Nationalist parties in Europe have been on the rise since the early 2010s due to, according to some, austerity measures and immigration.
Analyses
Linguist Ruth Wodak has stated that the populist parties rising across Europe do so for different reasons in different countries. In an article published in March 2014, she divided these political parties into four groups: "parties [which] gain support via an ambivalent relationship with fascist and Nazi pasts" (in, e.g., Austria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and France), parties which "focus primarily on a perceived threat from Islam" (in, e.g., the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland), parties which "restrict their propaganda to a perceived threat to their national identities from ethnic minorities" (in, e.g., Hungary, Greece, Italy, and the United Kingdom), and parties which "endorse a fundamentalist Christian conservative-reactionary agenda" (in, e.g., Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria). According to The Economist, the main attraction of far-right parties in the Scandinavian countries is the perception that their national culture is under threat.
Different parts of Europe have nationalist parties with various ideologies and goals. Most nationalist parties in Central and Western Europe are described as "right-wing populists". According to Thomas Klau of the European Council on Foreign Relations "as antisemitism was a unifying factor for far-right parties in the 1910s, 20s and 30s, Islamophobia has become the unifying factor in the early decades of the 21st century." At the other side, there are non-rightist nationalist forces, many of them are leftist, civic or big-tent parties, which often advocate regionalism.
Overview
There are several nationalist political parties of all kinds in Europe, with different cases among the countries.
In Cyprus, because of the complicated situation on the island nation, most of the political forces are described as nationalist but on a different perspective each: leftist-nationalist AKEL supports Cypriotism, social-democratic EDEK, green KOSP and centrist DIKO are Greek-Cypriot nationalist, while national-populist ELAM supports Hellenic nationalism and union with Hellas.
In Belarus (Belaya Rus) and in Azerbaijan (New Azerbaijan Party), the dominant ruling parties are also big-tent nationalist, while in Russia both the ruling big-tent party (United Russia) and the main opposition parties (leftist Commnist Party and far-right LDPR) are nationalist. In Turkey, almost all the political parties, from centre-left kemalists to the far-right, are nationalist, including the government parties (conservative AKP, far-right MHP) and the main opposition (kemalist CHP, civic nationalist İYİ).
Right-wing or far-right nationalist parties are the biggest party in Switzerland (Swiss People's Party) and the ruling party in Italy (Brothers of Italy, Lega), in Hungary (Fidesz) and in Poland (United Right), part of the government in Finland (Finns Party) , while in Sweden (Swedish Democrats) and in Serbia (United Serbia) they support the government. Also, in North Macedonia, nationalist VMRO-DPMNE is one of the two major parties in the country.
In the UK, Scotland's government is ruled by SNP, a catch-all and mostly social-democratic nationalist party that supports Scottish independence. In Spain, the centre-left government is supported by leftist nationalist ERC (Catalonia) and EH-Bildu (Basque) that seeking Catalan and Basque independence prospectively and also by the centrist nationalist and pro-Basque-independence BNP. In Norway (civic nationalist Centre Party) and in Cyprus (centrist DIKO, social-democratic EDEK), non-rightist nationalist parties are coalition partners on the governments. Also in Moldova, leftist nationalist PSRM is one of the two major political forces.