Eurasia Press & News
Europe’s far-right and illiberal populists are convinced of being “on the right side of history”. But if history is anything to go by, a Trump win could hold a few bitter surprises.
“Americans are so enamoured of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom,” mused French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville in his nearly 200-year-old seminal study of the American spirit, Democracy in America.
Donald Trump’s return as US president and the prospect of a second ‘MAGA’ term have sent shockwaves across the world. In Europe as elsewhere, voters may be at a loss to know exactly what to expect from the man who has elevated unpredictability as a cardinal pillar of governance and diplomacy; what is clear nonetheless is that the desired prospect of Trump laying waste to the status quo – from the protracted war in Ukraine to the ‘destructive’ pervasiveness of wokeism – has an attentive audience in Europe.
An aggregation of pre-US election polls shows a significant East-West divide in European voters’ political leanings. The 10 most pro-Trump electorates were found in the former Eastern Bloc countries, with four Central and Eastern European EU member states – Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia – giving the MAGA candidate a (theoretical) majority. Czechs were more ambiguous but favoured Kamala Harris, while Poland and the Baltic states completed the picture with a clear preference for the Democratic candidate – although nearly one-third of Poles ready to vote for a NATO-questioning and Russia-ambiguous Trump could hardly be dismissed as an insignificant statistical glitch.
Whether already in charge like Viktor Orban in Hungary and Robert Fico in Slovakia or knocking at the gates of power like Andrej Babis in Czechia, illiberal politicians in the region are intimately aware of what Trump is the symptom of. If anything, his victory in November has comforted them in the idea that they stand ‘on the right side of history’ – critics, sceptics and opponents beware and be damned.
What the 47th US president described in his victory speech as “the greatest political movement of all time” is putting wind in the sails of CEE populists, legitimising their rhetoric and emboldening their agenda, threatening deeper polarisation within electorates who already barely communicate with – let alone understand – one another, and acting as another catalyst bound to put the fundamental tenants of liberal democracy under strain throughout the region.
- Overview
It was no coincidence that Hungarian Prime Minister Orban scheduled the European Political Community (EPC) summit and informal gathering of EU leaders in Budapest for the start of November, just days after a US presidential election he had bet everything on Trump winning. And while Trump’s rumoured video-appearance at the gathering didn’t materialise, his against-all-odds comeback put the European hard right in unabashed champagne-popping mood, with good reason.
“We see a common playbook that might be adopted by far-right parties [in Europe] as Trump begins a new era,” assessed Georgios Samaras from King’s College London, noting that while his first presidency gave more credence to extreme-right ideas, the second one could have even more practical consequences and “might turn into an authoritarian approach.”
From the German AfD’s Alice Weidel to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, from Herbert Kickl’s FPO in Austria to Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, far-right forces and leaders across Europe rushed to congratulate Trump on his historic win, gleefully contemplating the return of the MAGA chief to the White House come January 2025. “Trump will strengthen far-right parties, not just by normalising and amplifying their ideas, but by boosting their electability,” experts at the Centre for European Reform wrote.
The ideological overlap between Trump’s Republican Party and Europe’s far-right populists is extensive, ranging from anti-immigration policies to contempt for the EU and other supranational institutions, from a nation-first approach to pushing “anti-woke” socially conservative views on topics like LGBTQ+ rights, abortion or climate change.
Sensitivity to criticism – whether it comes from the media, political opponents, human rights watchdogs, NGOs or others – and a very construed idea of what democratic checks-and-balances should look like, also pave the way for authoritarianism-prone political movements and figures. Across borders, these power-grabbing strategies tinged with an increasingly vengeful rhetoric are being justified on the grounds of the pervasiveness of ‘enemy’ liberal values responsible for a perceived economic and moral decline to be stopped and reversed, come what may.
Europe in 2025 also looks very different than during Trump’s first term, when a UK-less EU was steered by a more confident Franco-German duo throughout a set of crises that, however, was yet to include a global pandemic, a war at its doorstep and a cost-of-living onslaught that eroded people’s savings and their already feeble trust in the established political status quo.
Both domestically and at the EU level, European voters – including many among younger generations – did not wait for Trump to be re-elected in the White House to put their trust in the ready-made promises of illiberal actors, steering the entire political landscape – mainstream centrist and moderate right-wing parties included – further to the right.
Nevertheless, “we know that there is a normalisation effect on voters who will now [following Trump’s win] feel more comfortable to vote for the far-right or who feel happier voting for these types of parties,” said Javier Carbonell, an analyst at the European Policy Centre.
More specifically, Trump’s re-election has widely been described as a boost for Hungarian Prime Minister Orban, arguably his most loyal and consistent supporter in Europe, who has invested considerable personal, political and financial capital in wooing the Republican establishment ever since Trump’s first presidential bid.
Trump is a communication act for Orban and the Hungarian government, used domestically to show how important Orban is on the global stage and how Hungary is punching above its weight.”
– Daniel Hegedüs, Regional Director for Central Europe at the German Marshall Fund
Orban, whom Trump has described as a “very great leader [and] very strong man” and who is one of the very few European leaders still in office today who was in power during Trump 1.0, was among the first to meet face-to-face with the president-elect. “We have big plans,” Orban wrote on X after congratulating the Republican candidate on his victory.
The budding relationship between Hungary’s strongman and the first convicted felon to be elected US president does not exactly bode well for the state of democracy, analysts warn, with Orban – and not only him – likely to “feel further emboldened to put aside any rule of law concerns, whether that’s domestically or within an EU context.”
“The strong ties that the Trumpian ecosystem has built up with Hungary and, to a lesser extent, other European populist forces in Austria, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and elsewhere could easily shape internal EU politics,” Jeremy Schapiro and Zsuzsanna Vegh wrote for the European Council on Foreign Relations.
But behind the façade, relations between Washington and Budapest may quickly become more complex and less mutually beneficial than advertised. The Hungarian government’s unabashed pro-China policy is likely to become a major sticking point as the US pushes its allies to align with its own vision of Beijing as global enemy number one. Used to performing diplomatic balancing acts and playing all sides at once, Orban may quickly find himself forced to choose and lose a beloved strategic ambiguity of little taste to the White House. Orban’s inability to secure an invitation to Trump’s inauguration – attended by several other European far-right figures – already appeared to make that clear on day one.
Marginalised within the EU and forced to face a resurgent political opposition while reckoning with a weak economy, Orban’s ‘cloak of invincibility’ has faded since 2016, while Trump’s bulldozing trade diplomacy might further exacerbate Hungary’s economic and political fault lines.
Using similar rhetoric and advocating for like-minded policies may only bring Trump and the European far-right so far, experts believe, even more so between leaders whose “nation-first” agenda appears inherently confrontational and antithetical to cooperation on the global stage.
“Trump’s attitude towards Europe… will be harmful to far-right parties’ core electorate – think inflation, de-industrialisation, job losses,” commented Catherine Fieschi of the European University Institute.
“Trump is bad news for them,” she argues, describing it as “very, very unlikely” that the US president “gives a damn about building relationships with these people.”
What is poised to prevail, beyond any transatlantic ideological like-mindedness, is a transactional relationship on a case-by-case basis, an approach that could not only undermine EU unity on key topics – including on issues where deeper European unity would be necessary to meet Trump’s own expectations and demands – but also further divide Europe’s already-fragmented far-right scene.
“The diversity of Europe’s populists will be the greatest challenge to benefitting from the warm air of historical righteousness coming from DC,” according to Liana Fix, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
As is the case with Hungary, a closer look shows key potential points of friction between Trump and supposed allies on the old continent, something best exemplified by the lukewarm post-election reaction of the French National Rally – where deep currents of anti-Americanism persist, as in a number of other populist-right movements in Europe.
From possible tariffs on the car industry – the backbone and lifeblood of the Central European industrial economy – to a potentially disastrous trade war with China or a rushed peace deal in Ukraine, “Trump’s policies will not be good for his European allies… despite some ideological similarities,” wrote Armida van Rij, a senior fellow at Chatham House.
Close attention will have to be paid to differentiating between how European populists use Trump as an election-boosting communications tool, and actual policies they will enact at home and within the EU. According to Catherine de Vries of Milan’s Bocconi University, they will undoubtedly continue to say “Trumpian things, especially if they have an election coming”; in this region, that could apply to Poland’s presidential election in the spring, and Czechia’s parliamentary elections in the fall. Early elections are also a possibiliy in Slovakia, where the governing coalition of Prime Minister Robert Fico grows frailer every week.
“But when push really comes to shove – Europe’s security in Trump’s hands, NATO not guaranteed – then maybe quite a few are going to say, maybe we need to work on this in Europe,” she assesses.
Ultimately, European right-wing populists may be about to be pushed into a rather awkward corner, de Vries says, shoved between a rock – siding with Trump, and hurting their electoral base – and a hard place – siding with the EU, and disappointing their Eurosceptic voters.
- Signals to watch in 2025
Bending Trump’s ear: All eyes on who will become ‘Trump’s whisperer’, a position that European leaders are competing for, both for prestige and recognition, and to be in the good books of a US president known to prioritise one-on-one bilateral relationships for deals and favours. In Central Europe, Polish President Andrzej Duda has touted his close relationship with Trump, but he will be out of office come the summer, while the “Czech Trump” Andrej Babis – poised in all likeliness to win back office at the end of the year – has not appeared so far to really throw his hat into the ring. Orban is a clear forerunner, but policy differences and the Hungarian premier’s mounting troubles at home may hinder his bid and undermine the rewards he was hoping to reap in Washington for his ‘peacebuilding’ mission on Ukraine. “If Trump looks for a bridge to the EU, it is [Giorgia] Meloni,” a Hungarian government-close source recently told BIRN. Powerful and influential, ideologically close to the US president on top of benefitting from a close relationship with Elon Musk, the Italian prime minister was the only EU leader present at Trump’s inauguration, and is emerging as the favourite. Here too, however, Italy’s strong pro-Ukraine policy, its low defence spending, and Trump’s own storied awkwardness in dealing with female leaders may also hit the brakes on the venture. Easier said than done, then, and despite Trump’s vocal contempt for multilateral formats, the incoming US administration won’t be able to completely bypass the likes of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – on trade for instance – or NATO’s Mark Rutte for all things defence.
Playing defence: When it comes to currying favour with the White House, little matters more than pulling your weight on defence spending – as long as the US military industry remains the main beneficiary of all that extra-hawkishness, Europe’s own strategic autonomy and defence cooperation capabilities coming only second on the wish-list. NATO’s top spender – even more than the US – in terms of share of GDP, Poland emerges here as the clear role model, with American manufacturers by far the biggest beneficiary of Warsaw’s huge defence procurement deals and military spending frenzy, both under the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government and that of Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “Poland is often cited by Donald Trump as a positive example in the context of defence spending and commitment to common security,” the Polish Foreign Ministry told BIRN in a statement. On a political and personal level, there is little love lost between the two Donalds in Warsaw and Washington, but Poland is likely to be one of those “frontline states with genuine fears over Russia’s imperialist ambitions [who] will seek to buy Trump’s support through bilateral arms deals – despite their distaste for Trump’s position vis-à-vis Russia,” says Chatham House. European states – including more frugal spenders in Czechia, Slovakia or Hungary – would do well to follow Poland’s lead if they want to avoid making it into Trump’s little black book of “free-riders” – and be ready for any geopolitical headwinds ahead.
Post-truth era: The “Trump effect” on the degradation of press freedom and media pluralism worldwide is nothing new. Trump 2.0, however, with all its undertones of authoritarianism, double-standard permissiveness, and self-declared free-speech absolutism, will likely worsen the toxicity of the information sphere, entrench the polarisation of societies, and pose a direct threat to the work of newsrooms and the safety of reporters around the world. From Orban’s decade-long crackdown on free speech and independent media to Fico’s ‘declaration of war’ against critical journalists famously described as “dirty, anti-Slovak prostitutes” and “bloodthirsty bastards”, Central Europe proves particularly fertile ground for the spread of misinformation – state-sponsored or otherwise – and attacks against the media. Romania’s post-election chaos further highlights the far-reaching dangers that unregulated social media platforms pose to the foundations of democratic life – an acute reminder as Trump moves back into the White House with the increasingly unhinged owner of one of the world’s biggest social media platforms on his heels. “Mr Trump’s victory not only challenges American journalism, but also European journalism… condemned to marginalisation and invisibility” without protective measures, warned Ricardo Gutierrez, secretary general of the European Federation of Journalists.
Trump’s attitude towards Europe… will be harmful to far-right parties’ core electorate – think inflation, de-industrialisation, job losses… Trump is bad news for them.”
– Catherine Fieschi of the European University Institute.
‘Wokebusters’ unite: Regardless of varying domestic political dynamics and diverging geopolitical priorities, one agenda a Trump White House and Europe’s far-right actors can agree on is the need for a global counter-revolution against “progressivism” and “wokeism” – exploited as a “neo-Marxist” virus ravaging through Western societies. The war on “woke ideology” is primarily linked to a pushback against LGB and transgender rights – with clear manifestations from Hungary to Poland or Slovakia, and Czechia to a lesser extent. It has also come to designate and target a whole range of issues espoused by liberals, from the protection of minorities – sexual, ethnic, etc. – to women’s rights or the fight against climate change. A second Trump presidency – which started off with an all-out attack on DEI programs – is widely seen as giving a strong boost to proponents of conservative, counter-revolutionary narratives, with potentially far-reaching consequences on social policies and the wider political mood across Europe. Launched by the government-aligned Centre for Fundamental Rights at the CPAC 2024 Hungary conference, the ‘wokebusters’ initiative states: “We know this enemy well, all that happened was that they gave their ideology a new name: Bolshevik became Bolshewoke”. In the well-known 1980s movie referenced by the initiative’s name, ghosts are captured, ‘jailed’, and contained to keep them from wreaking havoc.
