The European right can win elections, but can it govern?

Citizens across the 27 member states of the European Union voted last week to elect a 720-member EU legislature. Two issues are widely seen as influencing the outcome: Voters are fed up with the inability of mainstream parties and institutions to control mass immigration and the social unrest that comes with it, and they are wary of further funding the European environmental left’s obsession with climate change.

It marked a notable shift to the right. The largest political group in the European Parliament remains the European People’s Party, a combination of center-right parties like Germany’s Christian Democrats and Spain’s People’s Party, which now has a growing majority. Even bigger gains include France’s Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, parties misleadingly labeled by many in the media as “far-right,” which now have enough seats to properly disrupt Brussels: 131.

The left parties suffered stunning defeats, especially the European Greens, who were heavily defeated by touching the fast-established concrete of Europe’s new indifference to climate change. Five years ago, voters were thinking deeply and seriously about climate change. Those same voters now know what it will take to make the change — higher energy prices, electric car mandates, deindustrialization — and they reject it.

In contrast to the impassioned media alarmism about fascists in boots, the main trend to emerge from these elections is a reinvigoration of Europe’s centre-right, most notably in countries such as Germany and Spain where mainstream centre-right parties performed well.

As for the newer parties, most have thrived due to a recent shift to the center — most parties are no longer opposed to the use of the euro, for example — and this ideological shift has allowed them to broaden their support and win.

In the end, that may be their downfall. After winning elections by appealing to a broader coalition of voters, they will need to govern skillfully to maintain that coalition. History has shown that some of the emerging right’s signature policy promises will be particularly difficult to deliver.

On climate policy, the EU has the best chance, given the popularity of right-wing party positions and the EU’s complex governance system that provides easier opportunities for change. An early trigger would be major negotiations over the appointment of the president of the European Commission, the EU’s bureaucratic machine. The president is nominated by the leaders of the EU’s 27 member states but must be approved by a majority in parliament.

Five years ago, von der Leyen made a series of policy concessions to left-wing parties in exchange for their support in parliament. Now she is seeking a second five-year term, and right-wing rebel parties allied with the centrist European People’s Party (EPP) have an opportunity to pressure her to cave to their priorities. That could include promises from von der Leyen and other candidates to repeal the EU’s electric vehicle mandate and unpopular climate-related agricultural regulations.

Immigration will be a much harder problem. The insurgent right convinces itself that there is an obvious solution if only Europe’s powerless ruling classes would act. It’s a stretch to say that Europe’s current immigration policies are adequate, but there are no quick and easy solutions to the problems that bring right-wing parties to power.

Reducing illegal immigration is a logistical, financial and political challenge. EU efforts typically stall as soon as European countries realize they may need to cede some national sovereignty to the EU, such as through greater financial transfers to border countries or further harmonisation of legal rules around asylum applications. Will Le Pen ask French taxpayers to write Meloni a big cheque to manage immigration into southern Italy?

Cultural assimilation of immigrants and their descendants is the right’s biggest concern, especially with regard to Muslims, but any proposed solutions have proven unworkable and unpopular. Le Pen has not been able to devise a way to ban halal butchers without also implicating kosher meat (an attempt to forcibly assimilate France’s large Muslim population). Whether it’s banning mosques or headscarves, the anti-immigration right across the EU has struggled to muster a majority of public opinion in support of assimilation measures.

There is a reason the status quo is the status quo — media, left-wing indoctrination, cultural decadence, or whatever — and citizens and rebel parties alike may soon be faced with the possibility that the problem in Europe is the voters themselves, specifically the discrepancy between what they want and what they are prepared to do to get it. Get ready.