BRUSSELS: Tensions over U.S. 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 criticized 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-U.S. 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% 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.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance drew scorn from within Germany and across Europe after he met with AfD leader Alice Weidel during elections in February. The party, with which mainstream parties refuse to work, upset German politics by doubling its presence in the Bundestag to become the nation’s second-largest party.
Yet deep divisions within MAGA itself over Trump’s approach to foreign affairs has reverberated in Europe, with his actions over Greenland, Venezuela and Iran forcing his political allies to favor their ideological convictions over their deference to the U.S. president.
France’s far-right National Rally has at times vaunted its ideological closeness to Trump, particularly on immigration. A year ago, the party sent one of its senior figures, Louis Aliot, to attend Trump’s inauguration. In turn, Trump has staunchly defended party leader Marine Le Pen, describing her conviction for embezzling EU funds as a “witch hunt.”
Jordan Bardella, the 30-year-old National Rally’s president and a MEP, has praised Trump’s nationalist views, saying to the BBC last month that a “wind of freedom, of national pride” was blowing across Western democracies.
In recent days, however, Bardella has appeared to distance himself from the U.S. administration. In his New Year’s address, he criticized U.S. military intervention in Venezuela aimed at capturing then-President Nicolás Maduro, calling it “foreign interference” designed to serve “the economic interests of American oil companies.” Going further, Bardella on Tuesday denounced Trump’s “commercial blackmail” over Greenland.
“Our subjugation would be a historic mistake,” Bardella said. Another Trump ally, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, echoed this sentiment.
