Europe's nationalist right gathered in Milan's Piazza del Duomo on Saturday for a rally billed as a show of collective strength, but the event exposed the movement's mounting difficulties rather than its momentum. Barely 2,000 people turned out for the three-hour meeting, organised by Patriots for Europe — one of the main sovereigntist blocs in the European Parliament — under the slogan "Without Fear: Masters in Our Own Home in Europe." The modest turnout, the notable absence of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán following his electoral defeat last week, and the increasingly awkward relationship between European far-right parties and their one-time champion Donald Trump all painted a picture of a movement struggling to find its footing.

The rally brought together Italian far-right Liga (League) leader and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, French National Rally (RN) president Jordan Bardella, and Dutch far-right PVV leader Geert Wilders, who declared that Europe's "indigenous peoples" had been overwhelmed by mass immigration from Islamic countries — a sentiment that drew repeated chants of "remigration" from the crowd. Bardella, presenting himself as the face of a possible far-right breakthrough in France's 2027 presidential election, told the crowd in Italian that "our victory is close" and that France was on the verge of "saying goodbye to Macron." For European nationalists, a French presidential win remains their most coveted prize, but the political ground beneath them has shifted considerably.

Central to that shift is the toxic turn of the Trump relationship. When Trump returned to power in early 2025, European far-right leaders celebrated openly: AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla called J.D. Vance's February 2025 speech in Munich attacking European elites "the best speech I've ever heard from a foreign politician in Germany." That enthusiasm has since curdled. Trump's tariff threats, his rhetoric about annexing Greenland — a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark — his administration's operations in Venezuela, and now his erratic posture on Iran have each chipped away at the alliance. Chrupalla, who once cheered Vance, now demands the withdrawal of US troops from Germany. Bardella has called Trump's war aims in Iran "erratic" and lacking any "ideological backbone." Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, until recently among Trump's closest European allies, publicly called his attacks on the newly elected Pope Leo XIV "unacceptable" and distanced herself from his Iran policy, prompting Trump to complain that he had misjudged her.

The electoral consequences are becoming clearer. Orbán's defeat in Hungary — where Vance had campaigned in person — was widely seen as evidence that American endorsement had become a liability rather than an asset. Analysts note that US attention "represented more of a distraction than a help" to Orbán's Fidesz party, eating into time that should have been spent directly courting voters. Further afield, the electoral reversals of Trump-aligned conservative parties in Canada and Australia in 2025 — where incumbents who firmly rejected Trump ultimately prevailed — have served as cautionary tales that are closely watched across Europe.

For now, the Milan rally reflected both the ambitions and the anxieties of a movement at an inflection point. Salvini, polling at around 7% with Italian legislative elections roughly a year away, is trying to reclaim voters who have drifted toward Meloni's Brothers of Italy party. The far-right's core themes — immigration restriction, Euroscepticism, national sovereignty — remain politically potent across the continent. But the Trump brand that once amplified those messages and lent the movement an air of global inevitability has become, in the words of one French analyst, "almost a burden." The question now is whether Europe's nationalist parties can sustain their momentum without the tailwind they once counted on from Washington.