Analysts say a rightward shift reflects disillusionment with mainstream parties, anti-mass immigration sentiment, and a backlash against ‘woke’ policies.
When Trump returns to office on Jan. 20, he will face a much-changed political landscape in Europe, where countries including France, Germany, Austria, and Sweden have shifted toward right-wing parties and policies.
With polling in many nations suggesting an accompanying shift in younger generations, many political analysts and pollsters believe this trend is set to continue well into the second Trump presidency.
Progressives, Centrists
When Trump first entered the White House in January 2017 Europe’s political landscape was dominated by centrist and progressive leaders.
France was led by President François Hollande, a member of the Socialist Party; Chancellor Angela Merkel, leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), was serving her third term in Germany; and Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, head of the Social Democrats, had been in power since 2014.
Italy was governed by a center-left coalition led by Paolo Gentiloni, a member of the social democratic political party Democratic Party (Partito Democratico).
Spain was ran by Mariano Rajoy, the leader of the People’s Party (Partido Popular, PP), a center-right political party, however, Rajoy was ousted by Pedro Sánchez, the leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party in 2018 after he lost a no-confidence vote.
Attitudes
Although attitudes towards immigration were generally liberal, they had begun to shift.
In a 2016 European Union report, the EU said that immigration of people from non-EU countries evoked a “negative feeling” for a clear majority of Europeans in 24 member states.
A year earlier, the 2015 European migrant crisis took place, a period of significantly increased movement of refugees and migrants into Europe, namely from the Middle East.
Merkel in 2015 accepted more than a million Syrian refugees into Germany.
Bucking the trend at the time, the UK with its conservative and liberal democrat coalition government under Tory PM David Cameron, refused in 2015 to accept any further refugees from the Middle East. Cameron also called a referendum in 2016 which resulted in the UK leaving the European Union, known as Brexit, though as a key part of the Remain camp, he subsequently resigned in 2016.
