Switzerland is famous for allowing its citizens to determine the country's course through direct democracy. It has put everything from social issues like same-sex marriage to economic debates like basic income to referendums. Now, the country faces another momentous vote: deciding whether to legally limit its population to 10 million. This initiative, dubbed "Not in a Switzerland of 10 Million" and proposed by the far-right Swiss People's Party, will be put to a vote on June 14, the government announced Wednesday. The proposal has set off alarm bells in both the government and the business and financial sectors. They warn that such a limit could have serious consequences for the country, ranging from having to suspend agreements with the European Union to a sluggish economy due to a labor shortage. Although the government and other political parties are vehemently opposed, a December 2025 poll puts support for the initiative at around 48%, suggesting a very close race leading up to June.

All the polls predict a victory for the Socialist candidate in Sunday's presidential elections in Portugal, but in practice, André Ventura, leader of the Portuguese far right, is poised to turn defeat into his greatest opportunity. momentumIn a way, the president of Chega and leader of the opposition has already won. First, because on January 19th he made history and achieved to force a second round of voting in a presidential election For the first time since 1986. And secondly, because it has brought to the forefront a dichotomy already supported by one in four Portuguese voters – a figure that could rise to a third after Sunday. The debate, also fueled by the media, has centered on whether it is necessary to continue with the democratic system born fifty years ago with the Carnation Revolution or to promote a "fourth republic." It is "the biggest change in the Portuguese political system since April 25th" of 1974, in Ventura's own words.

Salomé Saqué (1995, Lagny-sur-Marne, France) is the most influential French journalist on social media, according to the 2024 ranking of the prestigious Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Specialized in social rights, feminism and international politics, since 2021 she is a member of the independent media outlet Blast, where she heads the economics section. She is the author of Sois jeune et tais-toi [Be young and silent] (Payot, 2023) and Resist (2025), an essay on the rise of the extreme right that has become a publishing phenomenon in France and is now published in Spanish by Plataforma Editorial.

Is social democracy today simply an obsolete relic of the good old days of Europe's reconstruction after the Second World War? Expressed this way, the question has a provocative component, but it is ultimately legitimate. Analyses of the increasingly clear rise of the far right in the West (the rest of the world is currently operating with other ideological oppositions) modestly conceal the collapse of a social democracy that is no longer explicitly claimed by even the social democrats themselves. There are words in and words out, and this is one of them: just think of the language of the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia or that of the Spanish government. Neither Isla nor Sánchez use the word regularly. Reviled with wrinkled noses by the parody left that believes well-being is a capitulation of higher moral ideals, and also harassed by the extremists who have transformed resentment into a political program and historical amnesia into a long-term strategy, social democracy is going through one of its worst moments. It seems that for many people, social democracy is an exhausted political project, something from bygone days incompatible with the impoverishment of the middle class. There are even those who hold it responsible for a substantial share of the 2007/2008 crisis, having opted for constant and unlimited public debt: a kind of second bubble parallel to that of certain private productive sectors.

As the far right expands electorally and occupies (or is expected to occupy) positions of power, it also generates supporters and sympathizers. This is logical, and we can also see it reflected in the mirror of history: a hundred years ago, fascisms also went from being minority and extremist movements to being accepted, supported, and applauded by broad sectors of the population. The same thing is happening now. The most prominent case of whitewashing of a far-right figure in Europe, so far, has been the premier Italian Giorgia Meloni, racist, supremacist, government ally with Salvini's League and declared admirer of Mussolini, but nevertheless applauded by Ursula von der Leyen and the European Commission as the promoter of an immigration policy as advanced as closing immigrants in detention centers in Albania. Meloni represents the "reasonable" far right, with whom it's supposedly possible to work and make progress. He's a necessary lifeline for the most immobile political, economic, and financial powers and for followers of MAGAs, MEGAs, and their ilk.

Finnish government ministers have received training to combat the racist attitudes and comments that have shaken the country. Since the government's formation three years ago, the government has been rocked by several episodes that have exposed the racist attitudes of ministers who are members of the Finns Party. The far-right populist party entered the executive branch with more influence than ever in 2023., occupying seven of the nineteen portfolios in the government, which is formed together with the National Coalition Party (conservatives) and two smaller parties.

The leader of the far-right Portuguese party Chega, André Ventura, continues to gain support and consolidate his strength in the Portuguese political landscape. The key vote of residents abroad has made his party the second most voted force in the Parliament, ahead of the Socialists, and this makes him the new leader of the opposition. In Portugal, there is no regulation establishing the functions of this figure, but in practice, Ventura could become a key interlocutor for the prime minister on matters of state, such as appointments to oversight bodies or foreign policy. (in Catalan enough), the party founded by Ventura in 2019, is not the result of a one-time phenomenon. In last year's legislative elections, the party shook up the Portuguese political landscape: the far-right won 50 of the 230 seats in the Assembly of the Republic. A result that confirmed it was here to stay—a message that Ventura himself repeatedly reiterated during the last election campaign. This time, it won 60 seats (behind the conservative Democratic Alliance, which obtained 88) and surpassed the Socialist Party (PS), which fell to third place with 58 seats.

Romania is betting on the European Union, and Brussels is breathing a sigh of relief. Pro-Western candidate Nicusor Dan, mayor of Bucharest since 2020, will be the country's new president after securing 53.99% of the vote in the second round of elections held this Sunday. The far-right candidate, populist George Simion, finished far behind, almost 900,000 votes behind: he obtained 46.01% of the vote. Turnout in this second round rose to 64.5%, while in the first it only reached 53%.

From Warsaw to Lisbon, via Bucharest, millions of Europeans are called to the polls this Sunday to decide the political direction of Romania, Poland, and Portugal. This Super Sunday The election is taking place amid strong geopolitical, commercial, and economic tensions on the continent, due to the Russian threat and the trade war declared by US President Donald Trump. Brussels remains on tenterhooks, especially to see if Bucharest will shift to the far right.

Whether by rivals or supporters, it's not surprising that the label "far right" is often applied to specific political actors. This label sometimes refers to a widespread idea: that the European far-right family is a homogeneous, seamless body, and that any differences that may exist between its members are more a matter of accents than language. Indeed, radical right-wing populist parties, the name often used in academic circles to refer to these parties, often share certain specific characteristics, but they also have important points that differentiate them.

In one of the key moments of the third part ofThe Godfather (1990), by Francis Ford Coppola, Cardinal Lambert utters a sentence that more or less sums up the debate the Vatican faces every time the occupant of the chair of St. Peter dies.This pope has very different ideas. He's going to clean house" ("This dad has very different ideas. He intends to put order and clean the house.")