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.”
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.