Europe continues patching up democracy. Every narrow victory is a further relief. Liberals and conservatives will compete for the Polish presidency in a runoff on June 1. Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, the conservative, has emerged strengthened in elections that have further collapsed the social democratic party, which is tied in seats with the far-right Chega. And in the Romanian presidential election, the pro-European candidate, Nicusor Dan, has blocked the Trumpism of the far-right George Simion. Three victories for an increasingly narrow and diluted European political center, in the face of a far right that continues to rise. Three more chapters in the conservative turn of a European Union that fails to reverse social discontent and the continued failure of a left that has ended up becoming the defender of a status quo Disappointing, punished electorally in much of the EU.
This weekend's results do not hide or reverse the underlying concerns that have been transforming the European political landscape for years: from unrest against corruption to the impact of the war in Ukraine or the impoverishment of the middle classes. This is a Europe of persistent regional inequalities, with a spatially uneven distribution of the benefits of the EU integration process.
Increasingly weaker democracies have been unable to redress the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, the stagnation of wages and the loss of purchasing power, the fear of job obsolescence, the impact of public austerity for public austerity, and the astonishment of farms and small farmers who have felt threatened. Housing prices have grown by almost 50% on average in the EU between 2015 and 2023, but there are countries where the increase is close to or exceeds 100%, such as Portugal, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Lithuania.
Some 60 million Europeans live in places where real GDP per capita is now lower than it was in 2000. Around a third of the EU population lives in declining areas. This reality is particularly evident in France, Italy, Greece, and Croatia, but is common in virtually all EU countries. In Romania, for example, almost a quarter of the population lives on the poverty line.
The Europe of resentment and malaise is quite tangible. And the far right has been very skillful in identifying these fears and seizing the discourse of the alternative. It has shifted to promises of security, the recovery of past glories and hierarchies, and the criminalization of minorities that challenge these revisionist visions. The European Union has been seen as the architect of the protectionist amendment to an unequal capitalist globalization, which Nicolas Sarkozy promised to reestablish (unsuccessfully) back in 2008, in the midst of the unbridled expansion of the financial crisis that would eventually lead to a deep recession and a democratic crisis. In the face of global economic, trade, and governance challenges, the all-pervasive discourse of security has become the permanent rallying cry of this insecure world; it has also faced economic, social, and identity threats. European institutions warn against the impact of internal and external forces determined to further weaken the community project, propping up increasingly weak democracies.
