The State of the European Union. The European Parliament faces its most important elections yet

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION 48 large portions of the country have shifted to the right. This development must be interpreted in the context of the long right-wing authoritarian history of Austria. Like Germany, Austria has a long tradition of right-wing nationalism. However, in Austria, unlike in Germany, it was not sufficiently processed after the Second World War. Anton Pelinka proposed the convinc- ing theory (Pelinka, 2002; Pelinka, 2017 ) that Austria is the only country in Europe with a right- wing populist party tracing a line of continuity from fascist barbarism to the post-fascist period after the Second World War. The FPÖ represents the country’s nationalist tradition, and it is still part of mainstream society. The Netherlands Of the five determining factors for the growth of right-wing populism, the relevant ones in the Netherlands are socio-economic development, increasing social inequality, criticism of estab- lished parties, and the migrant crisis. The particu- larly harsh austerity policies since 2010 and the growth in and perception of socio-economic in- equality have been most significant since 2010 (see Busch/Bischoff/Funke, 2018, p. 110ff). Economic growth has also been weak in the Netherlands since the crisis. The country suffered particularly in 2012 and 2013, when the euro- zone was in recession as a result of the harsh European austerity regime. However, since then the country has recovered visibly: the GDP growth rate has risen considerably. Wages per capita have risen slightly in real terms since 2011. Nonetheless, this improvement in the mac- roeconomic data is overshadowed for the Dutch public by the fact that no other country in the comparison group endured such harsh cuts. The Netherlands has transformed its financial situa- tion from a budget deficit of around 5% in 2010 to a budget surplus of 0.4% in 2016. As a result, the Dutch have experienced a severe reduction in welfare-state services, in the areas of health, care, pensions and education. Furthermore, social inequality has increased in the Netherlands since the financial crisis. The income gap has grown, the problem of poverty has worsened, and there is more job insecurity in the Dutch job market than in the EU as a whole. This was the context in which Geert Wilders’ right-wing populist PVV party presented its pol- icies on tolerance to the first Rutte government in 2012. This minority government, made up of the conservative liberal party VVD and the Christian CDA, had been in power since 2010. The PVV used this opportunity to present itself as a social party that rejected the austerity poli- cies dictated by the European authorities. The second Rutte government (2012-2017), a grand coalition of the VVD and the social democratic PvdA, continued with the harsh aus- terity measures, allowing the right-wing popu- list party of Geert Wilders to continue to portray itself as the defender of the Dutch welfare state. Like right-wing populists in the other countries, they link this to an anti-migration discourse, and they attempt to name scapegoats, particularly Muslims, for social cuts and growing social ine- quality. The 2017 electoral campaign showed that Geert Wilders’ strategy fell on fertile ground. For a long time it looked as if the PVV might be the strongest party. Wilders’ plans were only thwarted when Rutte shifted to the right, writ- ing a letter to the Dutch public asking migrants to act “normally” or leave the country. Wilders’ PVV then “only” came second to Rutte’s VVD party. The social democratic PvdA paid a high price for supporting austerity policies in the