The center-right European People’s Party is eyeing “better implementation” of the Lisbon Treaty to better prepare the EU for what it sees as historic shifts in the global balance of power involving the U.S., China and Russia, EPP leader Manfred Weber said on Saturday. Speaking at a press conference on the second day of an EPP Leaders Retreat in Zagreb, Weber highlighted the possibility of broadening the use of qualified majority voting in EU decision-making and developing a practical plan for military response if a member state is attacked. Currently EU leaders can use qualified majority voting on most legislative proposals, from energy and climate issues to research and innovation. But common foreign and security policy, EU finances and membership issues, among other areas, need a unified majority. This means that on issues such as sanctions against Russia, one country can block agreement, as happened last summer when Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico vetoed a package of EU measures against Moscow — a veto that was eventually lifted. Such power in one country’s hands is something that the EPP would like to change.  As for military solidarity, Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty obliges countries to provide “aid and assistance by all the means in their power” if an EU country is attacked. For Weber, the formulation under European law is stronger than NATO’s Article 5 collective defense commitment. However, he stressed that the EU still lacks a clear operational plan for how the clause would work in practice. Article 42.7 was previously used when France requested that other EU countries make additional contributions to the fight against terrorism, following the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015.  Such ideas were presented as the party with a biggest grouping in the European Parliament — and therefore the power to shape EU political priorities — presented its strategic focus for 2026, with competitiveness as its main priority.  Keeping the pulse on what matters in 2026  The EPP wants to unleash the bloc’s competitiveness through further cutting red tape, “completing” the EU single market, diversifying supply chains, protecting economic independence and security and promoting innovation including in AI, chips and biotech, among other actions, according to its list 2026 priorities unveiled on Saturday. On defense, the EPP is pushing for a “360-degree” security approach to safeguard Europe against growing geopolitical threats, “addressing state and non-state threats from all directions,” according to the document. The EPP is calling for enhanced European defense capabilities, including a stronger defense market, joint procurement of military equipment, and new strategic initiatives to boost readiness. The party also stressed the need for better protection against cyberattacks and hybrid threats, and robust measures to counter disinformation campaigns targeting EU institutions and societies. On migration and border security, the EPP backs tougher asylum admissibility rules, faster returns, and strengthened external borders, including reinforced Frontex operations and improved digital systems like the Entry/Exit System.  The party also urged a Demographic Strategy for Europe amid the continent’s shrinking and aging population. The text, initiated by Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), member of the EPP, wants to see demographic considerations integrated into EU economic governance, cohesion funds, and policymaking, while boosting family support, intergenerational solidarity, labor participation, skills development, mobility and managed immigration.  Demographic change is “the most important issue, which is not really intensively discussed in the public discourse,” Weber said. “That’s why we want to highlight this, we want to underline the importance.” 

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will not attend the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in February, a spokesperson for the event confirmed Friday. “Several weeks ago, invitations were extended to individual government representatives from Iran. In light of recent developments, the Munich Security Conference will not uphold these invitations,” the spokesperson told POLITICO.  Araghchi this week described the anti-government demonstrations in Iran — in which thousands of protesters have been killed in a wave of repression driven by the Tehran regime — as “violent riots.”   It remains unclear whether Iranian opposition representatives will be invited to Munich instead, as has been the case in recent years with figures from Russian civil society. “As a matter of principle, we do not publish invitation or participant lists prior to the start of the conference. The invitation process is only concluded once the conference begins,” the MSC spokesperson added. The Munich Security Conference will take place Feb. 14-16 at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. Chris Lunday contributed to this report.

THE RISE AND FALL OF NATIONALISM STUDIES What the demise of a small department in an embattled university says about the future of Europe and the world.  By EMILY SCHULTHEIS in Vienna Illustration by Karolis Strautniekas for POLITICO In early 2022, just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, around two dozen students in the nationalism studies program at Central European University gathered in a classroom on the top floor of its glassy, modernist main building in Vienna. I was one of them.   The news of Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine felt urgent and close by. As we quietly nibbled sandwiches and sat in a circle of chairs facing the center of the room, a small group of professors went around the room, asking one student after another, particularly those from Ukraine and Russia, how they were reacting to the invasion. Ukraine had spent three decades creating a nation out of what had previously been one province in a vast superpower. Now Russia, the remaining heart of the former Soviet Union, seemed to be trying to rebuild the empire at the core of its own nationalist narrative by clawing it back with military force.  What was clear to me, and to everyone else in the room, was that the conflict playing out a few hundred miles away wasn’t just about whether NATO wanted to expand toward Russia or Ukraine wanted to join the European Union. It was a real-life case study in what we were studying: nationalism, the idea of the “nation,” the feelings it evokes in people and the way those feelings can be used and abused by those in power. Looking at the situation through a nationalism lens, we could see that one nation’s identity as an empire was pitted against another nation’s identity as an independent culture and ethnicity — and that the two national identities were fundamentally incompatible, regardless of the specific grievances being alleged.   In other words, we had an insight into the conflict that would take others years to grasp.  A few months later, I graduated from CEU with my degree in nationalism studies, and since then I’ve watched as political leaders across Europe and the globe increasingly wield nationalist narratives to win elections, justify war and chip away at democratic institutions. But even as nationalism seems ever more central to international politics, the university’s nationalism studies program is on the verge of extinction. When classes began on CEU’s Vienna campus earlier this fall, just seven students (plus three exchange students) remained in the program that had three dozen students a few years ago. Next year, there will be none at all.   The developments come on the heels of turmoil not just for the Nationalism Studies program, but for CEU itself, which was founded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros in the early 1990s. As part of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s protracted campaign against Soros, CEU was forced out of its longtime home in Budapest and announced it would relocate all its degree programs to Vienna in 2019 — a challenging and costly process that continues to put the university’s finances under strain, and one that in some ways foreshadowed the pressure U.S. President Donald Trump has put on American universities since returning to the White House earlier this year.  The Central European University’s campus in Vienna in 2020. Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images The reasons for the nationalism studies department’s closure are financial, administrative and, CEU leaders insist, not in any way an indication the university believes nationalism is unimportant. To the contrary, they argue, the study of nationalism is so imbued in all CEU programs that a standalone degree is hardly necessary.   So will anything be lost if this small but scrappy program disappears? As nationalism becomes the ascendant political force across the globe and real life provides countless examples for students of the phenomenon, I can’t help but feel that studying the world through the lens of the “nation” — what it means, who gets to belong to it and what can be done in its name — is more important than ever.   Covering far-right parties across Europe for nearly a decade, I’ve seen firsthand how nationalist narratives lie at the core of their populist appeals to voters. Their aim is to redefine who counts as the “us” of a national community and who is relegated to the outsider “them”: to make pronouncements about who belongs and who doesn’t; who is a true patriot and who isn’t; who deserves to live in a given country and who doesn’t.  When politicians from the Alternative for Germany party or the Austrian Freedom Party talk about protecting the Heimat (“homeland”) from refugees and foreigners, or U.S. Vice President JD Vance tells  Western democracies (as he did in Munich earlier this year) that their biggest security risk is a “threat from within,” they’re talking about a particular view of national identity they believe is under attack from increasing migration and multiculturalism. Naming those things, and understanding why they’re so effective with voters and supporters, is crucial for understanding the state of global politics.  The timing and symbolism of the demise of CEU’s nationalism studies program is unfortunate, Rogers Brubaker, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles who helped establish the program in the 1990s, told me this summer.  The program “started at a moment of heightened nationalism and is ending at a moment of heightened nationalism,” he said. “Not because people think we shouldn’t study this stuff, but for other reasons.”  FIRST STEPS In the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Europe became emblematic of the hope for a new, democratic future across the world — there was a belief that 1989 represented the “end of history” and a break with the nationalist wars and tensions that had dominated the 20th century.   It was in that environment in 1991 that Soros, who was born and raised in Budapest before emigrating to the United Kingdom after World War II, decided to found CEU, a university dedicated to the liberal democratic ideals and rigorous education he believed in and wanted to offer to students from the region who had previously lacked access to them.  The nationalism studies program began as a small center on the university’s Prague campus in 1992 led by the British-Czech scholar Ernest Gellner. Gellner was a key figure in the field, which explored the emergence of the modern nation-states that define the geographical borders of our world today. Gellner and others puzzled over why the concept of the “nation,” a political entity made up of people with a shared history, culture or language, arose in a world that had previously been dominated by feudal societies, city-states and diffuse, monarch-led empires.  In seminar rooms in Vienna, we learned about the concept of nations as “imagined communities,” a theory developed by Benedict Anderson in the 1980s — a shared identity that allows millions of disparate people to feel connected despite not knowing each other personally. Creating those communities based on shared traditions and national myths — the basis for a nation — became increasingly possible during the Industrial Revolution and the advent of mass media. Political leaders, who saw the value a unified population could have for consolidating power, helped facilitate this process and brought about the proliferation of the modern nation-state.  Nowhere was that creation of a national myth and shared traditions and values more powerful than in the United States, where a population without a common history came together in the late 18th century under a new American identity to overthrow British rule and found their own country. Many of the Americans in the program, like me, hadn’t recognized the nationalistic purpose of many of the traditions we grew up with, from the pledge of allegiance to the ubiquity of American flags.  But nationalism, in addition to being a powerful force in nation-building, has a dark side. Scholars in the field have also looked at how nationalism, when taken to extremes, led to fascism, totalitarianism and the conflicts that shaped geopolitics throughout the 20th century. In 1930s Germany, the belief in an ethnic German nation that extended far beyond the geographical boundaries of 1930s Germany — and the Nazis’ assertion that Jews were not and could not be part of that German nation — plunged the world into war and served as the rationale for the Holocaust.  Students at the Central European University’s library in Budapest in 2019. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images These were some of the big questions and developments Gellner hoped to explore with his center in Prague. After his death in 1995, other scholars of nationalism came together to establish a full-time degree program at CEU’s Budapest campus to honor his work and his memory. “The idea wasn’t that we were only going to study these classic works which are looking at these macro-historical, great transformations,” Brubaker, one of those involved at the time, told me in his office in Los Angeles this summer. “We have transformations happening right now … and so it seemed like a very much alive question and a crucial question.”  Rather than looking at nationalism as a historical phenomenon, the program wanted to help students understand what present-day nationalism looked like. The fierce conflicts that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, which pitted the predominantly Orthodox Christian Serbs against Muslims and Catholics in Bosnia and Croatia in a years-long war that left tens of thousands dead, served as a reminder to those studying the phenomenon that it was constantly evolving and showing up in new places and contexts.  “There was this hope that after the fall of the Iron Curtain, nationalism would not be a big thing,” said Szabolcs Pogonyi, current director of the Nationalism Studies Program, who joined the department a few years after its founding. With more and more countries democratizing and more and more economies globalizing, some thought that the era of nation-on-nation conflict was on the wane. “Then you had nationalist wars raging very close to us in Yugoslavia … and since then, we also see that it’s not going to go away.”  The resurgence of populist far-right parties in recent years, particularly as a backlash to increasing migration, is the latest iteration of nationalism. Arguing they are the only ones capable of protecting national identities under threat from new arrivals, they have tapped into insecurity and discontent in countries across the West to win elections and play an increasingly prominent role in setting the political agenda.  CLOSED CHAPTER In the years since its founding, CEU’s nationalism studies program has taught around 600 students from 60 countries around the globe. Where other attempts to establish nationalism studies programs have waxed and waned, including at the University of Edinburgh, CEU’s program endured. And even when CEU became the target of a nationalist leader itself, with Orbán ejecting it from Hungary in 2019, the program found a new home on CEU’s new campus in Vienna.  But last fall, department faculty got word that the university’s Senate was planning to discontinue the program and would stop it from accepting new students after the 2024-25 academic year. Those who had already matriculated for the program’s one- and two-year master’s programs could continue, but no new students would be allowed to join.  A banner in Budapest tunnel in 2017, as CEU students and teachers protested against government legislation. | Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images University administrators insist that they are not bowing to political pressure and say the decision was the result of declining application numbers in recent years. That, combined with the department’s small size — it has just three full-time faculty members and has relied on visiting professors to teach many of its courses — made it untenable financially at a time when the university was searching for ways to tighten its belt. (One other small program, they note, Cultural Heritage Studies, met a similar fate.)  “We are a private university,” Eva Fodor, a member of CEU’s senior leadership team who serves as pro-rector for teaching and learning, told me. “We have to consider the attractiveness of our programs to students.”  That argument was unconvincing to those involved in or close to the program, who argue nationalism studies was a drop in the bucket of the university’s broader financial struggles and remains symbolically important even if it’s small.  “This is an extremely small program, and not an expensive one compared to the magnitude of the challenges the CEU faces,” Brubaker said. “I think the decision was taken because a small entity is easier to abolish than a large entity for political reasons — low-hanging fruit, a symbolic thing to be able to tell to the trustees, ‘Look, we abolished a program.’ These are not compelling intellectual reasons.”  The program may live on, in diminished form, even if the Nationalism Studies Department no longer exists: CEU’s History Department is considering hosting a version of degree, if it gets approval from the CEU Senate.  In an interview, Fodor pushed back strongly against the idea that shutting down the Nationalism Studies Department is an indication CEU no longer believes the study of nationalism is important. To the contrary, she told me, nationalism is so integral to the ethos of CEU that it hardly needs its own department.   “Every single department at CEU is teaching courses on nationalism,” she said. “By suspending the program, we are not actually eliminating the study of nationalism.”  GLOBAL TIES Even if the program’s impending demise isn’t directly due to the rise of nationalism, the development could hardly come at a worse time for those hoping to better make sense of nationalist successes around Europe and the world.  Four years ago, when I started my master’s program at CEU, my goal was exactly that: to better understand why nationalism was on the rise in Europe and elsewhere. While covering the rise of far-right populist movements across Europe as a journalist based in Berlin, I discovered the program when I wrote a story about the university’s move to Vienna and decided to apply.  Studying nationalism from a theoretical perspective — whether it was understanding how national identities are formed, what processes contribute to ethnic prejudice, or the ways citizenship policy can be wielded — turned out to be helpful when I went back to being a reporter.   Writing about the global ties between nationalist, far-right political parties, I understood the ways these parties learned from each other’s messaging and framed outside influences (whether via migration or alleged efforts to sway national elections) as an attack on national sovereignty. In exploring the political activism of Los Angeles’ Iranian American diaspora, I drew on what I’d learned about the complicated relationships political diasporas can have with their home countries and the ways that identity impacts their civic involvement in their new countries. And when I covered the victims of racist violence in Germany, it was with an understanding I’d gotten at CEU about how ethnic prejudices are formed (and reinforced) by the way we’re socialized.  After graduation, my colleagues returned to their respective countries, which these days read like a list of successes for nationalist political parties. One went home to Romania, where a hard-right nationalist came within striking distance of winning the presidency earlier this year; another returned to Serbia, home of the right-wing leader Aleksandar Vučić. I went back to Germany, where the far-right Alternative for Germany party is leading the national polls; some remained in Austria, where the far-right Freedom Party came in first with 29 percent of the vote last year and nearly installed the first far-right chancellor since the end of World War II. My former classmates are now journalists, election observers, academics and political activists, all of whom approach their work armed with the knowledge of how these parties operate and appeal to their local electorates.  A master’s class at Central European University in Budapest in 2019. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images “Nationalism studies provides the understanding of these complex developments. One should understand what’s happening, why it’s happening and what such developments might lead to,” said Ruth Wodak, a professor of linguistics and expert on far-right rhetoric who has taught as a guest lecturer in CEU’s program (and served as my thesis adviser). Ethnically based nationalism “can lead to polarized societies, and sometimes, polarized societies can also become dangerous and violent.”  Those still involved in the nationalism studies program say they’re choosing to view this moment as a potential opportunity for the program to adapt: To an era when interest in studying humanities and social sciences is losing out to more professionally focused degrees, disciplines are increasingly intertwined and nationalism has evolved again to propel a new generation of illiberal leaders like Trump, Orbán and others into office.   “What would it look like if we were to establish this department today?” asked Michael Miller, a professor in the department who teaches (among others) its course on diaspora studies, when we spoke this summer. “Of course, we would deal with questions of identity, national identity and ethnic identity, but also questions of migration and diaspora in general, and the role of the state, the role of non-state bodies.”   “In the optimistic reading of this, it’s a blessing in disguise, because it gives us a chance to revitalize this field of study,” he added.   But it’s not yet clear whether that will happen. CEU’s Senate is in the process of considering whether to accept a proposal from the department’s faculty on reestablishing the program in CEU’s History department.  Studying nationalism means understanding the ways in which far-right nationalist parties’ fundamental pitches to voters play on deep-seated questions of identity, and the interplay between how someone views themself and how they fit within a broader group.   And that will remain relevant no matter what.   “If the study of nationalism … is broadly interpreted to refer to any way of invoking national community whether or not you use the word ‘nation,’” Brubaker told me, “then it is ubiquitous. Not only in political rhetoric, but also in the feelings and speech of ordinary citizens.” 

BERLIN — U.S. President Donald Trump’s overtures to the European far right have never been more overt, but the EU’s biggest far-right parties are split over whether that is a blessing or a curse.  While Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has welcomed Trump’s moral support, viewing it as a way to win domestic legitimacy and end its political ostracization, France’s National Rally has kept its distance — viewing American backing as a potential liability. The differing reactions from the two parties, which lead the polls in the EU’s biggest economies, stem less from varying ideologies than from distinct domestic political calculations. AfD leaders in Germany celebrated the Trump administration’s recent attacks on Europe’s mainstream political leaders and approval of “patriotic European parties” that seek to fight Europe’s so-called “civilizational erasure.” “This is direct recognition of our work,” AfD MEP Petr Bystron said in a statement after the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy — which, in parts, sounds like it could have been a manifesto of a far-right European party — warning that Europe may be “unrecognizable” in two decades due to migration and a loss of national identities. “The AfD has always fought for sovereignty, remigration, and peace — precisely the priorities that Trump is now implementing,” added Bystron, who will be among a group of politicians in his party traveling to Washington this week to meet with MAGA Republicans. One of the AfD’s national leaders, Alice Weidel, also celebrated Trump’s security strategy. “That’s why we need the AfD!” Weidel said in a post after the document was released. By contrast, National Rally leaders in France were generally silent. Thierry Mariani, a member of the party’s national board, explained Trump hardly seemed like an ideal ally. “Trump treats us like a colony — with his rhetoric, which isn’t a big deal, but especially economically and politically,” he told POLITICO. The party’s national leaders, Mariani added, see “the risk of this attitude from someone who now has nothing to fear, since he cannot be re-elected, and who is always excessive and at times ridiculous.”  AFD’S AMERICAN DREAM It’s no coincidence that Bystron is part of a delegation of AfD politicians set to meet members of Trump’s MAGA camp in Washington this week. Bystron has been among the AfD politicians increasingly looking to build ties to the Trump administration to win support for what they frame as a struggle against political persecution and censorship at home. This is an argument members of the Trump administration clearly sympathize with. When Germany’s domestic intelligence agency declared the AfD to be extremist earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the move “tyranny in disguise.” During the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President JD Vance urged mainstream politicians in Europe to knock down the “firewalls” that shut out far-right parties from government. “This is direct recognition of our work,” AfD MEP Petr Bystron said in a statement after the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy. | Britta Pedersen/Picture Alliance via Getty Images AfD leaders have therefore made a simple calculation: Trump’s support may lend the party a sheen of acceptability that will help it appeal to more voters while, at the same time, making it politically harder for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives to refuse to govern in coalition with their party. This explains why AfD polticians will be in the U.S. this week seeking political legitimacy. On Friday evening, Markus Frohnmaier, deputy leader of the AfD parlimentary group, will be an “honored guest” at a New York Young Republican Club gala, which has called for a “new civic order” in Germany. NATIONAL RALLY SEES ‘NOTHING TO GAIN’ In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally has distanced itself from the AfD and Trump as part of a wider effort to present itself as more palatable to mainstream voters ahead of a presidential election in 2027 the party believes it has a good chance of winning. As part of the effort to clean up its image, Le Pen pushed for the AfD to be ejected from the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament last year following a series of scandals that made it something of a pariah. At the same time, National Rally leaders have calculated that Trump can’t help them at home because he is deeply unpopular nationally. Even the party’s supporters view the American president negatively. An Odoxa poll released after the 2024 American presidential election found that 56 percent of National Rally voters held a negative view of Trump. In the same survey, 85 percent of voters from all parties described Trump as “aggressive,” and 78 percent as “racist.”  Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist and leading expert on French and international far-right movements, highlighted the ideological gaps separating Le Pen from Trump — notably her support for a welfare state and social safety nets, as well as her limited interest in social conservatism and religion.  “Trumpism is a distinctly American phenomenon that cannot be transplanted to France,” Camus said. “Marine Le Pen, who is working on normalization, has no interest in being linked with Trump. And since she is often accused of serving foreign powers — mostly Russia — she has nothing to gain from being branded ‘Trump’s agent in France.’” 

LISBON — Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission should continue to enforce its digital rules with an iron fist despite the outcry from U.S. officials and big tech moguls, co-chair of the Greens in the European Parliament Bas Eickhout told POLITICO. As Green politicians from across Europe gather in the Portuguese capital for their annual congress, U.S. top officials are blasting the EU for imposing a penalty on social media platform X for breaching its transparency obligations under the EU’s Digital Services Act, the bloc’s content moderation rule book. “They should just implement the law, which means they need to be tougher,” Eickhout told POLITICO on the sidelines of the event. He argued that the fine of €120 million is “nothing” for billionaire Elon Musk and that the EU executive should go further. The Commission needs to “make clear that we should be proud of our policies … we are the only ones fighting American Big Tech,” he said, adding that tech companies are “killing freedom of speech in Europe.” The Greens have in the past denounced Meta and X over their content moderation policies, arguing these platforms amplify “disinformation” and “extremism” and interfere in European electoral processes. Meta and X did not reply to a request for comment by the time of publication. Meta has “introduced changes to our content reporting options, appeals process and data access tools since the DSA came into force and are confident that these solutions match what is required under the law in the EU,” a Meta spokesperson said at the end of October. Tech mogul Musk said his response to the penalty would target the EU officials who imposed it. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the fine is “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” and accused the move of “censorship.” “It’s not good when our former allies in Washington are now working hand in glove with Big Tech,” blasted European Green Party chair Ciarán Cuffe at the opening of the congress in Lisbon. Eickhout, whose party GreenLeft-Labor alliance is in negotiations to enter government in the Netherlands, said “we should pick on this battle and stand strong.” The Commission’s decision to fine X under the EU’s Digital Services Act is over transparency concerns. The Commission said the design of X’s blue checkmark is “deceptive,” after it was changed from user verification into a paid feature. The EU’s executive also said X’s advertising library lacks transparency and that it fails to provide access to public data for researchers as required by the law.  Eickhout lamented that European governments are slow in condemning the U.S. moves against the EU, and argued that with its recent national security strategy, the Americans have made clear their objective is to divide Europe from within by fueling far-right parties. “Some of the leaders like [French President Emmanuel] Macron are still desperately trying to say that that the United States are our ally,” Eickhout said. “I want to see urgency on how Europe is going to take its own path and not rely on the U.S. anymore, because it’s clear we cannot.”

BRUSSELS — Last year’s gathering of Europe’s far right in Brussels took place behind metal shutters after protesters, police and city politicians tried to stop it from going ahead. This year, the doors are wide open — albeit flanked by security guards — and it’s the EU’s mainstream leadership that is under siege. Just a day after the EU was rocked by the arrest of two senior figures in a corruption probe, many at the Battle for the Soul of Europe conference — hosted by MCC Brussels, a think tank with close links to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and bringing together top officials from Budapest with right-wing politicians, activists and commentators from across the continent — said the time was right to channel public anger at the establishment. The latest corruption scandal is “another sign of double standards,” Balázs Orbán, political director to the Hungarian prime minister and the keynote speaker at the conference, said in an interview with POLITICO. “A corruption-based technocratic elite is mismanaging procedures. This element is very strong and it’s quite visible for the European voters but if you talk to Americans … this is what they see from Europe.” Prime Minister Orbán has repeatedly blasted the “EU elites” as out of touch and has sought to blame them for freezing funding for his own country over backsliding on democracy and the rule of law. There was a bullish mood at the event, held a stone’s throw from the EU Quarter of Brussels. Polish politician Ryszard Legutko, co-chairman of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group, took aim at Commission President Ursula von der Leyen herself. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images Polish politician Ryszard Legutko, co-chairman of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group, took aim at Commission President Ursula von der Leyen herself. “The fish stinks from its head,” he blasted. John O’Brien, one of the organizers of the two-day conference, which kicked off on Wednesday, said “a couple of years ago people were scared to say some of these things about immigration, to raise concerns about environmental extremism, to talk about the mismanagement of economies … now, people are really finding their voices.” “It’s been demonstrated the last few years, time and time again, that Europe is dirty and needs to be cleaned up,” said O’Brien, as waiters in bowties served coffee to attendees. The latest embarrassment for the EU — the detention on Tuesday of former Commission Vice President Federica Mogherini and ex-top diplomatic official Stefano Sannino as part of a fraud probe — has given the right plenty of ammunition. At a panel on Thursday, French National Rally MEP Thierry Mariani and British political commentator Matthew Goodwin are set to take aim at the “deep-state web of civil service, NGOs and captured institutions.” Alice Cordier, a French activist and president of the Nemesis Collective, a self-described feminist campaign group that has been branded a far-right Islamophobic outfit by critics, said “corruption is a big issue.” The scandals, she said, compound public anger that has so far been focused largely on the consequences of migration. Balasz Orbán, however, was skeptical that the scandal would be a game-changer for national elections, including his own boss’s tough re-election fight next year. “Honestly,” he said, the internal corruption allegation is “not a big surprise for me, so it doesn’t add too much.” But according to Daniel Freund, an MEP from the German Greens, the far right is not “in any position” to credibly champion the anti-corruption cause. “They are the problem, not the solution,” Freund said, adding that the far-right Patriots group [in the European Parliament, to which Orbán’s Fidesz party belongs] has voted against “almost every measure that would strengthen the fight against corruption.” For now, the EU’s political leadership has been muted on the fraud investigation and is firmly on the defensive, its hands tied by ongoing legal proceedings. That has some worried: “The credibility of our institutions is at stake,” said Manon Aubry, co-chair of The Left group in the European Parliament. Others from von der Leyen’s own governing coalition want to see her take an unequivocally tough stance before her opponents capitalize on the idea that the Brussels bureaucracy is awash with the abuse of public money. “It needs to be dealt with at a European level,” said Raquel García Hermida-van der Walle, a Dutch MEP from the centrist Renew faction. “Whether it is … Qatargate, or these new fraud suspicions. Zero tolerance and more tools to tackle this.” Max Griera and Dionisios Sturis contributed reporting.

BERLIN — Before Leif-Erik Holm became one of the German far right’s leading figures, he was a morning radio DJ in his home state in eastern Germany celebrated, by his station, for making “the best jokes far and wide.” Ahead of regional elections across Germany next year, Holm, 55, is now set to become the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s top candidate in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a largely rural area bordering Poland and the Baltic Sea. With polls showing the AfD in first place at 38 percent support in the state, it’s one of the places where the party — now the largest opposition group in Germany’s national parliament — is within striking distance of taking significant governing power for the first time since its formation over a decade ago. Holm embodies the type of candidate at least some AfD leaders increasingly want at the top of the ticket. With an avuncular demeanor, he eschews the kind of incendiary rhetoric other politicians in the party have embraced and says he seeks dialogue with his political opponents. Asked what his party would do if it takes power in his state next year, Holm rattled off some innocuous-sounding proposals: invest more in education, including STEM subjects, and ensure children of immigrants learn German before they start school. “I’m actually a nice guy,” Holm said. Underneath the guy-next-door image, however, there’s a clear political calculus. National co-head of the party, Alice Weidel, is attempting something of a rebrand, believing that the AfD won’t be able to make the jump to real political power unless it moves away from candidates who embrace openly extreme positions. That means moving away from controversial leaders like Björn Höcke — found guilty by a court for uttering a banned slogan used by Adolf Hitler’s SA storm troopers — and Maximilian Krah, who last year said he would “never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal.” Instead, the preferred candidate, at least for Weidel and people in her camp, is someone like Holm, who can present a more sanitized face of the party. But the makeover is proving to be only skin deep, and even Weidel, despite her national leadership role, can’t prevent the mask from slipping. NEW LOOK, SAME POLITICS Since its creation in 2013 as a Euroskeptic party, the AfD has grown more extreme, mobilizing its increasingly radicalized base primarily around the issue of migration. Earlier this year, Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency — which is tasked with surveilling groups found to be anti-constitutional — deemed the AfD an extremist group. Weidel is now trying to tamp down on the open extremism. The effort is intended to make the AfD more palatable to mainstream conservatives — and to make it harder for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right alliance to refuse to govern in coalition with the party by maintaining the postwar “firewall” around the far right. Weidel’s push to present a more polished party image isn’t necessarily supported by large swaths of the AfD’s rank and file — especially in its strongholds in the former East Germany — who point to the fact that the party’s political ascent coincided with its radicalization. The argument isn’t without merit. Despite its rising extremism, the party came in second in the snap federal election early this year — the best national showing for a far-right party since World War II. The party is now ahead of Merz’s conservatives in polls. Alice Weidel’s push to present a more polished party image isn’t necessarily supported by large swaths of the AfD’s rank and file. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images  Weidel is nevertheless pressing ahead with her drive to try to soften the AfD’s image. As part of this effort, Weidel has tried to somewhat shift her party from its proximity to the Kremlin — seeking closer ties with Republicans in the U.S. From now on, the party will “fight alongside the white knight rather than the black knight,” a person familiar with Weidel’s thinking said. In another remake attempt, earlier this year, an extremist youth group affiliated with the AfD dissolved itself to avert a possible ban that might have damaged the party. Last weekend, a new youth wing was formed that party leaders will have direct control over. Other far-right parties across Europe have made their own rebranding efforts. In France, far-right leader Marine Le Pen has attempted to normalize her party — an effort referred to as dédiabolisation, or “de-demonization” — ditching the open antisemitism of its founders. As part of that push, Le Pen moved to disassociate her party from the AfD in the European Parliament. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has moderated her earlier anti-EU, pro-Russia stances. For the AfD, however, the attempted transformation is less a matter of substance — and more a matter of optics. Underneath Weidel’s effort to burnish her party’s reputation, many of its most extreme voices continue to hold sway. THE POLISHED RADICAL Perhaps no AfD leader embodies that tension more than Ulrich Siegmund, the lead candidate for the party in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where it is polling first at 40 percent support ahead of a regional vote next September. It’s here, in this small state of just over 2 million people, where AfD leaders pin most of their hopes of getting into state government next year — possibly even with an absolute majority. Like Holm, Siegmund too tries to cultivate a regular-guy persona. Even members of opposing parties in the state parliament describe him as friendly and approachable. With over half a million followers on TikTok, he reaches more people than any other state politician in Germany. Perhaps no AfD leader embodies that tension more than Ulrich Siegmund, the lead candidate for the party in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. | Emmanuele Contini/NurPhoto via Getty Images At the same time, Siegmund is clearly connected to the extreme fringe of the party. He was one of the attendees at a secret meeting of right-wing extremists in which a “master plan” to deport migrants and “unassimilated citizens” was reportedly discussed. When news of the meeting broke last year, it sparked sustained protests against the far right across Germany and temporarily dented the AfD’s popularity in polls. Speaking to POLITICO, Siegmund minimized the secret meeting as “coffee klatsch,” claiming the real scandal is how the media overblew the episode. He described himself not as a dangerous extremist — but as a regular guy concerned for his country. “I am a normal citizen, taxpayer and resident of this country who simply wants a better home, especially for his children, for his family, for all of our children,” Siegmund said. “Because I simply cannot stand by and watch our country develop so negatively in such a short time.” Yet, when pressed, Siegmund could not conceal his extremism. He defended the use of the motto “Everything for Germany!” — the banned Nazi phrase that got his party colleague, Höcke, into legal trouble. “I think it goes without saying that you should give your all for your own country,” Siegmund said. “And I think that should also be the benchmark for every politician — to do everything they can for their own country, because that’s what they were elected to do and what they are paid to do.” Siegmund also took issue with the notion that the Nazis perpetrated history’s greatest crime against humanity, so therefore Germans have a special responsibility to avoid such terms. Ulrich Siegmund also took issue with the notion that the Nazis perpetrated history’s greatest crime against humanity, so therefore Germans have a special responsibility to avoid such terms. | Heiko Rebsch/picture alliance via Getty Images “I find this interpretation to be grossly exaggerated and completely detached from reality,” he said. “For me, it is important to look forward and not backward. And of course, we must always learn from history, but not just from individual aspects of history, but from history as a whole.” Siegmund said he couldn’t judge whether the Nazis had perpetrated history’s worst crime, relativizing the Holocaust in a manner reminiscent of some of the most extreme voices in his party. “I don’t presume to judge that,” he said, “because I can’t assess the whole of humanity.” One lesson from Germany’s history, Siegmund added, is that there should be no “language police” or attempts to ban the AfD as extremist, as some centrist politicians advocate. “If you want to ban the strongest force in this country according to opinion polls, then you’re not learning from history either,” he said. INTERNATIONAL NATIONALISTS The AfD’s national leaders privately smarted at Siegmund’s comments for making their faltering rebrand more difficult. (Holm did not respond to a request for comment on the statements.) That’s especially the case because Weidel and other AfD leaders are increasingly looking abroad for the legitimacy they crave at home and fear such rhetoric will complicate the effort. Weidel and people in her circle have sought to forge closer ties to the Trump administration and other right-wing governments, seeing connections with MAGA Republicans in the U.S. and other populist-right parties in Europe as a way of winning credibility for the AfD domestically. In Europe, Weidel has repeatedly visited Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at his official residence in Budapest. The party is also making an effort to reestablish connections with members of Le Pen’s party in the European Parliament, according to a high-ranking AfD official. Not everyone in the AfD, however, sees eye to eye with Weidel on the attempt to moderate the party image, especially when it comes to relations with Moscow. The AfD’s other national co-leader, Tino Chrupalla, recently told an interviewer on German public television that Vladimir Putin’s Russia poses no threat to Germany. Chrupalla’s rhetoric is much more friendly to the Kremlin, and he’s the preferred party leader among many of the AfD’s most radical supporters in eastern Germany — where pro-Moscow sympathies are more prevalent. Many of the AfD’s followers in the former East Germany, where the party polls strongest, see Weidel, born in the former West Germany, as too mild in her approach. Ultimately, the direction of the AfD — in next year’s state elections and beyond — may well depend on which leader’s vision prevails.

GROßRÄSCHEN, Germany — It was in a bowling alley beside a parking lot in a small eastern German town that the designated youth-wing leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) laid out a simple vision for the party’s march to power: recruit and professionalize the young acolytes. “We will need new blood,” Jean-Pascal Hohm, the 28-year-old who is set to lead the AfD’s new youth organization, told POLITICO as families gathered to bowl nearby. “We need to identify talented people early on.” Hohm is set to be elected leader of party’s revamped youth wing, dubbed Generation Germany, during its founding congress on Saturday. The group’s creation is part of a wider effort among some of the AfD’s national leaders to destigmatize the party and efface its extremist image. The rebrand comes after the former youth organization affiliated with the AfD dissolved itself earlier this year in what was widely seen as a tactical maneuver to avert a possible ban. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency had labeled the former group as extremist. But experts say the makeover, which brings the youth wing under the direct control of the AfD, is merely cosmetic. While the organization may appear more palatable and professional under Hohm’s leadership, it’s likely to be just as ideologically extreme as the earlier incarnation. “In terms of content, my perception is that what is currently happening is not what one would understand as a major deradicalization effort,” said Anna-Sophie Heinze, a researcher at the University of Trier who has studied the AfD. EXTREME HOOLIGANS Hohm, who joined the AfD when he was 17, in many ways embodies efforts by some party leaders to sanitize their image. With an assured demeanor and measured tone, his own ideological peers once described him online as the kind of guy a mother would be happy to see her daughter marry. But his past activities and connections suggest a far more extreme edge. Hohm is deeply rooted in the eastern German city of Cottbus, where he leads the local AfD branch, and is described by political scientists as a figure who has helped link local extremist activists. For a brief period he was deemed too extreme even for his own party. In 2017, Hohm lost his job as an aide for the AfD parliamentary group in the eastern state of Brandenburg after he was spotted at a soccer game for FC Energie Cottbus, a team in Germany’s third division that at the time attracted right-wing extremist hooligans known for chanting Nazi slogans and performing Hitler salutes in the stands. Hohm was seen at one game among the hooligans sitting beside a then-leader of Germany’s Identitarian Movement, which was eventually designated a right-wing extremist group by the federal domestic intelligence agency. But his exclusion from the AfD didn’t last long, and Hohm soon got a job as an assistant to an AfD national parliamentarian. Last year he himself was elected to the Brandenburg state parliament. When asked about his connections to Identitarian figures, Hohm took issue with their classification as extremist. “We will need new blood,” Jean-Pascal Hohm, the 28-year-old who is set to lead the AfD’s new youth organization, told POLITICO as families gathered to bowl nearby. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images “The question is always: How do you define extremism?” Hohm said. “There is the definition used by the media or domestic intelligence service, which says that the Identitarian Movement, for example, is right-wing extremist. But they also say that the AfD is right-wing extremist. And I don’t believe that either.” Hohm and others now see the new youth wing as a recruitment engine that can equip the AfD leaders of tomorrow with the political savvy they’ll need to take power and keep it — in part by making such ideological views palatable to mainstream voters. WHAT WOULD GRANDMA THINK? AfD youth activists have become increasingly influential in recent years, attracting young voters with online campaigns that have made once-fringe ideas mainstream. Last year, for instance, some activists created a viral AI-generated video for “Remigration Hit,” a far-right dance track that calls for the deportation of migrants from Germany. At the same time, the previous AfD youth organization, known as Young Alternative, was seen by party leaders as a potential liability. Germany’s postwar constitution allows domestic intelligence agencies to surveil political parties and organizations deemed extremist — and even makes it possible to ban such groups, though the legal bar is high in the case of political parties. Young Alternative was classified as a right-wing extremist organization by federal domestic intelligence authorities in 2023. The AfD as a whole was classified as extremist earlier this year. While centrist politicians have debated whether to try to ban the AfD, the idea is considered politically fraught given the party’s popularity. The former youth group, however, which functioned as an independent organization, was seen as far more vulnerable to a possible ban. That’s why the new youth group is forming under Hohm’s leadership. Because it will be under the direct control of the AfD, a ban attempt is considered less likely, thereby protecting the party from the possibility of collateral damage. Or, as Hohm put it at the bowling alley, “When grandma sees on the news that the AfD’s youth organization has been banned for right-wing extremism, that definitely leaves an impression.”

LONDON — Voters across the Western world are alarmed about threats to democracy, worrying that extremist parties, fake news and corruption will undermine elections.  A major poll by Ipsos of almost 10,000 voters in nine countries — seven in the European Union, plus the U.K. and the U.S. — found about half of voters are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working.  With the exception of Sweden, where people think democratic politics is working well, a clear majority worry about the risks to their systems of self-government over the next five years, according to the survey shared exclusively with POLITICO.  “There’s widespread concern about the way democracy is working, with people feeling unrepresented particularly by their national governments,” Gideon Skinner, senior director of U.K. politics at Ipsos, told POLITICO. “[There are] particular concerns around the impact of fake news, disinformation, lack of accountability for politicians, and extremism. In most countries there is a desire for radical change.”  The survey comes amid growing concern that democracy across the West is under threat. Wealth inequality around the world is driving support for extremist parties, undermining debate and preparing the ground for authoritarianism, according to a recent report for the G20. This week, the European Commission unveiled its plans to strengthen democracy across the EU’s 27 countries. But critics said its proposal to tackle foreign interference in European elections was too weak, with participation voluntary across the bloc. Authorities have identified Russian disinformation and meddling in elections in many European countries over the past year, from Romania to Germany.  For the new poll, Ipsos questioned more than 9,800 voters in the U.K., France, the U.S., Spain, Italy, Sweden, Croatia, the Netherlands and Poland between Sept. 12 and Sept. 29. The pollsters found an average of 45 percent of respondents across all nine countries examined were dissatisfied with the way democracy was working, Skinner said.  Voters who identified as belonging to the political extremes — both on the far left and far right — were most likely to say democracy was failing.  In France and the Netherlands, satisfaction levels have fallen over the past year in response to political turmoil. The French government has repeatedly collapsed amid an ongoing crisis over the national budget, while the Dutch coalition fell apart earlier this year, triggering an election that was held in October. In none of the nine countries surveyed did a majority of voters believe their national government was representing their views well. Voters in Croatia and the U.K. were the least likely to agree that their governments were representing them effectively, with just 23 percent saying so in both cases.  In every country surveyed apart from Poland — which saw a high turnout in presidential elections this year — more voters said the way democracy was working had worsened over the past five years than said it had improved. In the U.S. 61 percent of voters thought the state of democracy had worsened since 2020.  Voters in France (86 percent) and Spain (80 percent) were the most worried about what the next five years would mean for their democratic systems. Respondents identified the biggest risks to democracy as disinformation, corruption, a lack of accountability for politicians and the rise of extremist politics.    Generally, most people questioned still strongly supported democratic ideals, though in Croatia more than half (51 percent) said keeping democracy was only worth it if it delivered a good quality of life.  Ipsos found that respondents backed action to protect democracy, especially laws and enforcement to combat corruption, protecting the independence of the courts, better civic education in schools, and regulations against fake news and hate speech on social media.

PARIS — The scene at Le Carillon before kickoff when football powerhouses Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich faced off earlier this month probably looked a lot like it did 10 years ago — right before 15 people were gunned down at the bar while watching another Franco-German soccer match. Perhaps the only difference was that the crowd on the terrace of the Parisian bar in 2025 were themselves being watched by an armada of surveillance cameras installed in the aftermath of the Nov. 13, 2015 terror attacks. Though it’s been a decade since the tragedy that left more than 130 people dead across Paris and environs, silent traces of a national trauma — such as the omnipresence of cameras — still shape France. The attacks forever changed the country and its politics, tipping the balance of protecting civil liberties versus ensuring public safety in favor of the latter. Since 2015, France has passed a slew of laws meant to ensure such an event could never happen again. Members of parliament have expanded the state’s surveillance powers and its ability to impose restrictive measures without prior judicial approval. They’ve also reshaped France’s immigration policy and oversight of religious — particularly Muslim — organizations. “Successive governments — left-wing or right-wing — have reinforced the legal arsenal on anti-terror policy, and it’ll likely continue in the future to remain as close as possible to emerging challenges,” said Jean-Michel Fauvergue, who in 2015 was the head of the police RAID unit — France’s equivalent of SWAT. After going so many years without a major terror incident, it’s unlikely any politician will try to pare back this new reality of heightened alerts, increased surveillance and the omnipresence of armed soldiers. | Pierre Suu/Getty Images Proponents of what Fauvergue, who served as a lawmaker for President Emmanuel Macron’s party from 2017 to 2022, described as France’s “beautiful shield providing excellent protection” argue that it has helped prevent mass casualty incidents since the attack in Nice in 2016. Nicolas Lerner, the head of France’s foreign intelligence service, said in a radio interview Monday that while authorities remain extremely vigilant, the probability of another massive, complex attack organized by extremists abroad has “considerably diminished.” A former adviser to another interior minister, granted anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, reiterated that sentiment to POLITICO. After going so many years without a major terror incident, it’s unlikely any politician will try to pare back this new reality of heightened alerts, increased surveillance and the omnipresence of armed soldiers. “History has shown that it never happens, that governments go back and scrap measures taken in the name of anti-terrorism or security,” said Julien Fragnon, a French political scientist who researches anti-terror policies. “There’s a ratchet effect: The law, on the scale of gradation, goes up a notch … and no politician wants to go back on it for fear that future attacks could be blamed on them.” WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY Fragnon said it’s common for governments to pass stricter anti-terror policies, previously seen as unpopular, during a “window of opportunity” following a devastating attack, when worried populations are looking for security assurances. That appears to be what happened in France. A law passed in 2017 gave the government the ability to enact certain security measures that were only possible during a state of emergency, including setting up security perimeters around public events, as well as ordering movement restrictions for individuals and the closure of places of worship suspected of promoting extremism, both without prior judicial approval. The “separatism bill” proposed in 2020, which tightened rules on foreign funding of faith-based groups and introduced new offenses against incitement to hatred, was highly controversial and criticized as anti-Muslim. But even so, the legislation was approved the following year with support from across the political spectrum. Opinion polls at the time also showed widespread public support for measures combating “separatism.” French voters today remain concerned about the threat of terrorism, and are overwhelmingly supportive of the idea that public safety requires some sacrifice when it comes to personal freedoms, according to a survey from respected pollster Elabe conducted in July. “Even with an open question and no suggested answers on what are the biggest threats they face, French people will spontaneously mention terrorism,” said Frédéric Dabi, director general of the polling firm IFOP. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which has largely approved of measures directly strengthening the fight against the terror threat, wants to go a step further by “banning all expression of Islamist thought in France,” said a high-ranking official from the far-right party, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. French voters today remain concerned about the threat of terrorism, and are overwhelmingly supportive of the idea that public safety requires some sacrifice when it comes to personal freedoms, according to a survey from respected pollster Elabe. | Hans Luca/Getty Images Critics of the status quo, like lawmaker Pouria Amirshahi, fear that an illiberal government could one day use tools aimed at security threats to target political opponents — especially in France, given the National Rally’s steady rise in recent decades. Amirshahi was among only six of 577 lawmakers to vote against extending the state of emergency six days after the Nov. 13 attack, due to concerns that France would be “weakening the rule of law” by handing the executive more ability to bypass the judiciary. He said France should have taken inspiration from Norway’s decision to respond to the 2011 attack there with “more democracy, more openness and more humanity.” “In all countries that have shifted toward illiberalism — both historically and today, in Hungary and Argentina — heavy security measures came first to prepare the ground,” Amirshahi said. “There are currently no bills to roll back the measures adopted after 2015, and little concern for rights and liberties among legislators.” “The headwinds against us are extremely strong,” he concluded.