A historically-high number of voters have chosen parties classified as authoritarian or populist, according to new research looking at 31 countries across Europe, not just the EU.

Germany saw the starkest rise, with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) getting over 20 percent of the last national parliamentary vote, while in contrast parties classified as radical left split the 13.8 percent of votes between them.

The Authoritarian Populism Index, published by two European think tanks, EPICenter and the Nordics-based Timbro late last week (22 October), analyses parliamentary election results for 260 parties in 31 countries since 1946, or since the year free elections were first held.

The high support for populists is a result of mainstream parties not being able to “adequately address the concerns of our time,” Emelie Franzén, EPICenter’s research coordinator, told EUobserver.

The populists’ success is a “result of a lack of trust towards the elites,” Mateusz Michnik, economic analyst for EPICenter, told EUobserver. He also added that populists are more effective communicators than mainstream parties, especially in crisis situations, such as the Covid pandemic, the migration wave of 2015, or Russia’s 2022 attack on Ukraine.

The Index has been classifying populist parties since 2016, defining them as groups where representing the people above the elite is “a central organising principle of their political worldview,” the author says.

Reinhard Heinish, political science professor in Salzburg, told EUobserver that the report “combines different hard-to-measure concepts, and needs to interpreted with some caution.”

Despite this overarching characteristic, their profile is far from uniform, the report’s author, Andreas Johansson Heinö, Timbro’s director, warned.

“Most are culturally conservative, while economically they are almost evenly divided between left and right.” The populist parties included in the study tend to be eurosceptic, but only a minority supports leaving the EU, he added.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, about 10 percent of Europeans chose authoritarian or populist leaders. Since 2000, the number started to increase, reaching just under 30 percent in 2019.

Now, parties outside of the political mainstream have seats in 11 out of 31 European governments.

“Populists can ‘infect’ other political parties with populism,” Michnik said, which he thinks explains a surge of anti-migration policies across the continent.

Contrary to Germany, Bulgaria, and Norway, which recorded the largest increases in the past years, Hungary’s score radically decreased with the April elections that brought an end to Viktor Orbán’s rule.

This text was updated on Tuesday 27 October.

• Ukrainian pressure towards Velyka Novosilka has slowed, but not stopped.
• The Russian offensive near Orikhiv has stalled, as elsewhere, and Z-channels are again looking for reasons why reality does not match their maps.
• The weekend was marked by Storm Shadow missiles, which destroyed factories producing Iskander components.
• Russians are attacking bridges in Zaporizhzhia.
• Two people died on a train in Voronezh after a Ukrainian drone fell on it; according to the Russians, it was debris from a downed aircraft.
• Russians destroyed a Czech Dita howitzer.
• Maps of the day – Velyka Novosilka direction; Orikhiv
• Videos of the day – destruction of the Czech Dita howitzer; Storm Shadow missiles; a tank destroyed a position on the frontline with direct fire; a MiG-29 shot down a drone.

Ukrainian pressure towards Velyka Novosilka has slowed, but not stopped. The battle for Dobropillia continues, but without any major developments. Today, therefore, attention turns to the section of the front that was the main focus in spring, when the Ukrainian army managed to clear hundreds of square kilometres and push the Russians out of 26 villages.

This is where the borders of three regions meet: Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. It has received less attention in recent months because there have been more active areas of the front, but the creeping Ukrainian counteroffensive has not stopped and the Russians must now seriously consider the risk it poses to their forces in the direction of Velyka Novosilka.

This town was one of the launching points for the unsuccessful Ukrainian offensive in summer 2023. The Russians captured it in early 2025 and have since moved slowly westwards and north-westwards. They have not got far at all. Following the events of spring, the front is now less than 15 km from Velyka Novosilka.

Now, under ideal circumstances, the Russian army risks losing some of the gains it has made in this sector during nearly two years of heavy fighting.

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“Tonight we celebrate victory, tomorrow we build the future,” said Radomir Sajčić, professor at Belgrade University, speaking on behalf of the students at their headquarters on Sunday’s evening (25 October). “The voice of the people is being heard”.

The student-backed list won Serbia’s parliamentary election at the weekend, in a vote that amounts to the biggest challenge so far to president Aleksandar Vučić’s long-standing grip on power.

And that night, Vučić (unexpectedly) acknowledged defeat. “Vox populi, vox dei,” [The voice of the people is the voice of God], he said, marking a significant moment in the Serbian political landscape that Vučić has dominated for more than a decade.

The 56-year-old politician served as prime minister from 2014 to 2017, then won the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections. Critics accuse him of authoritarianism, control over the media, and manoeuvring between the European Union, Russia, and China.

However, this years historic turnout (nearly 70 percent ), the highest since the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1992, has overturned his SNS party (Serbian Progressive Party).

In the 250-seat parliament, the Student’s List will have the majority – 140 seats, and second comes Vučić’s SNS with 104 seats. The remaining seats will be shared mainly between ethnic national-⁠minority parties.  

“It was effectively a referendum on president Aleksandar Vučić,” the Serbian pro-democracy group Kreni-Promeni, who backed the Students’ List, told EUobserver.

From student protests to electoral change

The opposition was unable to seriously challenge Vučić in the previous parliamentary elections, partly because of its fragmentation. However, a significant turning point in Serbian politics came in November 2024, when 16 people died after a canopy collapsed at the railway station in Novi Sad.

The tragedy then sparked massive demonstrations across Serbia, led primarily by students. Hundreds of thousands of people took part. They blamed the disaster largely on the government and its corruption.

The student protests gave rise to Vučić’s main challenger in this year’s elections: the Student List (SL). The 250 candidates running for parliament included individuals selected by students, primarily academics.

“The students have selected prominent citizens – experts in their own fields,” Miloje Savić, a volunteering poll observer, told EUobserver. “They know which values they are supposed to protect and represent,” he added.

The student electoral list was led by Ilija Srdanović, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Novi Sad.

The weekend result thus represent a major political breakthrough for a movement that emerged less than two years ago from protests against the government’s long-standing corruption.

For the SNS, this defeat is “a huge blow to him [Vučić]”, senior research associate at the University of Belgrade, Jelena Vasiljević told EUobserver.

But, as the poll winner and Vučić’s most successful opponent, the SL is not out of the woods yet.

Students smeared as ‘blockaders‘

Even as he acknowledged defeat, Vučić continued to use the same online rhetoric, referring to winners as the “students’ blockade list”. Vučić also warned of investor uncertainty and damage these results might have on the gas trade.

Serbia's Vučić after conceding defeat in election:

What brought us down is this verified revolution, which they carried out with direct support from various European countries, and the deep American state, the one against President Trump.

I congratulate them, even though they… pic.twitter.com/Q7Pg0w92SH

— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 25, 2026

Taken together – the language and the economic warnings – offer an insight into how the SNS and Vučić will depict the incoming government.

“They would be framing the student movement as not as a legitimate political power, but as an extension of the protest movement and as a risk to economic stability,” Vanesa Valcheva, head of research at Balkan Free Media Initiative (BFMI), told EUobserver.

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First published in Deník N.

The lower house of Czech parliament became a nighttime battleground for the future of the country’s public service media at the weekend, when MPs pushed through the abolition of public service media licence fees in the bill’s first reading in the chamber on Saturday (24 October).

Czech MPs voted to pass a bill that lays the groundwork to abolish TV and radio licence fees and move public media under the state budget.

The weekend vote was not yet a vote on the law’s final approval: the government coalition only needed to prevent the bill’s rejection which the opposition had sought.

The controversial vote was scheduled for 4.36am on Saturday – by no means a typical time for such a vote. Opposition parties had failed to postpone the vote, and also did not have enough numbers to reject the bill.

Out of 177 lawmakers present, 96 MPs voted in favour of the bill, while 81 opposition MPs voted to reject it. Prime minister Andrej Babiš did not take part in the vote.

MPs from the Czech Republic’s five opposition parties also failed to pass a proposal to return the bill for redrafting to the coalition formed by ANO (led by the PM) and the far-right parties Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and Motorists to Themselves.

The bill will now go to the parliament’s media and culture committee. This will be followed by lengthy debate at the law’s second reading, where amendments may be submitted. The proceedings will likely last several days.

4.36am vote planned at last-minute

Babiš’s governing majority only added the agenda item for ending licence fees on the Chamber of Deputies’ (lower house of parliament’s) agenda on Friday morning. It even took by surprise the MPs of ANO, SPD and Motorists.

The coalition leadership formed by Babiš and foreign minister Petr Macinka (Motorists) had kept the plan secret all week, so that it would not become public and opposition parties could not prepare obstruction tactics.

Protesters had gathered outside the parliament through the night in the early hours of Saturday morning. Demonstrations carried on throughout the Czech Republic over the weekend.

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