These three women are the most powerful in the EU. They are all heads of far-right parties

The fact that the most powerful women in the EU’s big three are leaders of far-right populist nationalist parties could threaten the future of the European Union.

Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister since 2022 and co-founder of the neo-fascist Fratelli d’Italia, last month surpassed the record for uninterrupted longevity as an Italian head of government and is poised to win re-election next year.

Marine Le Pen took over her father Jean-Marie Le Pen’s extreme right-wing National Front in 2011. She “de-demonised” the party, changed its name to National Rally (RN) and leads all polls to become France’s next president in 5½ months.

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is the most popular party in Germany, polling at 27-30 per cent compared to 18-23 per cent for the ruling CDU-CSU coalition. Its co-president, Alice Weidel, is the AfD’s candidate to become chancellor in elections due by March 2029. Much of Germany and Europe were stunned when AfD won a regional election in Saxony-Anhalt in September, because Germany’s domestic intelligence agency classifies the regional branch as right-wing extremist.

The three share fervent nationalism and virulent rejection of immigration, especially by Muslims. Though they are seen as populists, Meloni is the only one from a disadvantaged background. Le Pen grew up in a manor west of Paris, waited on by servants who were paid in part with misused EU funds.

Weidel is the most extreme, categorical in her scorn for Europe and admiration for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. But Le Pen is the most dangerous, because of France’s status as a leading power in Europe and its seat on the UN Security Council. French institutions give broad powers to the head of state while Italy’s prime minister is constrained by its president. The power of the German chancellor is limited by the Bundestag and Länder.

Though Le Pen was born in 1968, and Meloni and Weidel in 1977 and 1979, “all three have roots in the fascist movements defeated in the second World War,” says Marion Van Renterghem, the author of Femmes Extrêmes, published last month in Paris.

Weidel’s grandfather Hans Weidel was handpicked by Hitler to be a Wehrmacht military judge. When this was revealed by Welt am Sonntag newspaper, Weidel claimed she did not know and deplored the “cult of shame” imposed on Germany.

Le Pen’s father founded the National Front with former members of the Waffen-SS, supporters of the second World War Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain and advocates of l’Algérie française. Yet she broke with Weidel in 2024 when the AfD’s lead candidate in EU parliamentary elections, Maximilian Krah, said that “not all SS were criminals”.

Meloni joined the youth branch of the Italian Social Movement (MSI) at age 15. MSI was founded in 1946 by survivors of Benito Mussolini’s short-lived Republic of Salò. A former leader of MSI and former deputy prime minister in Silvio Berlusconi’s government, Gianfranco Fini, dubbed “the fascist in a double-breasted suit” by his critics, attempted to shed the association with Mussolini, but Meloni reasserted it, restoring the tricolour flame as her party’s symbol. Le Pen’s RN uses the same symbol.

[ ‘De-demonisation’ of Europe’s far right clears ground for resurgence of fascist ideasOpens in new window ]

These three women might not have risen in politics without the May 1968 and feminist revolutions. Fratelli d’Italia and the AfD advocate traditional families with a strong father, yet Meloni is a single mother and Weidel lives in Switzerland with Sarah Bossard, her partner, who was born in Sri Lanka and adopted by a Swiss couple. They have two sons who were carried by Bossard.

The 9/11 attacks, the 2008 financial crisis, the Greek debt crisis, the migrant crisis of 2015, the Islamist attacks which began in France in 2015, Brexit and the 2016 and 2024 elections of Donald Trump created a context favourable to the far right. The three women gained prominence in their countries’ politics from 2017-19.

It is not merely coincidence that women have come to dominate movements often associated with toxic masculinity. “If these women have advanced in their parties, it is also because they help defuse the virilism and threatening brutality of party programmes and their fascist past,” says Van Renterghem.

Though Meloni rails against Brussels bureaucracy and elites, she has surprised fellow heads of state and government by co-operating with the EU. Her predecessor, Mario Draghi, advised her that Italy needed €200 billion in post-Covid aid. Meloni joined forces with commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Denmark’s Social Democrat prime minister Mette Frederiksen in promoting draconian measures against migrants. Unlike Weidel and Le Pen, Meloni supports Ukraine. Yet her domestic policies target “red judges”, NGOs who rescue migrants from the Mediterranean, journalists and homosexuals.

Some commentators predict that if Le Pen or Weidel reach high office, they will become “moderate”, like Meloni. But opposition to Europe is an integral part of the political identity of the RN and AfD. On the other hand, if far-right nationalist populists achieve a critical mass, the pragmatic Meloni could be expected to shift in their direction.

The success of these three women contributed to the impression of an unstoppable far-right populist, illiberal wave. But this year, the far right lost elections in Hungary, Serbia, Brazil and now the US. The trend could strengthen Meloni’s co-operation with the EU and what is left of Nato, and hamper the rise of Le Pen and Weidel.