BRUSSELS – European leaders are engaged in the fight of their lives. For the first time, the summit they are organizing this week will focus on topics aimed at regaining ground from the far right.
Politicians from traditional parties, whether center right, center left or liberal, have been in power in Europe since the Second World War, but they see their hegemony fading. They hope that Thursday’s European Council — which brings together the 27 heads of state and government — will show that the EU is concerned about issues that have created discontent among voters. In the largest capitals of the Union, from Paris to Rome, via Amsterdam and Berlin, nationalist, even pro-Russian, forces are either already in power or at the gates of power, because they have shown themselves capable of exploiting anger.
“Defending the European project today means more than investing in our armies, it also means keeping the social promise that unites Europe,” argued Hannah Neumann, Green MEP and member of the Parliament’s Security and Defense Committee. “One of Putin’s main tactics is to divide our societies.”
The summit agenda is dominated by themes that leaders associate with a fundamental challenge: preventing a scenario in which four or five far-right leaders, who could reject the very existence of the EU, sit on the European Council within a few years. This scenario would raise huge questions about the military power of the West and the future of the Union itself.
A draft version of the summit conclusions, seen by POLITICO, which member state diplomats are working on before submitting it to their leaders, reflects this underlying concern. Heads of state and government will discuss housing, defense, competitiveness, green and digital transitions, and immigration, all issues that European government officials consider essential to containing the far right.
The meeting to be held in Brussels this week is “a European Council seeking a new identity for the EU,” says a European diplomat who is taking part in the preparations and speaking anonymously to talk about confidential deliberations. “It is a very difficult search, with a very difficult internal process, to find answers to the questions that the EU has so far failed to address.”
A social crisis
In particular, putting housing on the agenda would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. But its cost today influences policy across the Union, and it allowed the far right to achieve important victories.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders and his far-right party, the Party for Freedom, won the 2023 legislative elections by campaigning on the housing shortage which, according to him, is exacerbated by migrants and asylum seekers. In Portugal, Chega became the country’s first opposition party this year by denouncing the inability of establishment parties to fight against soaring real estate prices.
The European Council is taking a late interest in the issue. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the housing shortage as a social crisis for over a year and to consecrate a portfolio for this theme within the college of commissioners ― occupied by the Dane Dan Jørgensen, who will present the very first affordable housing plan of the European Union in December and pledged to fight against short term rentals in 2026. The European Parliament created a commission special on the crisis at the start of the year.
European Council President António Costa has long argued that the housing crisis is as urgent a challenge as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The only way to strengthen citizens’ confidence in the European project is to show that we have the capacity to deal with housing and the concrete problems that affect them personally,” he defended in the columns of POLITICO last year.
Until now, housing prices and rents were not considered as a subject on which the EU could act. While the housing crisis is an EU-wide problem, there is no consensus on how to tackle it. National leaders are divided along different political lines and risk being at loggerheads when it comes to tackling the speculation real estate, short term rentals or the expansion of social housing programs.
The divisions are evident in the summit’s draft conclusions, where leaders consider the crisis “urgent” but only demand that the Commission present its plan as planned.
On the rise
The progress of the populists is already very real. The Hungarian Viktor Orbán and the Slovakian Robert Fico sit on the European Council, making it sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to take unanimous decisions, although they are often necessary. The Czech Republic could soon join their camp: right-wing populist Andrej Babiš won elections earlier this month. In Slovenia, the ultraconservative party of former Prime Minister Janez Janša is leading the polls, See the Poll of Polls from POLITICO.
In the EU’s two largest and most powerful countries, France and Germany, the far right is also on the rise. Jordan Bardella, of the National Rally, is regularly at the top of voting intentions for the 2027 French presidential election. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) came second in the legislative elections last year.
Defense is another issue on which EU policymakers from the center left to the center right hope to strike back.
The European Commissioner for Defense estimated that by adding the defense budgets of the Member States and European funds, the Union will spend 2,400 billion euros over four years, a staggering figure compared to previous investments. This defense boom could, in theory, offset Europe’s struggling auto industry, which accounts for nearly 14 million jobsor around 6% of European employment.
The subject should be discussed at the summit, Slovakian Robert Fico binder his support for new sanctions against Russia for aid to the automotive sector, given that Slovakia is the world’s largest producer of cars per capita.
“Defense is essential to prevent a rise of the far right, because it creates jobs,” underlines another EU diplomat.
Regulating social media is another front in efforts to stem the far-right tide. The EU is in conflict with Washington over the rules applicable to American tech giants, such as Meta and X – this platform belongs to Elon Musk, who used it to give more visibility to far-right parties, like the AfD in Germany during the last elections. The EU has criticized TikTok for playing a significant role in spreading far-right messages during Romania’s elections at the end of 2024.
“Faced with geopolitical changes (…) it is crucial to advance Europe’s digital transformation, strengthen its sovereignty and consolidate its open digital ecosystem”, we can read in the provisional version of the declaration by European leaders.
However, concrete solutions remain difficult to find. “What are we supposed to do? Create our own European social media platform to counter this harmful influence?” asks a third diplomat.
Diluted ambitions
European diplomats already feel the ground slipping away from under their feet.
Last week, a discussion among EU ambassadors about “simplification” ― the EU buzzword meaning less regulation ― evolved into a more general plea by some governments for American-style deregulation. An ambassador intervened to clarify that deregulation should consist of tackling administrative burdens rather than completely getting rid of European rules, according to two diplomats present.
Ecological ambitions have also been watered down under pressure from the far right, with leaders having to discuss a rollback on the Union’s carbon emissions reduction targets for 2040.
One of the most blatant examples of this desire by centrist political leaders to go into the territory of the extreme right is that of immigration. The once taboo idea of processing asylum requests outside EU borders – in closed and “protected” centers – is now regularly debated, with even socialist leaders like Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen in favor of it. The idea echoes calls from far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and features in his plan Schengen 2.0 of 2016.
Ultimately, some of these topics may fall by the wayside on Thursday. The agenda is packed and the conversation will likely be dominated by more pressing geopolitical issues, such as how to boost support for Ukraine.
Then there are the deep divisions that remain between the European People’s Party, which dominates the EU’s main institutions, and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
But it’s a start.
This article was first published by POLITICO in English, then edited in French by Jean-Christophe Catalon.
Disclaimer: This news article has been republished exactly as it appeared on its original source, without any modification. We do not take any responsibility for its content, which remains solely the responsibility of the original publisher.
Author: Jacopo Barigazzi, Aitor Hernández-Morales, Gabriel Gavin
Published on: 2025-10-21 00:03:00
Source: www.politico.eu
