ABSTRACT
Regular democratic elections have been disrupted in almost all countries in the western, eastern, and southern peripheries of Europe. These countries were strongly hit by the Great Recession and have the traditional middle class splitting and shrinking. There have been four prime ministers from new nationalist parties: from the right in post-communist Hungary and Poland and from the left in Greece and Italy. In other countries, some nationalist parties have had stints in multi-party coalition governments, opposition parties have won pressured resignations or successful motions of censure against incumbent prime ministers, multiple snap elections have been called, and several independent or caretaker governments have been formed.
The Brexit referendum was an irresponsible experiment with direct democracy that wrecked representative parliamentary democracy. For the European Union, Brexit was an outstanding opportunity to both learn and teach a lesson. Either not even a country like the UK could manage to leave or leaving would prove to have dire consequences, with the Britons crashing out. Nationalist and populist parties have learned the lesson and none of them now want to leave the EU or the euro. In a context of uncertainty, the European Union has become an anchor of stability.
