After decades of backing mainstream politics, European voters across the continent are increasingly empowering right-wing parties to upend Europe's long march toward a common economic, social and political union.
On Sunday, a right-wing, anti-immigrant party candidate won the most votes in the first round of Austria's presidential election, a rebuke of the center-left and centrist parties that have dominated the country's politics for 70 years.
Two weeks earlier, Dutch voters dealt a blow to European Union foreign policy by rejecting a treaty favored by the mainstream parties that would tie Ukraine closer to the 28-nation union. The rejection of the treaty signals "the beginning of the end" for the EU, said Geert Wilders, founder of the right-wing Dutch Party for Freedom.
"Europe is disintegrating as we speak," said Sophia in 't Veld,
a Dutch liberal member of the European Parliament. "It's a risk everywhere."
Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-immigration UK Independence Party, says such votes are only preludes to the critical June 23 "Brexit" referendum on whether Britain should exit the EU, a move that could trigger disintegration of the economic and political alliance that Europe's ruling parties have been building.
"Things are changing. I don't believe these (EU) institutions can survive," Farage said.
The upstart politicians' targets are centrist leaders who have supported the cause for European unity since the 1950s, pushing for common trade, immigration, currency and budgetary rules at the price of national sovereignty and discretion in implementing social policies.
In France, officials of the socialist government are considering a centrist coalition to thwart the conservative National Front, whose leader, Marine Le Pen, topped a recent BVA poll with as much as 30% for next year's presidential election in the first round of voting.
"We have to get over partisan divides," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the Paris daily Libération. "My roots are on the left, but I think that on the big issues we can perfectly well get together. ... The upcoming presidential election can't be a repeat of classic left-right confrontations."
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union is seeing the emergence of Alternative for Germany, a right-wing party that scored successes in three state elections in March by campaigning against Merkel's welcome of more than 1 million migrants and her support of coordinated EU economic policies.
In Italy, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is rallying a coalition against an anti-EU 5-Star Movement and anti-immigration Northern League.
Conservative nationalists already are in power in Hungary and Poland, where they are challenging EU unity over how to stem the flood of migrants entering Europe. Their consolidation of power over their courts and crackdown on press freedom raises concerns elsewhere in the EU.
In 't Veld, the Dutch politician, sees parallels between the rise of the right in Europe and support for Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump in the United States.
"I see exactly the same brand of populism, the same political discourse, the same issues, the same polarization," she told USA TODAY.
Many of Europe's conservative politicians admire the U.S. billionaire candidate. "Go Donald Trump, go!!!," Italy's Northern League leader Matteo Salvini wrote on Facebook after a recent Trump primary victory. "We are on the same wavelength."
Polls show Salvini's party has nearly quadrupled its support since the last Italian general election in 2013 and is Italy's third most-popular party.
Wilders of the Netherlands is another Trump fan. With his distinctive blond hair and anti-Muslim, anti-migrant rhetoric, he may be the European politician whose style is most like Trump's. His Party of Freedom is vying for first place in the Netherlands' fragmented political system.
In `t Veld said globalization, the pace of technological change and urbanization have made voters "feel uneasy, insecure, afraid."
"They are blaming immigrants, they are blaming Muslims, they are blaming the EU, because they feel that everything they have learned, all their coping mechanisms, but also their prospects for the future, everything has changed, nothing is certain anymore."
Some analysts say the power of the anti-EU parties may be overstated. For example, less than a third of Dutch voters turned out for the referendum, because some EU supporters stayed home in hopes turnout would drop below the 30% threshold needed to validate the result.
"We have to be very careful with what we see and not jump to conclusions and think that the Netherlands has gone mad and everyone is voting for Wilders," said Adriaan Schout, Europe coordinator at the Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations. "This is not necessarily anti-European, this is saying 'give us a good Europe.'"
Still, the campaign for the United Kingdom's exit from the EU has impressive backing from many senior leaders in the governing Conservative Party, as well as the right-wing Independence Party. And while most polls show a slight lead for the "remain in the EU" camp — which includes Prime Minister David Cameron — the fear is that EU opponents are more passionate and, thus, more likely to vote.
"Those who favor European and international cooperation are on the defensive," said Michiel van Hulten, a former chairman of the Dutch Labor Party. "Advocates for EU cooperation need to be much more forceful and persuasive."
