Many centre-left European governments turn to hard-right polcies — with little reward

In Slovenia, Robert Golob’s centre-left Freedom Movement won national elections in March 2026 after introducing the so-called ‘Šutar law‘, which permits warrantless home entry in designated areas, expanded policing powers, and effectively treated Slovenia’s approximately 12,000 Roma citizens as a collective security problem. The law was adopted in 12 days and passed before the investigation into the crime that prompted it was complete. The main suspect, a Roma man, was later released. Amnesty International condemned the law, warning that the vitriolic rhetoric used to justify it raised serious fears that the measures would be deployed arbitrarily against the Roma population.

The Council of Europe, the European Parliament, and leading Roma organisations raised similar concerns, to no effect. Golob won the election — but with just 28.6 percent of the vote, barely ahead of Janez Janša’s far-right Slovenian Democratic Party on 27.9 per cent. In 2022, he won by more than 34 per cent. Golob was ultimately unable to cobble together a majority coalition, paving the way for Janša to secure a term as prime minster with the support of several right-wing and centre-right groups (including New Slovenia, Democrats, the Slovenian People’s Party, and Focus).

Slovenia is not an outlier. It is a case study in a pattern that is reshaping European politics. Mainstream left and centre-left parties are increasingly adopting positions associated with the far-right — tougher migration enforcement, collective policing measures, and the scapegoating of minorities — in pursuit of electoral safety. The objective is rarely ideological: it is risk management.

The assumption is that moving right on these issues reduces the appeal of more extreme actors. The evidence this works is, at best, mixed. Denmark and Romania In Denmark, the Social Democrats strengthened the most restrictive migration policies in Europe rather than weakening them, and expanded so-called “parallel society” laws, including enhanced policing powers and harsher sentencing in designated areas. Those measures were criticised by human rights organisations and EU bodies for their discriminatory impact.

This was not a party under pressure from outside; it was a governing party that made these choices deliberately, while in office. In Romania, the Social Democratic Party — nominally centre-left — recently backed moves in the Senate to repeal the country’s anti-fascist laws, a shift with direct implications for the legal protections of minorities, including Roma. The move is consistent with a broader pattern in which social democratic parties reach for far-right instruments to maintain their footing in competitive electoral environments. The effects of this shift extend well beyond migration policy.

Once parties normalise the language of crisis and collective risk in one domain, it becomes easier to apply it elsewhere. In France, Italy and other European countries, stricter migration enforcement has run alongside the repeated dismantling of Roma settlements under public order justifications. In both cases, policies developed in the context of migration extended into broader approaches to governing minority populations through control and exception. Structural blind spot For European institutions that uphold values of democracy, equality and the rule of law, this exposes a structural blind spot.

EU enforcement mechanisms are designed to respond to clear violations: attacks on courts, restrictions on media, or foreign interference. They are less equipped to address how governments use democratic systems to legitimise collective blame and secure electoral advantage. Without sustained pressure, the political costs of these tactics remain low, while the incentives to replicate them grow. Enforcement of existing standards is not a procedural issue but a test of whether European values have a practical effect.

Ignoring it risks undermining the EU’s own credibility. If it cannot defend basic human rights and due process within its own territory, it cannot credibly speak on these issues elsewhere. There is another model. In Hungary, Péter Magyar’s Tisza party demonstrated that a credible alternative to authoritarian populism can gain broad support without imitating it, drawing in former government voters, previously disengaged citizens, including a significant share of Roma voters.

The real test will come under pressure: whether it can resist populist shortcuts and begin dismantling a system that has long excluded minorities from political influence. The lesson is not that parties of the left should ignore voters’ concerns about security or migration. It is that imitation is not the only alternative to irrelevance. Given a genuinely different choice, voters are capable of making one.

That is the model the European centre-left would do well to study.