to the individual country, rather than having a “one size fits all” method applied to all EU members. 

Due to the politically sensitive nature of migration, the importance of impartiality was noted. It is recommended that the ICRs are conducted independently, with assistance from the Eurostat peer-review team. The EU has six funding pools that it may draw from that can achieve this recommendation feasibly: (1) Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, (2) Internal Security Fund, (3) European Social Fund Plus, (4) European Regional Development Fund, (5) Neighborhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument, and (6) Emergency Assistance and Other Ad Hoc Funding.

6. Conclusion

At this stage, the result of the American elections is ambiguous. The scenario of Trump’s re-election to power will bring about unfavorable results both at the overall EU level and on the immigration issue, as a Trump presidency would entail significant disruptions in US-EU relations (Frangeul-Alves & Weber, 2024).  Trump’s troubled relations with the EU and his pursuit of isolationism, as well as his apparent apathy towards immigrants and refugees, mean that the former president will once again leave the Union alone on the issue that plagues it. Therefore, the developments in the field of immigration will differ greatly depending on the US election results.

In any case, the EU should not be complacent, regardless of the election result, as the migrant – refugee crisis plagues Brussels. Migration is one of the most important policy issues (Lovato, 2021) and it has turned into a geopolitical issue. Immigration is a labyrinthine for the EU and a complex problem, thus the solution will not be easy, especially given EU member states’ diverse opinions on the matter (Donceel, 2024). 

To conclude, this policy paper delved into the implementation of this Pact, focusing on how it is susceptible to the rise of populism both in Europe and abroad. In particular, after conducting a SWOT analysis of the Pact and providing an overview of how it is perceived across Europe, the paper focused on how the implementation of the Pact could be affected by the results of the upcoming US presidential elections. Based on previous cases, it is expected that in case of victory Trump will incentivize his EU “allies”, such as Hungary’s Orban, Italy’s Meloni, and Slovakia’s Fico (Naughtie, 2024), resist the Pact in the name of national sovereignty and anti-elitism. In the case of Trump’s loss however, the likely scenario is that the former president would encourage them to challenge the election outcomes and attempt to undermine democratic processes. This could deepen the public’s distrust in representative institutions across the US and the EU, ultimately furthering the disengagement from electoral processes (i.e. increasing voter absenteeism).   

The authors of this paper believe that the recommended introduction of periodic in-depth country reviews (ICRs) would serve as a preventative measure in anticipation of Trump influencing RPPs in Europe. Of course, whilst future outcomes are uncertain due to the vivacity of the electoral campaigns in the US as well as worsening international orders, we are confident that as the European Commission sustains the cooperative nature of the Pact across political spectrums – which we recommend doing by ensuring tailored implementation strategies across member states’ government – its implementation will be successful. 

 

(*) This policy paper is based on research conducted by Beatrice Bottura, Paris O’Keeffe-Johnston, Pinelopi Gkampeta, Ludmila Malai, Matt Lynch, Joon Park and Leon Gräf during the ECPS Case Competition “US Foreign Policy and Populism,” held as part of the ECPS Summer School from July 1-5, 2024. 

Authors’ Biographies

Beatrice Bottura is a Sciences Po master student in Public Policy, specializing in Social Policy and Social Innovation, and a Central European University (CEU) graduate in Philosophy Politics and Economics. Her research interests revolve around the crisis of democracy and how it relates to political attitudes and policymaking. She has explored this in her bachelor thesis “Ethnopopulists’ reaction to crises: the case of Fratelli D’Italia”, from which she derived an article for the Horizon Europe project “AuthLIB – Neo-Authoritarianisms in Europe and the Liberal Democratic Response”, which she is involved in as a research assistant. For this project she has worked with CEU’s Democracy institute and Sciences Po’s Centre d’Études Européennes (CEE). Particularly, she conducted discourse analyses for the working paper “Illiberalism and Social Policy: A Four-Country Comparison”, is authoring an upcoming publication on varieties of illiberalism across policy areas with CEU and has coded speech for the CEE’s work measuring “Ideological configurations”. 

Joon Park is a third-year student at George Washington University, pursuing a bachelor’s in international Affairs and Finance with a minor in Economics. Born to Korean immigrants and raised in Germany, her academic focus spans EU economics, German domestic and foreign politics, U.S. foreign policy, and East Asian geopolitical strategy. She is currently researching the rise of right-wing populism in Europe in collaboration with the Center for Faith, Identity, and Globalization in Washington, D.C. Joon’s passion lies in exploring how global political systems and economic dynamics intersect to shape international relations and policy. 

Matthew Lynch is a Master of Science candidate in Global Studies and International Relations at Northeastern University in Boston. He received a Bachelor of Science in Supply Chain Management from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. With a background in international business, his current research focuses on how populism creates vulnerabilities in EU defense and security, particularly the potential for external actors to exploit these weaknesses. He also researches German foreign and defense policy.

Leon Gräf holds a BA in Political Science and Philosophy, University of Heidelberg, Germany and an MA in Political Science, University of Mannheim, Germany. He is currently working as Research Fellow at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law, and as a Research Assistant at the Chair of Empirical Macrosociology at Heidelberg University. Additionally, is has been working as a researcher at the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (HIIK) since 2021. His MA thesis focused on mediator characteristics and their effect on ceasefire success across different regions. 

Pinelopi Gkampeta is a graduate student in the Advanced M.Sc. in “European Integration” in Brussels School of Governance (VUB) and she currently lives in Brussels. Furthermore, she has obtained a master’s degree in “International and European Governance and Politics” from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and a bachelor’s degree in “Philosophy” from the same university. She has taken part in the Erasmus+ Program “Maritime Security Common Module “by European Security and Defence College and Hellenic Naval Academy. Moreover, she is a research intern in the Institute of International Relations (Athens, Greece) and also an editor and analyst at the Association of International and European Affairs. Pinelopi worked as a research assistant for the Identity and Conflict Lab (Yale University) for some months. Her areas of interest and research are EU as a Global Actor, EU External Relations, EU Security and Defense Policy, Maritime Security and Immigration Policy.

Paris O’Keeffe-Johnston holds an MA in International Relations, Conflict & Security from Northumbria University. Her research focuses primarily on societal security, with an emphasis on digital threats. Her dissertation explored how EU policy documents framed cybersecurity as an existential threat. Currently, her research interests have expanded to include the societal risks posed by AI. This includes how populists may use generative AI to either gather support or create the illusion of widespread backing, as well as to drive disinformation campaigns. By investigating this area, she aims to uncover how algorithms could be leveraged for early detection and mitigation of polarizing content ahead of elections. 

Ludmila Malai is an experienced EU Project Manager at the Intercultural Dialogue Platform, with a diverse academic background in Economics, Administration, Politics, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution. She holds a Master’s in International Law and Security Studies from the Free University of Brussels and is fluent in English, French, Russian, Italian, and Romanian. Over the past six years, Ludmila has specialized in writing and coordinating European projects focused on CVE/PVE, radicalization, combating racism, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, the security of places of worship, women’s empowerment, and youth civic engagement.

 

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Prabowo Subianto sings during a grand campaign at GBK Stadium in Jakarta on March 23, 2014. After four attempts, Prabowo was finally elected President of Indonesia in 2024. Photo: MRNPic.

From Political Pariah to President: Prabowo Subianto and the Perils of Populism in Indonesia

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Please cite as:
Watmough, Simon P. (2021). “From Political Pariah to President: Prabowo Subianto and the Perils of Populism in Indonesia.” ECPS Leader Profiles. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). October 24, 2024. https://doi.org/10.55271/lp0011

 

Prabowo Subianto’s victory in Indonesia’s February 2024 presidential election marks a pivotal moment in the nation’s democratic evolution, echoing a global shift towards nationalist populism. As Indonesia’s eighth president, Prabowo’s political journey and ideological stance have sparked concerns about the future of the country’s democratic institutions. His controversial military past, including allegations of human rights abuses in East Timor and Aceh during the 1990s, continues to raise alarms about the potential for authoritarianism under his leadership. Critics fear his presidency may signal a return to repressive practices, with threats to civil liberties and increased polarization. Prabowo’s background as a former military general adds to concerns about a consolidation of power and the erosion of democratic checks and balances in one of the world’s largest democracies.

By Simon P. Watmough

Introduction

Prabowo Subianto’s[1] stunning victory in Indonesia’s presidential elections in February marks a significant moment in the country’s democratic journey, reflecting a global trend towards authoritarian nationalist populism. As he assumes the presidency of the world’s third-largest democracy, Prabowo’s political career and ideological stance have ignited conversations about the potential implications for Indonesia’s democratic institutions and pluralistic society, prompting observers at home and abroad to scrutinize the trajectory Indonesia might take under his administration. This profile joins that conversation, asking: Who is Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia’s eighth president?

If the “peculiarity of populist discourse is to frame politics as an antagonistic confrontation between the people and the oligarchy” (de la Torre, 2007: 389), then Prabowo hits the mark. Known for his assertive rhetoric and strongman persona, Prabowo – a retired lieutenant general in the Indonesian Armed Forces (Tentara Nasional Indonesia, TNI) – has successfully tapped into a vein of nationalist sentiment in Indonesia, promising robust leadership in the face of mounting economic and security challenges.

It is scarcely surprising that Prabowo embodies all the qualities of a “warrior populist” in the vein of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, as he has publicly declared his admiration for the late Venezuelan general-turned-dictator (Aspinall, 2015: 2). Equally, as the brother of one of Indonesia’s richest men (and a multimillionaire in his own right), we can see him as the paradigmatic “pluto-populist” in the vein of Donald Trump, the late Silvio Berlusconi and of course, Thailand’s Thaksin Shinawatra, whom Prabowo openly admires (ibid.).

The country itself is no stranger to populism, which has “deep roots in Indonesia” (Aspinall, 2015: 3). “Diffuse” forms of populist mobilization have played an outsized role in the country’s mass politics since the beginning, even during the “Guided Democracy” of the founding president, Sukarno, and the authoritarian “New Order” period under Suharto (ibid.). Some have even located the roots of Indonesian populism in the country’s birth as an independent nation (van Klinken, 2020). However, Indonesia’s current “populist moment” reflects conditions that have emerged in the 21st century, not least the attenuation of party functioning in the campaigns of political actors and the rise of “media-based populism,” which is “now the default mode of electioneering” (Gammon, 2023: 442). The allure of authoritarian nationalist populism, with its promise of decisive action and appeal to traditional values, poses questions about the future of Indonesia’s open and inclusive political climate. Critics argue that this could lead to a regression in human rights, freedom of the press and minority protections, elements that are foundational to Indonesia’s democratic framework.

This profile offers a comprehensive overview of the factors that have shaped Prabowo’s outlook and approach, including his early life, his military career (including his close links with the Suharto regime and his role in the transition to democracy in 1998) as well as his subsequent business and political ventures, all of which have led him to the seat of ultimate power. Charting his move from political pariah to perennial contender and now president, it sketches the key influences that have shaped his authoritarian populist outlook and the controversies that continue to devil him and give his critics pause for concern. Ultimately, it suggests he is likely to work to centralize power in the hands of the presidency, undermine Indonesia’s independent institutions, take the country backwards and possibly threaten to ignite conflicts far and wide.

A Cosmopolitan “Third Culture Kid” Forged in Exile

Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto greets the public during a 2024 general election campaign in Bengkulu City, Indonesia, on January 11, 2024. Photo: Shutterstock.

Prabowo Subianto Djojohadikusumo was born on 17 October 1951, in Jakarta, Indonesia, into an aristocratic Javanese family “line that goes back centuries” (Connelly & Laksmana, 2018). His grandfather, Margono Djojohadikusumo (1894–1978), a prominent economist and founder of Bank Negara Indonesia (also serving as its first president), was a leading figure in Indonesia’s independence movement, while his father, Sumitro Djojohadikusumo (1917–2001), held key positions as Indonesia’s minister of trade and industry. Growing up amidst this political and economic elite exposed Prabowo to the inner workings of government and economics from a very young age (Purdey, 2016).

In the late 1950s, at just seven years of age, Prabowo was forced into exile with his family, his father and grandfather having been central players in an internal rebellion against Sukarno. Exile took the family first to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, then Switzerland and later to the United Kingdom, where Prabowo studied, graduating from the prestigious American School in London (ASL) in 1968 (Tanu, 2004). This international journey at a young age had a profound impact on Prabowo, exposing him to a wide range of cultures and shaping him into a “third culture kid” (Pollock & Reken, 2009), one who learned precisely how to navigate elite cosmopolitan circles (Tanu, 2004).

After the fall of Sukarno and the rise of the New Order regime in 1966 (headed by Suharto), the family were no longer political exiles. As Aspinall (2015: 3) notes, Prabowo returned to Indonesia “more comfortable speaking English than Indonesian, yet with powerful ambitions” to make something of himself in the country of his birth. Indeed, from a young age, Prabowo displayed a natural aptitude for strategy and a strong aspiration to the grand exercise of political power – a particular fascination in his youth was the Turkish general-turned-founding father Kemal Mustafa Ataturk (Friend, 2003: 323). Recognizing his teenage son’s leadership potential, Sumitro encouraged Prabowo to attend the military academy and pursue a career in the armed forces.

Military Career and Accusations of Human Rights Abuses

Understanding Prabowo’s military career is central to understanding both his outlook and style and the controversies that have dogged him in politics since 2004. His military journey began in 1970 when he enrolled in the Indonesian Military Academy in Magelang. He graduated in 1974, alongside fellow cadets who would go on to hold senior leadership positions, including Indonesia’s sixth president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (widely known as SBY).

After graduation, Prabowo served in elite regiments of the TNI, first in the Indonesian Special Forces (known as Kopassus), which he joined in 1976 and where he gained experience in counterinsurgency operations (Aspinall, 2015: 6). Indeed, during his several tours of East Timor after the Indonesian invasion in December 1975, he was responsible for many human rights violations. At just 26 years old, Prabowo became the youngest commander of a key commando unit operating in East Timor and was implicated in the execution of East Timor’s first prime minister and freedom fighter, Nicolau dos Reis Lobato, in December 1978 (van Klinken, 2014).

Prabowo’s career took off after his marriage to Siti Hediati Hariyadi (“Titiek”) – the daughter of Indonesia’s strongman President Suharto – in 1983. His marriage to Titiek further elevated his status within the ruling political elite and gave him access to important networks and resources, allowing him to rise through the ranks of the Indonesian military more swiftly than many of his peers.

In the early 1990s, Prabowo, now a Major General, led Kopassus Group 3 in its attempts to suppress the East Timorese independence movement. His methods included using irregular troops, known as “ninja” gangs, and militias directed by Kopassus commanders, leading to a rise in human rights abuses. He has also been implicated in killings in Indonesia’s restive province of West Papua, particularly targeting the region’s independence activists (Nairn, 2024). During the dying days of his father-in-law’s regime, “Prabowo emerged as the leader of a palace guard of generals most willing to use coercion to defend the regime” (Aspinall, 2015: 6). In March 1998, Prabowo was appointed as the head of the 27,000-strong Army Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad) – a position Suharto himself once held, which he used to topple Sukarno and propel himself to power in 1965.

Just three months into this role, during the May 1998 riots, Prabowo sought to deploy Kostrad units to restore order in Jakarta. This move was met with controversy as it involved hundreds of individuals trained by Kopassus, Prabowo’s former command. Accusations of importing trouble and seeking to discredit rivals were raised, with some arguing that Prabowo was putting pieces in place for a military coup in which he would assume command of Indonesia. These events escalated tensions and played a role in the resignation of President Suharto on May 21, 1998 (Aspinall, 2005: 212).

In the aftermath of the 1998 riots, investigations revealed allegations of human rights abuses and kidnappings involving Prabowo’s troops, including the torture of democracy activists. He acknowledged responsibility for the abductions (although he continues to deny any role in the activists’ deaths), leading to his discharge from military service in August 1998 (Nairn, 2024).

Second Exile and Business Empire

As soon as he was expelled from the military, Prabowo again went into exile (this time self-imposed), residing in Jordan (Prabowo is reportedly close to King Abdullah). During this time, he downplayed involvement in the 1998 riots and maintained that he was not responsible for betraying his country or its leaders (Tesoro, 2000). On his return to Indonesia in 2004, he immediately began to plot a path to the presidency (Aspinall & Mietzner, 2014: 352).

At the same time, Prabowo ventured into the business world, collaborating with his younger brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo. His business interests reflect a pattern endemic to Indonesia’s “oligarchic” political economy (Winters, 2013). Today, Prabowo’s Nusantara Group oversees an extensive portfolio of 27 companies operating both within Indonesia and internationally. These companies cover a diverse range of sectors, including Nusantara Energy (focusing on oil, natural gas, and coal), Tidar Kerinci Agung (engaged in palm oil plantations), and Jaladri Nusantara (operating in the fishery industry) (Purdey, 2016).

From Political Pariah to Perennial Presidential Candidate

Even as a solider, Prabowo Subianto had established a reputation as a political player, leveraging his connections with President Suharto in the 1990s to engage in efforts to suppress critics in the journalistic and political spheres. In the dying days of the New Order, Prabowo attempted to sway Goenawan Mohamad to sell his controversial Tempo magazine (a leading mouthpiece of popular dissent) and warned various influential figures, including Abdurrahman Wahid (popularly known as Gus Dur, who served as Indonesia’s fourth president from 1999 to 2001) and Nurcholish Madjid, against taking a public stand against the regime (Friend, 2003: 203).

By 2004, Prabowo’s political aspirations led him to vie for the Golkar party’s presidential candidacy, but he received minimal support. He speaks of this campaign as a “trial run” that gave him the experience he needed to move forward. In this period, he also began to create grassroots networks, especially among farmers, small traders, and a wide range of other organizations, including “veterans’ associations, labor unions and organizations of village heads, which could provide him with access to a mass base” (Aspinall, 2015: 9) on which to ground a populist political movement.

In 2008, Prabowo’s inner circle established the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), supporting his presidential run in 2009. Hashim Djojohadikusumo serves as party chairman. Despite not winning enough parliamentary seats, Prabowo ran as a vice-presidential candidate alongside Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Sukarno. The pair, known as Mega–Pro, lost to SBY, who succeeded Megawati as Indonesia’s sixth president on 20 October 2004. Unbowed by this failure, Prabowo doubled down on building up Gerindra, his business interests, and his populist networks (Mao, 2024).

The 2014 Presidential Election: The “Battle of the Populists”

President-elect Prabowo Subianto with the 7th President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, at the 79th Indonesian National Armed Forces Anniversary in Jakarta, Indonesia, on October 5, 2024. Photo: Donny Hery.

By 2014, Indonesian politics had reached a critical juncture, one that was ripe for populist mobilization. While SBY’s ten years in office had seen the country bed down several important reforms, recover fully from the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and resolve some longstanding regional conflicts, they were largely seen as a lost opportunity, mainly due to the vacillating leadership of President Yudhoyono himself (Aspinall et all., 2015: 1–2). The period of political indecision and policy stagnation that characterized the last years of his presidency set the stage for the rise of a “populist challenger” in Indonesian politics, something “political scientists had been predicting for years” (Aspinall & Mietzner, 2014: 351; see also Anugrah, 2020: 5). Indeed, as Aspinall has rightly noted, “The rise of an authoritarian populist challenger like Prabowo was almost overdetermined in contemporary Indonesia” (Aspinall, 2015: 3)

Scholars widely agree that 2014 was a “watershed” and a “turning point” in Indonesian democracy in the post-Suharto era (see, for example, Anugrah, 2020: 6; Aspinall & Mietzner, 2014: 347). It was the year that saw Indonesia join “the new wave of illiberal populist mobilization in both established and newer democracies” (Anugrah, 2020: 11). The result was an epic “battle of the populists” – Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”), the incumbent governor of Jakarta, and Prabowo – in the presidential elections in July. While both were clearly populist, each had a distinctive populist style that contrasted with the other. For his part, Jokowi showcased a provincial “everyman” populist style (he promised to meet Yudhoyono’s do-nothing elitism with workaday governance on a platform of good governance and populist policies like cheap healthcare and education). As Aspinall & Mietzner (2014: 351) have noted: “In Jokowi, Indonesians found someone who possessed a popular touch that was the antithesis of Yudhoyono’s wooden formality.” In stark contrast stood Prabowo, who instead offered “‘firm leadership’ as the antidote to Yudhoyono’s hesitant style of leadership” (Ibid.). Despite his impeccable establishment credentials, Prabowo cast himself in classical populist terms as an “outsider” ready to take on the Indonesian elite.

Prabowo ran a lavish campaign funded mostly by his brother, Hashim, a wildly successful businessman and one of Indonesia’s dollar billionaires. Notwithstanding his claims of wanting to fight a corrupt oligarchy, Prabowo’s campaign was “organized using a pattern of cash-driven informal networking” (Aspinall, 2015: 3) that drew in many constituencies. Despite a campaign levelled at “corrupt elites,” Prabowo managed to perfect the game of “patronage democracy” that Indonesia has become known for (Van Klinken, 2009).

Consistent with a turn to “media-based populism” in Indonesia (Gammon, 2023: 442), Prabowo campaigned “with relentless media advertising and set piece mass rallies all stressing a simple message: Prabowo was the man Indonesia needed to lead it towards a desperately needed national renaissance” (Aspinall & Mietzner, 2014: 357). Prabowo’s appeal was enhanced by a “widespread – though diffuse – mood of nostalgia for the certainties of the New Order” regime of his father-in-law Suharto, Indonesia’s longest-serving president (Aspinall, 2015: 3).

His campaign adopted classic populist discursive frames, and he cast himself as Indonesia’s “savior” with promises to rescue the country from a rapacious elite in cahoots with foreigners seeking to exploit Indonesia’s vast natural resources (Hellmann, 2019: 13). His style was avowedly nationalist and sought to both burnish his credentials as a “strong leader” and draw on the symbolism of the populist Sukarno era: “His campaign appearances had a highly theatrical character, with lots of uniforms, marching, and fiery oratory, and with much of the styling obviously based on that of Sukarno and other nationalist leaders from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s” (Aspinall & Mietzner, 2014: 352).

Moreover, despite his claims to be the answer to the corruption and money politics of the Indonesian campaign system, Prabowo himself marshalled a wide range of constituencies through vote buying. In this way, he was able to galvanize Islamic groups, small businessmen and other mass constituencies. As Aspinall & Mietzner (2014: 359) note, “like his Thai role model Thaksin Shinawatra,” Prabowo “appealed mainly to the rural poor for support” (although in the end, he garnered as much or more urban support). Despite his mass appeal and backing from the outgoing SBY (the president reportedly held Prabowo “unfit to be president” but bowed to pressure and opinion polling to swing his weight behind the former general at the last minute), Jokowi won with 53% of the vote, after a late scramble to get out his base of his voters to the polls.

In the aftermath of the elections, both candidates declared victory. Jokowi’s claim was backed by most independent quick counts, showing a slight lead over Prabowo. The latter, however, citing different polls, also claimed victory, a strategy he would repeat in 2019. However, he withdrew from the race on the day the official tally was to be announced, citing “massive cheating” and declaring the election unconstitutional, a move that sparked legal and political controversies, culminating in an appeal to the Constitutional Court alleging significant voting irregularities, which the court unanimously rejected.

The 2019 Rematch: Islamic Populism and a Promise to “Make Indonesia Great Again”

Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto at a campaign event in Jakarta, Indonesia, on April 4, 2014. Photo: Simon Roughneen.

The 2019 campaign set up a “rematch” between the two populists and was even more divisive than their 2014 contest (Arifianto, 2019: 46). As had been the case in 2014, Prabowo’s participation in the 2019 campaign was contentious. He initially claimed victory despite independent counts favoring Jokowi (he was eventually declared the winner with 55.5% of the vote), who later faced violent protests from his supporters challenging the results, which were ultimately upheld by the Constitutional Court (Jakarta Globe, 2019). During the campaign, Prabowo was accused of emulating the tactics used by Donald Trump in his 2016 bid for the US presidency, particularly in emphasizing economic inequalities and foreigners ripping the country off. In a speech given in October 2018, Prabowo echoed Trump’s infamous slogan by declaring his desire to “Make Indonesia Great Again.”

In a pattern that has recurred across his presidential campaigns, Prabowo reinvented himself going into the election campaign, in this case as a pious Muslim, appearing at religious festivals and Islamist rallies and actively courting Muslims: “Unlike in the 2014 election, when the Islamists were just a small contingent of Prabowo’s mainly ultranationalist coalition, the Islamists had now become an integral part of his campaign team” (Arifianto, 2019: 47). He made much of his connections with hardline Muslim groups, notably exemplified by his relationship with Muhammad Rizieq Shihab of the Islamic Defenders Front. Rizieq, in self-imposed exile in Mecca at the time, was a vocal critic of Jokowi and supporter of Prabowo. The former general pledged to facilitate Rizieq’s return to Indonesia if he won the election. Prabowo’s courting of the populist Islamic vote shifted the entire tenor of the campaign, forcing Jokowi to select the “conservative cleric Ma’ruf Amin” (Arifianto, 2019: 46) as his running mate.

Amidst a rancorous campaign, voter turnout in the 2019 elections reached record highs, fueled largely by the populist mobilization of Islam by the two leading contenders: “Religious-based polarization conducted by both sides during their campaigns helped boost total voter turnout to 154 million—approximately 80% of the electorate” (Arifianto, 2019: 49). This was up from the 69% who turned out to vote in the 2014 presidential poll (Anugrah, 2020: 9).

Rapprochement, Political Reinvention, and “Digital Populism” in the 2024 Presidential Campaign

Despite the bitterly fought campaign and Prabowo’s alleged role in violent post-election riots in Jakarta that killed six people (Soeriaatmadja & Chan, 2019), the ex-general opportunistically sought a rapprochement and approached Megawati and Jokowi to see if Gerindra could be included in the governing coalition (Indonesia’s party system is highly cartelized and parties often bandwagon in exchange for spoils; see Slater, 2018). In turn, and notwithstanding the rancor that had characterized their relations for half a decade, Jokowi appointed Prabowo his defense minister in October 2019 “as a gesture of national unity” (Anugrah, 2020: 1). Moreover, “[d]espite earlier tensions, Prabowo and Jokowi found common ground in a nationalist vision that emphasized sovereignty, defense, food security and energy security” (Utama, 2023).

His appointment as defense minister resurfaced criticisms of his past human rights abuses and comments praising charismatic populists who later became dictators, such as Hugo Chavez. Dogged by these criticisms, Prabowo sought to shed his image as a firebrand strongman (see below) in the run-up to the 2024 campaign, which culminated in a landslide win on February 14 (Prabowo took over 58% of the vote with another record turnout of 82%; Strangio, 2024).

Prabowo’s 2024 triumph after successive failed attempts rested on three central (and interrelated) dimensions, all of which contributed to his landslide win. The first was the backing of President Jokowi and the full force of the Indonesian state, which deployed a mix of “retail corruption” and “wholesale coercion” on a scale not seen in Indonesia since the 1970s (Nairn, 2024). This approach was coupled with a populist policy of offering one free meal to every child of school age in order to address malnutrition and stunting. A laudable policy on the face of it, it remains to be seen whether the US$30 billion price tag can be met from Indonesia’s strained central budget (Lindsey, 2024). Jokowi, who was term-limited, saw in Prabowo a chance to “carry forward his plans for a political dynasty and, with it, continued influence” (Utama, 2023). In late 2023, Prabowo skillfully wooed the president, offering the second spot on his ticket to Jokowi’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, whose constitutional ineligibility for the office was overruled by Indonesia’s Supreme Court, headed by none other than Gibran’s maternal uncle, Anwar Usman, in October 2023. Secondly, Prabowo had the backing of Indonesia’s elite, in particular his brother and “an alliance of mining oligarchs and several giant capitalists who … supported the pair behind the scenes” (Hermawan, 2024).

Finally, Prabowo reinvented himself yet again – this time as a “gemoy” (cute) grandpa – and launched a campaign of “digital populism” on social media (primarily the video platform TikTok), featuring him “dad dancing” on campaign stages and adopting an approach vaguely reminiscent of Trump’s rally antics. This “reinvention tour” appealed to thrill Indonesia’s GenZ and millennial voters, who make up the majority of the country’s electorate and have little or no memory of Indonesia’s authoritarian past or Prabowo’s role in the violent end to the New Order in 1998. Here, too, Jokowi’s backing was also critical, not only in furnishing the young Gibran as Prabowo’s campaign sidekick. As Ary Hermawan (2024) has noted, “Prabowo’s new persona as a ‘cuddly grandpa’ [was] manufactured by an army of cybertroopers,” the majority of which were inherited from Jokowi’s political outfit and which the Prabowo camp deftly used to blunt “campaigns targeting the former general’s checkered human rights record—a key issue in the 2014 election” that Prabowo, ironically enough, lost to Jokowi (Ibid.)

Political Style and Controversies

Presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto and vice-presidential candidate Gibran Rakabuming Raka deliver a speech to their supporters in Jakarta, Indonesia, on February 14, 2024. Photo: Prayoga Nugroho.

Prabowo has been famously described as a chameleon, presenting different colors depending on the audience. As one profile put it on the eve of the 2014 presidential campaign, “The pro-business cosmopolitan who can ‘knock Indonesia together’ is the one who shows up to events at posh Jakarta hotels with diplomats and investors. The fist-shaking demagogue is the one who appears in front of the voters” (Tanu, 2004). Prabowo’s past has been a subject of scrutiny, particularly during his presidential campaigns in 2014, 2019 and 2024, with many organizations calling for investigations into his actions during this period. As far as personality is concerned, he is often described as “temperamental,” with “a propensity for outbursts of rage that sometimes involve physical violence, with reports circulating widely of him throwing cellphones, ashtrays, and even punches when angered by his associates or underlings” (Aspinall, 2015: 8–9).

His political style is emblematic of a broader global trend towards authoritarian nationalist populism, a mode of governance characterized by strong leadership, assertive nationalism, and, often, a skepticism towards liberal democratic norms. In Indonesia, Prabowo has cultivated an image of a decisive leader, one who promises to restore order, enhance national pride and protect Indonesian interests from foreign encroachment. This approach has garnered substantial support, particularly among voters disillusioned with the perceived inefficacies of previous administrations.

Despite his impeccable elite credentials (he descends from Javanese aristocracy on his father’s side and is the scion of one of Indonesia’s wealthiest and best-connected families), Prabowo loves to style himself as an “outsider” and a “maverick.” The latter is not actually far from the truth, a personality trait that has been in evidence since his days at the military academy in the early 1970s, where — despite his impressive mastery of military lore and practice — he quickly developed a reputation for independence (his graduation was delayed because he spent some time AWOL), most likely a reflection of his experience as a “third culture kid” in exile around the world in the 1960s.

However, this same political style raises concerns about the potential erosion of democratic principles, including checks and balances, freedom of speech and minority rights. Prabowo’s emphasis on nationalism and sovereignty taps into deep-seated sentiments among the populace, yet it also risks inflaming divisions within Indonesia’s ethnically and religiously diverse society. The manifesto of his Gerindra Party calls for a rollback of the post-Suharto constitutional reforms and a return to Indonesia’s original 1945 Constitution, which Indonesia’s first two presidents, Sukarno and Suharto, had used to establish authoritarian regimes over five decades.

Prabowo’s approach to governance also reflects a skepticism towards liberal internationalism, favoring instead a more insular, Indonesia-first policy. This stance is evident in his critiques of foreign investment and his proposals to reevaluate Indonesia’s participation in international trade agreements, which he argues disadvantage Indonesian workers and compromise national sovereignty. Such positions resonate with nationalist sentiments within Indonesia, promising economic sovereignty and the protection of local industries against global market forces. However, this economic nationalism has sparked debates about the practical implications for Indonesia’s economy, with critics cautioning that protectionist policies could isolate Indonesia from global supply chains and hinder economic growth.

Conclusion: What Can We Expect from a Prabowo Presidency?

After decades of aspiring to lead Indonesia, we can be sure that Prabowo has a clear idea of where he wants to take the country and a clear plan of how to do so. Volatile and mercurial, he is equally pragmatic and will almost certainly be looking to cut deals and build alliances, not least with his major opponent, Megawati’s Indonesian Party of Struggle (PDI–P), which has the largest number of seats in Indonesia’s House of Representatives (DPR). But at 72 years of age and in less-than-robust health, time is not on his side, and he is likely to quickly lose patience with Indonesia’s messy consensus-building approach or overt political opposition, be it in the DPR or on the streets.

Throughout his political career, Prabowo Subianto has faced numerous controversies, many of which stem from his tenure in the Indonesian military, as detailed above. Allegations of human rights abuses during his leadership of the special forces in the 1990s, particularly in regions like East Timor and Aceh, have dogged him, casting a long shadow over his subsequent political endeavors. While Prabowo has consistently denied any wrongdoing, these allegations have been a focal point for critics who argue that his presidency could signal a return to the repressive practices of Indonesia’s past. This history, combined with his current political rhetoric, feeds into fears of an authoritarian drift should Prabowo consolidate power, potentially leading to a curtailment of civil liberties and a crackdown on dissent.

Prabowo’s casual disregard for democracy has also been on display during his successive presidential bids. For example, his 2014 campaign “espoused an authoritarian populist message suggesting he wanted to recentralize power and dismantle key democratic institutions” (Aspinall & Mietzner, 2014: 347). He has also floated the idea that “the country to do away with direct elections of executive government leaders—which he described as a Western product inappropriate for Indonesia” (Ibid.: 352). Before constitutional reforms in the 2000s instituted popular elections of Indonesia’s president and regional governors, they were appointed by their respective legislatures. As Tim Lindsey (2024) has recently pointed out, much of the work of dismantling the reforms of the last 30 years has already been accomplished: “Many of the elements of the New Order are already in place. Much of the work of dismantling Indonesia’s liberal democracy has already been done by the outgoing president” Jokowi, who has overseen an “illiberal turn in Indonesian democracy” over the last decade (Anugrah, 2019).

These points underscore concerns about the erosion of democratic norms and the potential for increased polarization within one of the world’s most diverse countries. Prabowo’s background as a former military general with a controversial record further compounds fears about the centralization of power and the undermining of checks and balances in governance. As this profile shows, these fears are hardly overblown – Prabowo’s record offers clear pointers as to how he is likely to attempt to govern.

Indonesia now stands at a crossroads. President Prabowo’s leadership will test the resilience of the country’s democratic institutions and its capacity to navigate the tension between strongman governance and pluralistic values. Prabowo’s tenure could bring decisive action on issues like economic sovereignty and national security, but at what cost to civil liberties and political freedoms? His legacy will be determined not just by the policies he enacts but by how he handles the delicate balance between authority and accountability, nationalism and inclusivity. The question that now lingers is whether Prabowo’s leadership will unite Indonesia under a shared vision or deepen the divisions that have long shaped the nation’s complex political landscape.

 

References

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[1] Indonesian naming conventions differ significantly from the Western model of first, middle and last names. Names may consist of one or more words, with one-word names particularly common among the Javanese (e.g., Suharto). Prabowo Subianto is commonly referred to by his first name, “Prabowo,” which aligns with Indonesian naming conventions, where individuals with multiple names are often identified with a single, unique personal name. Thus, he does not generally use the family name “Djojohadikusumo,” in contrast to his father and brother, Hashim. In this profile I introduce each politician with his or her first and second names and refer subsequently to their most commonly used one-word identifier.