Europe Faces a Far-Right Reckoning

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at far-right gains across Europe, the United Nations passing a cease-fire resolution for Gaza, and a BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in Russia.

The Fallout of European Elections

Mainstream parties secured a slim majority during European Union parliamentary elections this weekend, but far-right groups made the most noteworthy gains in the bloc’s legislative body. “The center is holding, but it is also true that the extremes on the left and on the right have gained support,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday following the end of Europe’s four-day vote.

Among the centrist leaders forced to reckon with the far right’s rise is French President Emmanuel Macron, who called for snap legislative elections on Sunday after opposition leader Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally party delivered a crushing defeat to Macron’s Renaissance party in the European Parliament elections—winning around 31 percent of the vote compared with the Renaissance delegation’s less than 15 percent. France’s snap elections will take place on June 30 and July 7.

“The rise of nationalists, of demagogues, is a danger for our nation but also for our Europe, for France’s place in Europe and in the world,” Macron said in an announcement to dissolve the National Assembly. Regional experts worry that Macron is taking a major risk with his remaining three years in office. If Le Pen gains control of the National Assembly, then France could be forced into “cohabitation,” in which the president is part of a different political party than the majority of French parliamentarians. In 1997, the last time that a president dissolved parliament, right-wing then-President Jacques Chirac lost his party’s majority to the left.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo also took drastic measures following far-right gains in parliamentary and general elections this weekend. On Monday, De Croo tendered his resignation after his Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats party dropped to ninth place—far behind the right-wing New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) and far-right Vlaams Belang party.

N-VA leader Bart De Wever is expected to become Belgium’s next prime minister. De Croo will serve in a caretaker capacity until Brussels forms a new coalition, which could take months; De Croo’s own coalition took almost 18 months to form, and in 2010, the country took 541 days to form a government.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party secured second place in the country’s European Parliament elections, with almost 16 percent of the vote—its best showing yet. “We’ve done well because people have become more anti-European,” AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said on Sunday, citing Germans’ frustration with EU bureaucracy. AfD gains underscored the far right’s strength ahead of next year’s federal election despite the party suffering a series of scandals related to Nazi-sympathetic comments.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni bolstered her image as Europe’s kingmaker after her right-wing Brothers of Italy party more than quadrupled its vote share in the European Parliament. The far-right Freedom Party of Austria gained nearly 26 percent of the vote, topping the national ballot for the first time in history. And in the Netherlands, the anti-immigration Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders, celebrated moving from one to six seats in the European Parliament.

But not all right-wing parties fared well. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s nationalist Fidesz party won the most votes but fell short of surpassing its 2019 success, achieving only 44 percent of the vote versus the 53 percent secured five years earlier. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition secured a narrow win over the right-wing Law and Justice party. And Bulgaria’s center-right GERB party won snap elections on Sunday against the ultra-nationalist Revival party.

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The World This Week

Tuesday, June 11: Germany hosts the two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference.

Jordan hosts an emergency international conference on a humanitarian response for Gaza.

Wednesday, June 12: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pays a two-day visit to Spain.

Campaigning begins in Iran ahead of its early presidential election on June 28.

Thursday, June 13: Italy hosts the three-day G-7 summit.

NATO defense ministers hold a two-day meeting in Brussels.

Friday, June 14: Japan’s central bank determines its interest rate.

Saturday, June 15: Switzerland hosts a two-day peace summit on the Russia-Ukraine war, to which Moscow is not invited.

What We’re Following

New cease-fire calls. The United Nations Security Council passed a U.S.-drafted resolution in support of a cease-fire proposal for the Israel-Hamas war on Monday, with 14 nations voting in favor and none voting against. Russia abstained. This is the first time that the council has adopted a cease-fire resolution aimed at ending the war in Gaza.

The three-phase proposal, which U.S. President Joe Biden first outlined on May 31, would establish a cease-fire that would continue so long as hostage negotiations are ongoing, with a minimum truce of six weeks. The resolution calls on Hamas to accept the deal and urges “both parties to fully implement its terms without delay and without condition.” The text specifies that Israel has already accepted the deal’s terms, though some Security Council members have questioned that statement, particularly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected any efforts to remove Israeli troops from Gaza before Israel totally eliminates Hamas.

Israel continues to face domestic and international criticism over its handling of the war. On Saturday, Israeli forces killed at least 274 Palestinians, including children, during a raid to rescue four Hamas-held hostages near Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—sparking global condemnation.

The following day, Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz resigned from Netanyahu’s governing coalition over the prime minister’s failure to approve a postwar plan for Gaza. “I call on Netanyahu: Set an agreed election date. Do not let our people be torn apart,” Gantz said. Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld, the head of the Israeli military’s Gaza division, also resigned on Sunday over Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, saying he had “failed in his life’s mission” to protect Israel.

BRICS talks. Foreign ministers of BRICS nations (consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, among others) convened in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, on Monday for a two-day meeting to discuss security and economic cooperation.

Among the bloc’s top agenda items is pushing for BRICS members to use local currencies in trade instead of the U.S. dollar. Last Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that nearly 40 percent of the country’s trade turnover is now in rubles instead of “so-called ‘toxic’ currencies of non-friendly states,” adding that Moscow will “increase the use of national currencies in foreign trade settlements, improve the security and efficiency of such operations, including through BRICS.”

Clan clashes. At least 55 people were killed and another 155 wounded during clashes in central Somalia on Saturday, local officials reported on Monday. Violence erupted between the Dir and Marihan clans over grazing land and watering points despite the two groups historically working together to oust the Islamist al-Shabab group from the Galmudug region, near Somalia’s border with Ethiopia.

“Al-Shabab continues to pit Somali clans against each other so that it would benefit by distracting the local governments and local people from their fight against al-Shabab,” a security advisor to Galmudug state President Ahmed Shire Falagle told VOA Somali. Last year, around 600,000 people in Somalia were internally displaced due to conflict.

Odds and Ends

Cyclists around the world swapped their bike shorts for their birthday suits on Sunday to take part in the World Naked Bike Ride. But nude enthusiasts in Mexico City and London took the annual event a step further by using the parade to demand improved road safety measures, including the addition of more bike lanes. Some riders wore underwear, but many donned nothing except their helmets.

Correction, June 11, 2024: A previous version misstated which country was hosting this year’s Ukraine Recovery Conference.