The EU’s Far Right Is Divided Over Enlargement; Mainstream Parties Can’t Be

Two axes of far-right competition

Although it shares a sizeable number of common agenda items, the European far right aches from an essential schism when it comes to the question of enlarging the EU. Two main dimensions help understand these parties’ oftentimes dichotomous approaches to a broader Union.

The first dimension that articulates the EU far right’s enlargement appetite has to do with its political view over the Union’s mere existence.

On one side are parties and leaders that defend the survival of the EU but reject deeper integration among member states, and rather seek their mutation into an alliance of sovereign nations that can and ought to enlarge – which is the case of Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski. This category roughly corresponds with the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament.

On the other side are parties and leaders that long for the effective dissolution of the EU overall and are, therefore, against any attempt to expand it, let alone to countries that are thought to pose a threat to the identity and security of Europe’s immaculate Christian nations. This group encompass France’s Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, among others. Most of these parties are aligned with the Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European Parliament.

The second dimension that divides the EU far right’s approach towards enlargement is its positioning vis-à-vis Russia. While Orban openly embraces Vladimir Putin’s regime and mimics the servility of Le Pen and the leadership of Alternative for Germany (AfD) – a significantly common practice among the ID group parties – a vast majority of the EU’s radical right does, in fact, reject any ties with Moscow. This is the case of Meloni and the party leaderships of Finland, Sweden and Poland, which largely articulates the identity of the ECR group.

Remarkably, these two dimensions play out differently depending on whose EU accession bid is being assessed.

The first category includes the years-long hopefuls of the Western Balkans. The far right’s schism vis-à-vis the six countries of the Western Balkans is channelled through the first dimension, essentially being for or against a larger Union. This frames the proactive and constructive approaches showcased by figures like Orban and Meloni – textbook examples of how being Eurosceptic does not imply a rejection of EU enlargement, but rather a search for a larger EU that is built upon illiberal and nationalist values. Orban’s close ties to the Serbian and Bosnian Serb regimes, and his explicit support for their EU accession bids, pay testimony to this ambition. The other side of the far-right spectrum, namely those parties that oppose enlargement as a principle, is naturally against the EU integration of the Western Balkan countries, as Le Pen and Wilders preach.

The second category, namely the cases of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, proves radically different. There, the schism occurs mostly along the second dimension: being with or against Russia. This frames, for instance, much of Orban’s rogue demeanour around the EU’s military aid to Ukraine and, of course, his overall scepticism towards Kyiv’s accession to the EU. On the other side of the spectrum, a vast majority of Moscow-critical far-right parties perceive their pro-enlargement stance as part and parcel of their opposition to Russia, which also feeds into their vision of a bigger and stronger ‘fortress Union’ of sovereign nations.