As has become common since 2016, reports of a dramatic far-right surge in Europe turned out to be overblown. Instead, the elections to the European Parliament that took place over the past few days largely served to preserve the status quo.

Giorgia Meloni’s national-conservative European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group and Marine Le Pen’s radical-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group gained only a few seats, while the three political families of the broad center (European People’s Party (EPP), Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), and Renew) preserved their ample majority. That ample majority of Christian-democrats, social-democrats, and liberals—with over 400 out of 720 seats—will remain the Parliament’s governing coalition for the next five years.

To add to their troubles converting votes into power, the parties to the right of the EPP are not a unified block. There have been persistent rumors of some sort of ECR-ID merger, but nothing concrete has happened so far. And, to pick just one such example, would it really make sense for the mainstream Flemish nationalists of the New Flemish Alliance to sit with the radical Flemish Interest party, who they refuse to cooperate with just a mile away in the Belgian Parliament? Does Giorgio Meloni want to surrender the influence she has gained as she has moved closer to the mainstream center-right?

Plus, even an ECR-ID merger would not unify the right. Marine Le Pen recently expelled the neo-Nazi-adjacent Alternative für Deutschland from ID. In a desperate attempt to regain its affiliation, this morning the party’s caucus in the Parliament in turn expelled its neo-Nazi-adjacent, pro-CCP, Putin-friendly leader Maximilian Krah.

Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party is the other significant non-inscrit party on the right—it is in some ways a reasonable match for the ECR but Orbán pro-Russian stances are a poor fit for the second-largest party in that group, the Polish Law and Justice Party.

The European hard right will thus continue to be limited to exerting its influence through the national governments it controls, especially those of Hungary and Italy. It may be able to add partial control of France to the list soon, as president Macron responded to his party’s poor performance by calling legislative elections. If Le Pen’s party, which did well on Sunday, wins those elections, she will be able to form a government in “cohabitation” with Macron. 

But for now, plus ça change.

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