On April 17, nearly 20 percent of Finns voted for a eurosceptic party opposed to financial support for Eurozone countries in difficulty. A year before the presidential election in France, the leader of the National Front, Marine Le Pen, has every chance of making it through to the second round. Her programme: dumping the euro, protectionism and closing the borders. In the Netherlands, under pressure from the popular Geert Wilders, the government is going after tougher conditions for residency for foreigners, including nationals of the European Union. And it is partly to limit electoral damage that Angela Merkel has tightened up the conditions for German participation in stabilising the euro zone.

For the last fifteen or twenty years the anti-Europeans have been on the margins and extremist parties were a problem primarily within national borders; even the crisis caused by the Jörg Haider party taking seats in Austria’s government had few ripples across Europe. But today, in contending for power or as players that cannot be shut out from national governments, these groups, which are attracting more and more voters, are weighing heavily on the overall functioning of the European Union.

Not federal enough to act in a coordinated manner or to remain independent of the political calculations of member states, and yet too federal to build close links to citizens, the EU finds itself in an unprecedented bind: the political trend that is developing flies in the face of what, ever since the Second World War, it has considered its values ​​– and what seemed to be the inevitable course of history. For our national and European leaders, the challenge is an immense one.

As European living standards decline in the midst of a global economic crisis accompanied by severe austerity measures, disillusion with traditional politics and institutions is growing. Most analysts dismiss these symptoms as "populist" and "anti-political", a trap for the ignorant fringes of society that are especially vulnerable to political manipulation. However, the fact that an audience of highly educated people in Ferrara should applaud the economist’s sentiments, even to the point of yelling “Stop”, ought to give us pause for thought.

Populism as defined by Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell is "an ideology which pits a virtuous people against a set of elites that deprive them of their rights, their values, their prosperity and their voice." In the wake of a crisis that has disrupted the lives of millions of Europeans without affecting the elites who are in part to blame, this sentiment now presents an alarmingly accurate reflection of political reality – and this is the case in Ireland, where the cost of rescuing its zombie banks now amounts to a third of the country’s GDP.

As French sociologist Alain Touraine recently pointed out, growing inequality is now the foremost threat to the stability and cohesion of the EU and its member states. The populist political parties which have made inroads all across the continent do not have the right answers, but the question as to why they have come to the fore should not be dismissed as readily as their largely bankrupt ideas.