Opinion polls suggest that parties of the nationalist and far right could win almost a quarter of the seats in June’s elections to the European parliament. Forecasts of a significant shift to the right in Europe therefore seem well placed. Yet we should be wary of treating the pan-continental far right as a homogenous bloc or of being too confident in judging its ability, after the vote, to shape and disrupt the usual business of the European legislature.
In early February, Reconquest!, the party formed in 2021 by Eric Zemmour, the rightwing commentator and former candidate for the French presidency, announced that it would be joining the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European parliament. Nicolas Bay, who left Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) to join Reconquest! before the 2022 presidential election in France, became the first French MEP to sit with the ECR since it was founded in 2009.
While Bay will sit alongside representatives of Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, the RN’s MEPs belong to a different far-right bloc, Identity and Democracy, which also contains Italy’s League and the Alternative for Germany.