The rise of the right can be seen throughout Europe for a long time now: aggressive street mobilisations, racist and chauvinist shifts of discourse, unequivocal terror. These achievements could be transformed into steadily ascending electoral results within the last two decades, in some contexts even into national governmental responsibilities. At the european parliamentary level, the far right has been working hard as well at the consolidation and visibility of its success.
This project documents the mandates of far right parties and deputies in the European Parliament (EP) from 1979 to date and forthcoming.
Since the first direct elections to the EP they took advantage of the broadened possibilities of transnational cooperations and formed groups in the EP, which offered them infrastructural and financial benefits. From the beginning on and for the purpose of political interchangings they also formed party alliances, later accredited and publicly financed parties on the European level. Those are the second focus of this project.
The website facilitates an overview of far right participation in EP factions since 1979 as well as in extra-parliamentary party alliances. The basis are data derived from the EP archive, press coverage, scientific articles and self-portrayals. In general, these data are freely accessible but allocated in numerous sources. For the moment, it encompasses all far right politicians and parties who once had or presently have European mandates, furthermore all those far right parties that participated in party alliances at the European level without ever being represented in the EP. You can search either for individual MEPs or national parties and their evolvement through EP groups and party alliances will be displayed. Clicking on the groups and alliances will display their specific party composition as well es futher informations.
The combination of this data and its arrangement will hopefully make it accessible more easily to the scientific, journalistic, pedagogic, or simply the politically interested public. Have a nice research!
Interesting literature:
Fielitz, M., & Laloire, L. L. (Hrsg.). (2016). Trouble on the Far Right. Contemporary Right-Wing Strategies and Practices in Europe. Bielefeld. [besides the parliamentary level covers also street mobilisations, cultural and discursive, as well as violence based terrorist phenomena]
Osterhoff, A. (1997). Die Euro-Rechte. Zur Bedeutung des Europäischen Parlaments bei der Vernetzung der extremen Rechten. Münster. [up till today the most systematic work on the topic of the far right in the European Parliament; quite old by now]
Janssen, T. (2012). Was macht die politische Rechte im Europäischen Parlament? Berlin. [a very detailed, more updated analysis of the far right engagement in the EP]
Steinart, S. O. (2015). „Nation Europa“. Eurofaschismus 1945-1970. Lich. [one of the few compilations of far right cooperations in the era following immediately the military abolition of National Socialism and (almost) all fascist regimes]
Schiedel, H. (2011). Extreme Rechte in Europa. Wien. [a history of transnational far right networks of the more recent past, rich in informations and anecdotes]