Brussels: Tensions over US President Donald Trump’s plans to take control of Greenland have driven a wedge in the once iron-clad link between MAGA and Europe’s far-right.
The rift seems to signal that ideological alignment alone may not be enough to temper worries among European nationalists over Trump’s interventionism abroad.
Far-right leaders in Germany, Italy and France have strongly criticised Trump’s Greenland plans. Even Nigel Farage, a longtime ally of Trump and head of the Reform UK nationalist party, called Trump’s Greenland moves “a very hostile act.”
During a debate Tuesday in the European Parliament, far-right lawmakers typically aligned with Trump overwhelmingly supported halting a EU-US trade pact over their uneasiness with his threats, calling them “coercion” and “threats to sovereignty.”
MAGA’s trans-Atlantic partners
Such a divergence between Trump and his European acolytes came as some surprise.
Far-right parties surged to power in 2024 across the European Union, rattling the traditional powers across the bloc’s 27 nations from Spain to Sweden. Their political groupings now hold 26 per cent of the seats in the European Parliament, according to the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
Less than a year ago, Europe’s far-right parties gathered in Madrid to applaud Trump’s election under the banner “Make Europe Great Again,” while Elon Musk, before his fall from Trump’s graces, had boosted European far-right influencers and figures on X, including Germany’s radical right Alternative for Germany party.
US Vice President JD Vance drew scorn from within Germany and across Europe after he met with AfD leader Alice Weidel during elections in February. The party, with which mainstream parties refuse to work, upset German politics by doubling its presence in the Bundestag to become the nation’s second-largest party.
Yet deep divisions within MAGA itself over Trump’s approach to foreign affairs have reverberated in Europe, with his actions over Greenland, Venezuela and Iran forcing his political allies to favour their ideological convictions over their deference to the US president.
Sovereignty trumps shared values
France’s far-right National Rally has at times vaunted its ideological closeness to Trump, particularly on immigration.
A year ago, the party sent one of its senior figures, Louis Aliot, to attend Trump’s inauguration. In turn, Trump has staunchly defended party leader Marine Le Pen, describing her conviction for embezzling EU funds as a “witch hunt.”
Jordan Bardella, the 30-year-old National Rally’s president and a MEP, has praised Trump’s nationalist views, saying to the BBC last month that a “wind of freedom, of national pride” was blowing across Western democracies.
In recent days, however, Bardella has appeared to distance himself from the US administration. In his New Year’s address, he criticised US military intervention in Venezuela aimed at capturing then-President Nicolas Maduro, calling it “foreign interference” designed to serve “the economic interests of American oil companies.”
Going further, Bardella on Tuesday denounced Trump’s “commercial blackmail” over Greenland.
“Our subjugation would be a historic mistake,” Bardella said.
Another Trump ally, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, echoed this sentiment. In an interview on Rai television on Wednesday, she said that she told Trump during a call that his tariff threat over Greenland was “a mistake.”
Reluctance to criticise the EU’s eastern flank
Yet the reactions among European right-wing leaders have not been lockstep. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, widely regarded as the trailblazer of Trump’s brand of illiberal populism, has been careful to avoid even the slightest criticism of the US president.
Facing what is likely to be the toughest election of his 16 years in power in April, Orban has built his political identity around his affinity with Trump, promising voters that his close relationship with the president will pay hefty dividends.
Trump, Orban has insisted, is Europe’s only hope for peace amid the war in Ukraine and a guarantor of national sovereignty.
Orban has sought to cast Trump’s threats on Greenland and the capture of Maduro either as beneficial for Hungary or as none of its business.
“It’s an in-house issue … It’s a NATO issue,” Orban said of Trump’s plans for Greenland during a news conference earlier this month, adding that any proposed change to Greenland’s sovereignty can be discussed within NATO.
Despite his staunch advocacy of national sovereignty, Orban also praised the US action in Venezuela, calling the country a “narco state” and suggesting Maduro’s ouster could benefit Hungary through future cheaper oil prices on world markets.
Hungary’s reluctance to push back on Trump’s actions reflected similar positions among far-right leaders in the EU’s eastern flank.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki, seen as an ally of both Orban and Trump, said in Davos this week that the tensions over Greenland should be solved “in a diplomatic way” between Washington and Copenhagen — not a broader European coalition. He called on Western European leaders to tone down their objections to Trump’s conduct.
In the neighbouring Czech Republic, Prime Minister and Trump ally Andrej Babis has declined to speak out against the US threats to Greenland, and warned against the EU allowing the issue to cause a conflict with Trump. In Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico has remained silent on Trump’s Greenland designs, even as he met with the president at his Mar-a-Lago resort last week.
Still, Trump’s deposing of Maduro led Fico to “unequivocally condemn” the action, calling it a “kidnapping” and the “latest American oil adventure.”
Disruption or division ahead
The ideology linking MAGA and its European allies might survive recent disagreements by doubling down on old, shared grievances, said Daniel Hegedüs, Central Europe director of the German Marshall Fund.
He pointed to recent votes against Brussels’ leadership in the European Parliament by far-right European lawmakers on the EU migration pact and halting the massive trade deal with the Mercosur bloc of five South American nations.
“If Trump continues that way, posing a threat to the sovereignty of European countries, then of course that will divide the European radical right,” he said.
“We don’t know whether this division will stay with us or whether they can again unite forces around issues where they can cooperate. Those issues can be damaging enough for the European Union.”
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