Extreme-right in Europe: Win some, lose some

Many radical parties are making their entry in the European parliament, but an extreme-right front is still out of reach.

From Finland come the True Fins, who got nearly ten percent of the Finnish vote; Jobbik (For a Better Hungary) is sending three representatives to Brussels; and two parlementarians will represent the idea of a Greater Romania. Austria will have no less than five representatives of the extreme-right FPÖ and the eurosceptic party of former journalist Hans Peter Martin.

For the first time, the anti-immigrant British National Party will be represented in Europe with two MEPs. And the eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIO) is now bigger than prime minister Gordon Brown's own Labour party.

The rise of the extreme-right parties in the European elections looks impressive, but it is actually less than predicted by the opinion polls. In some countries (Poland, Czech Republic) the extreme-right parties did less well than expected; in others, they suffered huge electoral losses.

The anti-immigrant Vlaams Belang party in Belgium suffered its first major defeat in decades, losing one of its three seats in the European parliament and eleven of its 32 seats in the Flemish parliament. In France, the Front National lost four of its seven seats in the European parliament. The eurosceptic Libertas party of Irishman Declan Ganley failed to get a single seat.

Mainstream politicians in the European parliament didn't seem particularly worried about their new colleagues yesterday. They expect them to shout a lot, but with only a few dozen seats they won't have any real influence, they said.

The radical parties are severely handicapped by the diversity of their points of view: from the defense of illegal downloading (the Swedish Piracy party) to anti-Islam (PVV, British National Party, Vlaams Belang) to euroscepticism (UKIP, Libertas...)

Most parties in the European parliament work together in political groups, which gives them more clout, more funding, more speaking time and more top appointments. An attempt to form an extreme-right political group in 2007 fell apart after infighting between the Belgian, the Italians and the Romanians among others.

The anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) of the Dutch populist Geert Wilders has already said it is not looking to join a European political group. The PVV, which won four seats on Thursday, says it wants to bring an "undiluted PVV message" to Brussels.