Since 2019, when Europeans last went to the polls and heads of government appointed a new cohort of European Union leaders, the bloc has borne the brunt of a ‘polycrisis’: a pandemic, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and now, on its eastern flank, the Israel−Hamas conflict.
Alongside these external shocks has come a home-grown political disruption – the right-wing populists who have come to power in Europe. Their impact on June’s European Parliament elections and whether the EU will lurch to the right as a result has led to some hand-wringing, yet the future remains fluid.
