Centre-left parties adopt hard-right tactics across Europe with diminishing returns

When Robert Golob called a snap election in March 2026, he did so after ramming through a security law that effectively criminalised an entire ethnic group. The Šutar law, drafted and passed in twelve days, granted police warrantless entry powers in designated areas and expanded collective punishment measures aimed at Slovenia's approximately 12,000 Roma citizens. The legislation was a response to a violent crime whose main suspect, a Roma man, was subsequently released without charge. Amnesty International, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and major Roma organisations all warned the law would enable arbitrary discrimination. Golob ignored them.

A gamble that failed to pay off

The electoral arithmetic was brutal. Golob's Freedom Movement secured 28.6 per cent of the vote, a collapse from the 34 per cent he commanded in 2022. Janez Janša's far-right Slovenian Democratic Party finished a whisker behind on 27.9 per cent. Golob could not assemble a parliamentary majority. Janša could, stitching together a coalition with New Slovenia, the Democrats, the Slovenian People's Party and Focus. The centre-left prime minister who adopted hard-right rhetoric found himself replaced by the genuine article.

Slovenia is not an anomaly. It is the clearest recent illustration of a pattern spreading across the continent: mainstream left and centre-left parties reaching for far-right policy instruments in the belief that doing so neutralises the electoral threat from their radical rivals. The assumption is one of risk management. The evidence suggests it is a miscalculation.

Denmark's deliberate choice

In Copenhagen, the Social Democrats have governed for years on a platform of the strictest migration regime in Europe. Rather than soften those rules when in office, they tightened them further. The so-called parallel society legislation, which imposes enhanced policing powers and harsher sentencing in designated neighbourhoods, was expanded. Human rights organisations and EU bodies have repeatedly documented the discriminatory impact on minority communities. This was not a party forced into concessions by opposition pressure. It was a governing party making a deliberate calculation that severity on migration and integration would secure its flank.

Romania's legislative reversal

Bucharest offers a different but related trajectory. The Social Democratic Party, nominally centre-left and a long-standing fixture of Romanian politics, recently backed a Senate initiative to repeal the country's anti-fascist laws. Those statutes provide legal protections for minorities, including Roma communities. Their removal would strip away a layer of constitutional safeguard erected after the fall of communism. The move aligns with a broader drift in which social democratic formations adopt the legislative toolkit of the radical right to survive in fragmented parliaments.

From migration control to minority governance

The migration portfolio is the entry point, but the logic rarely stays there. In France and Italy, the same public order justifications used to enforce border controls have been deployed to justify the repeated dismantling of Roma settlements. Policies developed in the context of asylum and irregular migration migrate into domestic policing, creating a two-tier legal framework where minority populations are governed through exception rather than rights. The language of crisis and collective risk, once normalised in one domain, becomes a template for others.

The institutional blind spot

The European Union's rule-of-law toolbox was built for a different era of democratic erosion. Article 7 proceedings, the conditionality regulation, the annual rule-of-law report, these instruments target structural dismantling of checks and balances. They do not easily capture a prime minister who wins an election after passing a discriminatory law with parliamentary support. The Slovenian case exposes the gap: Golob's government followed constitutional procedure. The law was debated, voted on, enacted. The victims were a minority too small to sway the outcome. The EU's response was limited to statements of concern.

This is not a procedural deficiency. It is a test of whether European values have practical effect. The European Parliament has condemned the Slovenian legislation. The Council of Europe's human rights commissioner has warned of arbitrary application. Yet no sanction follows, no infringement procedure is triggered, no funding is conditioned. The message to other capitals is clear: the political marketplace rewards the adoption of far-right frames, and the cost of doing so is negligible.

A counter-example from Budapest

Hungary provides an unexpected contrast. Péter Magyar's Tisza Party, formed in 2024, has demonstrated that a credible alternative to authoritarian populism can attract broad support without mimicking it. The party drew votes from former Fidesz supporters, previously disengaged citizens, and a significant share of Roma voters. It did so by offering a distinct political proposition rather than a diluted version of the incumbent's rhetoric. The real test for Tisza will come under pressure: whether it can resist the populist shortcuts that have trapped so many centre-left parties across Europe and begin dismantling a system that has long excluded minorities from meaningful political influence.

Imitation is not the only survival strategy

The lesson is not that voters' concerns about security or migration are illegitimate. They are real, and they are exploited by parties that offer simple, punitive answers. The lesson is that imitation validates the framing. When a centre-left prime minister treats a minority community as a collective security threat, he tells the electorate that the far right was right all along. The voter who wants that approach will vote for the original. The voter who wants something different is left without a home.