🔗 Share this article Countering Europe's National Populists: Shielding the Less Well-Off from the Winds of Change More than a twelve months after the election that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic party has yet to issued its election autopsy. However, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its authors contended, did not resonate with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, liberals neglected the bread-and-butter issues 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 message that must be fully absorbed in European capitals. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy indicates, is optimistic that “nationalist movements in Europe will soon replicate Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) top the polls, backed by significant segments of working-class voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is sufficient to troubling times. Era-Defining Problems and Expensive Solutions The issues Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and developing economies that are more resilient to pressure by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based research institute, the new age of global instability could necessitate an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness called for massive investment in public goods, to be partly funded by collective EU debt. Such a economic transformation would stimulate growth figures that have flatlined for years. But, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a lack of boldness when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations resist the idea of shared debt, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are profoundly timid. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move. The Cost of Inaction The truth is that without such measures, the less affluent will pay the price of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and greater inequality. Bitter recent disputes over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle over the future of the European welfare state – a trend that the RN and the AfD have happily exploited 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 focus any benefit cuts at foreign residents. Preventing a Political Gift for Nationalists Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet without a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the campaign trail. Absent a radical shift in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Policymakers must avoid handing this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.