Danish People's Party leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl in Copenhagen last week.

London: The surprisingly strong electoral showing of Denmark's anti-immigration, anti-Brussels Danish People's Party last week has underlined a growing crisis of confidence in traditional political institutions and in the European Union itself.

European officials have seemed incapable of framing a credible alternative narrative to that of their critics in the face of rising immigration and slow economic growth, and parties expressing popular anger and anxiety are gaining traction, pushing politics rightward in some of Europe's wealthiest and most stable countries, like the Nordic nations, Britain and France.

At the same time, the inability of the EU and the eurozone to negotiate a compromise with Greece over that nation's financial problems - to the point where Greek exit from the euro and even from the bloc itself cannot be ruled out - has further undercut confidence in traditional political leadership and in the direction of European politics.

The Danish opposition Liberal Party leader Lars Loekke Rasmussen last week. Photo: AP

"We are in a new place, and people are right to be worried about the political direction," said Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, a London-based research institution. "The eurozone crisis, combined with outside trends like migration and globalisation, has exposed the disconnect between domestic politics in many countries and EU politics".

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The effort of traditional political parties to attract alienated and angry voters has shifted the discourse. "Once society legitimizes talking of immigration and immigrants in a way now routinely discussed, there is a greater risk of policy becoming more extreme," Mr Tilford said.

In Denmark, the centre-left coalition lost to a centre-right coalition, but the main surprise was the Danish People's Party, which ran second with 21 per centof the vote and beat the centre-right Liberals four years after finishing third with 12 per centof the vote. The Liberals are likely to form a coalition government in any case, but the People's Party platform, appealing to anti-foreigner, anti-Islamic and nationalist sentiment while promising a range of incentives to the elderly, suggested fundamental shifts in public opinion.

Chairman Uffe Elbaek of the newly formed party, The Alternative, in Copenhagen last week. Photo: Reuters

The same formula has been used by France's National Front, which is running strongly in opinion polls, as well as by similar parties in Finland, Sweden and Britain, where the UK Independence Party won only one seat in May's election but got nearly 13 per centof the vote.

Greece is led by the far-left Syriza party, which won on a promise to end the austerity imposed by Brussels and to get a reduction in Greece's huge and probably unpayable mound of debt. Syriza, like many of the right-wing populist parties, appeals to voters unhappy with "dictates" from the EU's headquarters in Brussels that trump national politics.

"Syriza and the Danish People's Party are mirror images of one another, part of the same mega-trend now in many European countries," said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. "There is a remaking of the political order, with centrist parties that have run politics over the last few decades being hollowed out and replaced by parties appealing to the fringes".

Denmark's then prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt conceded defeat last week. Photo: SCANPIX DENMARK

To Mr Leonard, the shift appears structural, similar to the way that liberal parties were weakened a century ago and then surpassed by socialist parties, like the Labour Party in Britain.

"Globalisation produces winners and losers, and large groups feel they've been left behind, no longer represented by mainstream parties," Leonard said. "The parties of the left have become representatives of public-sector workers and the creative industries, while the right represents big business and finance, and both are rather liberal in social values. That leaves large segments of the population feeling angry and unrepresented, and new parties are emerging with a different language."

If there is a sense in northern Europe that the EU is failing to control immigration in a period of weak growth, in southern Europe there is a sense that Brussels is imposing painful, if not impossible, demands on countries that will never fit the dominant German economic model.

The rise of these populist parties is perhaps most pronounced in northern countries that allocate parliamentary seats in proportion to popular vote, a system that tends to create coalition governments with narrow majorities, said Timo Lochocki, a Europe expert at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.

Countries like Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands are tough on Greece, he said, because governing coalitions "are very afraid to lose even 2 or 3 per centof the vote to far-right parties if they give in to Greek demands".

"The leverage of these governments," Mr Lochocki said, "is extremely constrained by populist parties who say, 'Don't give the Greeks any more'."

New York Times