THE ELECTIONS to the European Parliament held on June 6th-9th have delivered a stinging rebuke from voters to some incumbents, most clearly in Germany and above all in France, where Emmanuel Macron, who saw the hard right trounce his own candidates, responded by dissolving the French parliament and calling a risky snap election.

The continued rise of populist parties in the EU’s two biggest countries, even if not matched in other countries, will make it harder for centrist parties to run the bloc’s powerful institutions in Brussels without the support of nationalist politicians once considered beyond the pale.