2019 EU Elections: How Many Populists Does It Take to Change the EU?

In the Anglosphere, the dominant narrative ahead of the 2019 EU elections has been the seemingly irrepressible progress of populist or nationalist movements: in Italy, the support base of Matteo Salvini’s League is cannibalising voters from his M5S coalition partners; in Hungary Victor Orban’s Fidesz alliance has held a parliamentary supermajority all decade; the Macron government has not had a Gilets Jaunes-free weekend since November; and with the Brexit Party’s polling supremacy ‘answering’ a delayed withdrawal, the theme has a domestic dimension.

Whether Britain can leave before the year’s end or not, there is a true feeling of momentum in eurosceptics over the populist-nationalist upswell: success in 2019 should allow them to begin reforming the EU into a decentralised (yet still willingly collaborative) ‘Europe of sovereign states’. They point to Salvini’s rapidly-gathered alliance with the French National Rally, Germany’s AFD and others in anticipation of having more parliamentary strength.