Europe’s Maga populists are on the rise

European leaders breathed a deep sigh of relief after a centrist pro-EU candidate won Romania’s presidential election on Sunday.

But the results from that contest, and other elections in Poland and Portugal over the weekend, underscored how a populist insurgency is gathering strength across Europe and coming ever closer to taking or returning to power. They also showed how vaunting an ideological affinity with Donald Trump can pay off electorally.

EU leaders lavished praise on Nicuşor Dan, the mathematician turned reformist mayor of Bucharest, for beating ultranationalist George Simion to win Romania’s presidency after coming a distant second in the first round.

Simion, who described himself as “Trump’s candidate”, had vowed to take Romania in a Eurosceptic, anti-Ukraine direction aligned with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. French President Emmanuel Macron said Romanian voters had chosen “democracy, the rule of law and the European Union”.

But Simion still won 46 per cent of the vote and his AUR party, the second largest in parliament, is likely to benefit from expected government turmoil and the austerity measures needed to bring a ballooning public deficit under control.

“This time we pulled it off, but what about next time?” said Dimitar Bechev, an expert at Carnegie Europe. “You probably have a lot of voters that are swinging back and forth. We give another chance to somebody else on the liberal side and of course he fails, and with all the discontent, Simion becomes even stronger.”

After Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Portugal, which until recently was one of the few European countries without a far-right movement, the anti-immigrant Chega party could take second place once overseas votes are counted.

Luís Montenegro, the centre-right prime minister, previously ruled out working with Chega. But on Monday he dodged the question, saying: “Everyone must be able to engage in dialogue and put the national interest above all else.”

In Poland, the pro-EU mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, is facing an unexpectedly tough run-off against the nationalist candidate Karol Nawrocki on June 1 after only just beating him to first place in Sunday’s first round.

Although the fork in the road for Poland is not quite as stark as it was for Romania, which has not had a Eurosceptic leader since the fall of communism, the outcome next month is still hugely consequential for the EU.

If elected, Trzaskowski would unblock the reform agenda of centre-right Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which has been stymied by the outgoing president Andrzej Duda, a nominee of the Eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party that governed Poland until 2023. If PiS’s Nawrocki wins, Tusk’s agenda, including measures to restore judicial independence, are likely to remain paralysed and the coalition government could fall apart.

“Nawrocki’s victory would undermine Tusk’s political project and could be the harbinger of PiS’s return to power in 2027 or even earlier in case of a snap election,” said Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The three elections show an anti-establishment mood among voters. This was most pronounced in Romania, where the joint candidate of the centre-left and centre-right governing parties won only one-fifth of the vote in the first round earlier this month. Dan co-founded a small reformist party, USR, but left it eight years ago and has been an independent ever since.

In Poland, Trzaskowski and Nawrocki together won 61 per cent of the votes, the lowest combined result for the two main parties, Tusk’s Civic Platform and the PiS opposition.

“This was a clear yellow card given by voters to Tusk and Trzaskowski, for not fulfilling the promises made in 2023, but we’re also seeing a strong challenge to Poland’s long-standing duopoly,” said Marcin Duma, chief executive of pollster Ibris.

The three elections also illustrate the lightning emergence of new rightwing forces. Portugal’s Chega, led by former trainee priest and football pundit André Ventura, broke through electorally only three years ago, when it won 7 per cent of votes in a parliamentary poll. Simion set up AUR five years ago.

Like Simion, Ventura has played up his proximity to Trump — and so has Nawrocki, who secured a brief photo opportunity with the US president ahead of the vote.

One of the most striking aspects of Poland’s presidential vote was the strength of two far-right candidates — Sławomir Mentzen, who took 15 per cent, and Grzegorz Braun on 6 per cent. Braun split from Mentzen, a former ally, to run a more xenophobic and antisemitic campaign. Braun faces charges for several alleged crimes, including using a fire extinguisher to put out Hanukkah candles during a celebration held in the Polish parliament.

On the face of it, Nawrocki should count on Mentzen and Braun voters for their support in the run-off. But his two rivals have attacked him over a series of scandals, and Mentzen’s Confederation party, founded in 2019, has ambitions to supplant PiS to become the main ultranationalist force in Poland.

The three votes on Sunday showed just how the centre of gravity has shifted to the right, with voters increasingly shunning the left. Candidates to the right of Trzaskowski, himself a moderate conservative, together won 53 per cent.

Trzaskowski shifted to the right during his campaign, notably by calling for cuts to the benefits granted to Ukrainian refugees and abandoning some of the rhetoric on LGBT+ rights that he had espoused as Warsaw mayor. That pivot may have cost him support on Sunday.

“Trzaskowski is part of the governing establishment and has no longer been running as a progressive breath of fresh air,” said Anna Wójcik, assistant law professor at Kozminski University in Warsaw.

In Romania, Dan may be reformist but he is socially conservative, having quit the party he founded because of his opposition to same-sex marriage.

Portugal’s socialists fell to their lowest score since 1987. For the first time since its return to democracy, right-of-centre parties control two-thirds of the seats in parliament. That gives them a chance, if they co-operate, to reform Portugal’s constitution, which was born in an era when the left was ascendant and, in the view of rightwingers, gives too much power to the state and too little to the private sector.

Simion, Nawrocki and Ventura may not be winners, or at least not yet. But they all showed that being an openly pro-Trump candidate can pay electoral dividends.

Unlike in Canada or Australia, where Maga populists were humiliated by voters, in Europe being pro-Trump still pays some dividends.