🔗 Share this article Combating Europe's Populist Movements: Protecting the Less Well-Off from the Forces of Transformation More than a twelve months following the vote that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic party has still not released its postmortem analysis. However, recently, an prominent progressive lobby group published its own. The Harris campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives overlooked the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds. A Warning for Europe While Europe prepares for a turbulent era of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a message that must be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, is optimistic that “nationalist movements in Europe will soon mirror Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s core nations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, backed by large swaths of working-class voters. Yet among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is adequate to challenging times. Era-Defining Challenges and Expensive Solutions The issues Europe faces are expensive and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and developing economies that are less vulnerable to pressure by Mr Trump and China. As per a Brussels-based thinktank, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could necessitate an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A major report last year on European economic competitiveness called for massive investment in shared infrastructure, to be partly funded by jointly held EU debt. Such a fiscal paradigm shift would stimulate growth figures that have flatlined for years. But, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there remains a deficit of courage when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations resist the idea of collective borrowing, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are deeply unambitious. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is widely supported with voters. Yet the beleaguered centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move. The Cost of Political Paralysis The truth is that without such measures, the less well-off will pay the price of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and greater inequality. Acrimonious recent disputes over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – a phenomenon that the RN and the AfD have eagerly leveraged to promote a politics of welfare chauvinism. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has resisted moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would target any benefit cuts at foreign residents. Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Populists Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect blue‑collar interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. But without a compelling progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Absent a fundamental change in economic approach, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being torn apart. Governments must avoid giving this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.