The Extreme Right in the June 1999 European Elections

An analysis of the European party system shows that extreme right-wing political parties were basically nonexistent until the beginning of the 1980s. Looking at the results of the first European elections in 1979 (see table 10.1), only one extreme right-wing party entered the European Parliament: the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI). Other parties participated in those elections: the Parti des Forces Nouvelles (PFN) in France, the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) in West Germany, the National Front (NF) in Great Britain, the Vlaams Blok (VB) in Belgium, and the Fremskridtsparti (Progress Party, FRP) in Denmark. Whether this Danish party, along with its Norwegian counterpart, should be included in the extreme right, however, remains debatable; and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), created in 1971 by the Presbyterian pastor Ian Paisley, is more the result of an ultraconservative and intransigent Protestant movement than of the extreme right.