Europe’s Youth Are Fueling the Far Right

Evidence is mounting that Europe’s far right will score better than ever before in the upcoming European Parliament elections on June 6 to June 9—and that the continent’s young voters will fuel its ascent. The young adults now gravitating to far right aren’t Nazis or xenophobic racists, but they may have a hand in an outcome that will, at the very least, shift the European Union’s priorities and accents to the right. A particularly solid right-wing finish—and cooperation across the hard-right spectrum—could rattle EU unity and throw a wrench into the bloc’s workings at a time when it is confronting acute crises on several fronts, not least the war in Ukraine.

Since new laws mean that even people under 18 will be eligible to vote in some countries—16-year-olds in Austria, Germany, Malta, and Belgium, and 17-year-olds in Greece—there had been hope that these new voters would put a brake on the populist surge engulfing Europe. The idea behind giving 16- and 17-year-olds the vote was partly based on their long-term investment in politics. The policies designed today will affect them for many decades, in contrast to their grandparents.

And in the 2019 European Parliament election, young voters showed great promise by turning out in record numbers, a hopeful sign that reflected their enthusiasm for the common European project. With the climate movement rocking the streets, their votes went disproportionately to green parties that championed strong climate protection and deeper EU integration—two sets of long-term interests. This landed green representatives from Portugal to Latvia in the Brussels parliament and prompted the EU administration to approve the European Green Deal in 2020.

But the democratic exuberance of voters in their late teens, 20s, and early 30s could boost a very different trend this June, as growing numbers of younger voters are siding with far-right populist parties—the very ones that want to scupper the Green Deal and rein in the EU. In recent national votes conducted in Portugal, Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Finland, and France, young people voted in unprecedented numbers for extreme nationalist and euroskeptic parties. (Though some observers have argued that reporting about these trends is incomplete or oversimplified.) And surveys in Germany show the youth vote becoming ever more sympathetic to the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right party that has undergone a radicalization that makes it among Europe’s fiercest, hard-right electoral parties.

“There’s no doubt that these parties have been making inroads to younger voters,” said Catherine de Vries, a Dutch political scientist. “The parties don’t look so extreme anymore, as they’ve been around for a while now. And young people think that the mainstream parties have had their chance. The system still doesn’t work for them, so let the other guys have a try.”

A German study published this year by a team led by youth researcher Simon Schnetzer showed that a full 22 percent of the young people (in this case, ages 14 through 29) surveyed would vote for the AfD if German elections were held today—twice as many as just two years ago. The tally for the Green Party fell by a third during that time frame. A full quarter of those asked said they weren’t sure who’d they vote for—another all-time high result.

The grounds for the pronounced shift are vague: Researchers tend to cite a general unhappiness with the post-pandemic economic and political conditions. “It seems as if the coronavirus pandemic left [young people] irritated about our ability to cope with the future, which is reflected in deep insecurity,” wrote the study’s authors. The issues described by participants that most impact this insecurity included their personal finances, professional opportunities, the health sector, and social recognition. They expressed less concern about the climate crisis and more about inflation, the economy, and old-age poverty.

“We can speak of a clear shift to the right in the young population,” said Klaus Hurrelmann, one of the study’s authors and a professor at the Hertie School in Berlin. The AfD’s foremost campaign priority of stopping immigration and refugee relief plainly struck a chord: Compared to a separate study conducted five years ago, about half as many (26 percent) of the young participants (26 percent) in the 2024 study said they were not in favor of taking in refugees. But just as important as the content of immigration policies, the authors underlined, was the idea that young people feel unheard or involved in the political process.

The change in sympathy in many young Germans reflects survey results, elections, and the statements of other young people across Europe. In the Netherlands’ elections last year, the most popular party among people under 35 (at 17 percent) was the Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders, a far-right populist with a long record of EU-trashing.

The explanation provided by many Dutch experts: It’s all about bestaanszekerheid, a Dutch word translated as “livelihood security.” This refers to having a decent and regular income, a comfortable home, access to education and health care, and a buffer against unexpected problems, de Vries told the Guardian. Young peoples’ leading concerns in the Netherlands are housing, overcrowded classes, and struggling hospitals, she said, which Wilders addressed in his campaign.

In Portugal’s March legislative elections, the far-right Chega party, which prioritized courting young people, raked in more of their votes than any other party. The meaning of chega, which can be translated as “that’s enough,” accurately describes many young voters’ motive for supporting it. Their gripes: “a very low average wage and an economy that cannot absorb educated young people,” according to political scientist António Costa Pinto in an interview with Euronews

“In the past, right-wing sympathizers accused immigrants of taking their jobs,” said Eberhard Seidel, the managing director of a Berlin-based nongovernmental organization called Schools Without Racism. “Now there are enough jobs but not enough housing for people who work. They still have to live with their parents.”

Observers say that the far right has excelled at grabbing the youth’s attention, not least with the social media platform TikTok. The recent German study found that 57 percent of young people imbibe their news and politics through social media. More than 90 percent use messaging service WhatsApp, followed by Instagram (80 percent) and YouTube (77 percent). TikTok stands at 51 percent; more than half of all 14- to 29-year-olds now use the app regularly, compared to 44 percent last year. The epiphany prompted an immediate response from German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, who on declared in his first video on the platform, posted on March 19: “Revolution on TikTok: It starts today.”

Other opinion surveys show that young voters are diverse, divided, and undecided. A YouGov poll conducted in August 2023 showed that young Europeans are overwhelmingly concerned about the climate crisis and its likely effects, and more willing than older people to change behavior to mitigate those effects. Another poll, conducted in Germany, showed human rights violations at the top of younger people’s lists, followed by climate change, sexual harassment, and child abuse.

Younger voters still aren’t the drivers of xenophobia in the way that their parents’ generation was, Seidel said. A vote for the AfD doesn’t necessarily mean that they favor expelling immigrants from Germany or exiting the EU. “They take the basics of democracy and the social system for granted,” he said. “And they’re not fully aware of the implications of a rightward lurch in their political systems.”

Neither were Brexit’s voters, Seidel noted. And they found out the hard way.