🔗 Share this article Countering Europe's National Populists: Shielding the Less Well-Off from the Forces of Transformation Over a twelve months following the election that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic Party has yet to issued its postmortem analysis. However, recently, an influential progressive lobby group published its own. The Harris campaign, its authors contended, failed to connect with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals overlooked the kitchen-table concerns that were foremost in many people’s minds. A Lesson for Europe While Europe prepares for a turbulent era of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that must be fully absorbed in European capitals. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful that “nationalist movements in Europe will quickly replicate Mr Trump’s success. Within Europe's Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) top the polls, backed by large swaths of blue-collar voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is adequate to troubling times. Major Problems and Costly Solutions The challenges Europe faces are expensive and historic. They include the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and developing economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based research institute, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness called for massive investment in public goods, to be partly funded by collective EU debt. Such a fiscal paradigm shift would boost growth figures that have stagnated for years. However, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a deficit of courage when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks oppose the idea of shared debt, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are deeply unambitious. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move. The Cost of Inaction The reality is that in the absence of such measures, the less affluent will pay the price of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent disputes over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany highlight a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – a phenomenon that the RN and the AfD have happily exploited to promote a politics of welfare chauvinism. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has opposed moves to raise the retirement age and has stated that it would focus any benefit cuts at foreign residents. Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. Yet in the absence of a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Absent a fundamental change in economic approach, social contracts across the continent are in danger of being torn apart. Policymakers must steer clear of giving this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.