Far-right parties cannibalising Europe's centre-right across the continent

When Friedrich Merz allowed his Christian Democrats to pass a non-binding immigration motion with the votes of Alternative für Deutschland in the Bundestag last month, he shattered a taboo that had held for the entire post-war history of the Federal Republic. Alice Weidel, the AfD co-leader, called it a historic day. Angela Merkel, Merz's predecessor, called it wrong. The motion itself was symbolic, but the breach was real: for the first time, a German conservative leader had governed with the explicit support of a party that the domestic intelligence service monitors as a suspected extremist organisation.

A pattern repeated from Vienna to Rome

Germany is not an outlier. In Austria, Herbert Kickl's Freedom Party finished first in September's election and is now negotiating to form the first far-right-led government since 1945, with the conservative People's Party as a willing coalition partner. In France, Prime Minister François Bayrou's warning that voters feel "submerged" by immigration was instantly claimed by Marine Le Pen as proof that her National Rally had won the ideological argument. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom leads a coalition that pushed the once-dominant People's Party for Freedom and Democracy into junior status. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy has rendered the old centre-right Forza Italia a minor satellite.

The list extends further. Finland and Croatia have far-right parties in conservative-led cabinets. Sweden's government depends on parliamentary support from the Sweden Democrats. The Czech Republic's ANO movement, aligned with the hard right, leads polls ahead of elections due this year. In Britain, Nigel Farage's Reform UK has overtaken the Conservative Party in several surveys, despite the Tories having spent years hardening their own immigration rhetoric, culminating in the Rwanda deportation scheme.

The mechanics of the vicious cycle

Tarik Abou-Chadi, who studies European party systems at Oxford, describes a self-reinforcing dynamic. The radical right gains ground. Mainstream parties, fearing electoral irrelevance, shift right on immigration and security. That shift legitimises the radical right's core claim, that their agenda is the only serious response, and signals to voters that the radical right is now a normal governing option. Public opinion then moves further right, because voters take cues from mainstream elites. Mainstream parties see the shift and move again. At no point do they recover the voters they lost.

Two things happen instead, Abou-Chadi says. First, the stigma attached to voting for the far right evaporates. When the firewall, Germany's Brandmauer, France's cordon sanitaire, holds, voters who might sympathise with a radical programme still hesitate, knowing the party will be excluded from power. Once mainstream leaders signal willingness to cooperate, that hesitation disappears. Second, the agenda-setting power of mainstream parties works against them: by treating immigration as an existential crisis, they convince the electorate that it is one, and the party that has owned the issue longest reaps the benefit.

Why the copy never beats the original

Sarah de Lange, professor of political pluralism at the University of Amsterdam, puts it bluntly: the radical right has more credibility. Mainstream centre-right parties have been in office across Europe for years. Voters ask a simple question: if immigration was so urgent, why did you do nothing about it when you held the levers? The Rwanda bill, the Dutch asylum crisis law, the German border controls, each was introduced after years of conservative governance, and each looked like panic rather than conviction.

Nathalie Tocci, director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, goes further. She calls the willingness to work with the extremes "political suicide". When moderate parties rule out cooperation, citizens know a vote for the far right is wasted. When they wink at the far right, that disincentive evaporates. And voters tend to prefer the original to the copy. The evidence bears her out: in every country where the centre-right has accommodated, Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Finland, the radical right has grown, not shrunk.

The firewall that wasn't

For decades, the cordon sanitaire was treated as a moral and strategic necessity. In Germany, the CDU's refusal to work with the AfD was absolute. In France, the "republican front" saw left and right unite to block the National Front in run-off elections. In Austria, the People's Party broke coalition with the Freedom Party in 2019 over the Ibiza scandal, only to return to the negotiating table five years later. The firewall was always porous in practice: the Danish People's Party supported a liberal-conservative government from 2001 to 2011; the Swiss People's Party has been in the Federal Council since 1929. But the recent acceleration is distinct. Since 2022, the far right has entered government in Italy, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands, and is on the threshold in Austria and the Czech Republic. The taboo has not just cracked; it has been dismantled by the very parties that built it.

What the numbers show

Polling across the continent tells a consistent story. The National Rally commands roughly a third of French voting intention. The AfD sits second in German polls at 20 to 22 percent, double its 2021 result. The Freedom Party won 29 percent in Austria's election. Brothers of Italy polls above 28 percent. Reform UK has reached 25 percent in some British surveys, ahead of the Conservatives. De Lange notes that far-right parties are now regularly scoring up to 30 percent, while mainstream centre-right shares decline and the left fragments. The arithmetic is unforgiving: in a fragmented multi-party system, a unified radical right capturing 25 to 30 percent becomes the dominant force on its side of the spectrum.

The German test case

Germany remains the critical test. The CDU/CSU leads federal polls at around 30 percent, but the AfD's rise has been steady since 2021. Merz's calculation was tactical: a hardline motion on border closures and deportations would signal toughness to wavering voters before the February election. Instead, it triggered mass protests, a rebellion from within his own parliamentary group, and a public rebuke from Merkel, an intervention so rare it underscored the gravity of the breach. The subsequent rejection of a binding immigration bill, thanks partly to CDU rebels, left Merz weakened. The AfD, meanwhile, could claim it had forced the agenda. Weidel's "historic day" was not hyperbole: the Brandmauer had been crossed, and the political cost fell entirely on the conservatives.

A decade to subsumption?

Abou-Chadi predicts Europe's centre-right parties could be subsumed by the far right within 10 to 15 years. In some countries, Italy, the Netherlands, it has already happened. In others, Germany, France, Austria, it is under way. The language of "fringe" no longer fits parties that win elections, lead governments and set the terms of debate. De Lange agrees the probability is high. The combination of radical-right consolidation, centre-right decline and left fragmentation creates a structural trap. Every accommodation deepens it. Every election cycle without a reversal confirms it.