EU elections Bloc braces for a new reality as hard right seek big gains

When the results of the European parliamentary W elections start to emerge on Sunday night, polls suggest they will show that the world's only directly elected transnational assembly will have tilted unambiguously to the right.

- Jon Henley

Yet, for all the talk of a surge in support for Europe's hard right, their gains should prove broadly in line with a steady progression over the past couple of decades. The difference will be in the response.

"The real storyline is not the continuing advance of the hard-right parties," said Alberto Alemanno, a professor of EU law at HEC Paris and the College of Europe. "It's the extent to which the centre-right is prepared to normalise some of them."

Across Europe, national-conservative and far-right parties are in government in half a dozen of the EU's 27 member states: Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia. In Sweden, a hard-right party is propping up a rightwing coalition in exchange for policy concession. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' far-right Freedom party will form the next government. Austria's autumn elections seem certain to yield a coalition led by the far-right FPÖ. In France, Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) is streets ahead in the polls, while Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is second in Germany.

Setbacks for far-right and national-conservative parties in elections in Spain and Poland last year show that the progression is not necessarily all one way. But the prevailing trend seems clear.