Is Europe next?

Will France be the next domino to fall to the populist surge? It’s possible, said Anne-elisabeth Moutet in The Daily Telegraph. In Paris last week, the National Front was on jubilant form. A smiling Marine Le Pen (right) was the first French politician to congratulate Donald Trump. His victory, she said, was an “additional stone in the building of a new world”; the implication that French voters will rise up against the establishment in next year’s presidential elections was hard to miss. Le Pen is indeed likely to get through the first round. She is far less likely to win the run-off – but if she is defeated, it may only be because she has gone up against a rival who has positioned himself as Le Trump français, and Nicolas Sarkozy is one of a number of politicians ready to assume that role.

In fact, there is an army of “little Trumps” across Europe who will have been emboldened by the way US voters defied the pollsters, said The Economist. The “aloof and sleazy establishment is being punished step by step”, said Heinz-christian Strache, of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, last week. His thesis will be tested on 4 December, when his party’s candidate squares up against a Green-backed one in a presidential run off. But even if Europe’s far-right parties don’t make big wins, they may still have an effect, by forcing centrists further to the fringe: a further “backlash against liberal norms” embodied by the EU risks strengthening the Eurosceptic trend in France and in the Netherlands, which also has elections next year, and where the far-right Geert Wilders is riding high in the polls.

Angela Merkel’s response to Trump’s victory was notably firm, said Natalie Nougayrède in The Guardian. Shared values, she warned, are as important as alliances. Merkel is already deeply concerned about the National Front; she knows that if the US – which over the decades has played such a key role in the European project – “enters a dark era of illiberalism”, just when liberal values are being “increasingly questioned” in Europe, the fallout will be “immense”.