Why Cyprus’s mainstream parties are helping the far right grow

Cyprus’s mainstream parties have normalized ELAM, and that is why the far right is gaining power.

Cyprus should treat ELAM’s election gains as a failure of the mainstream, not as a surprise surge from the fringe. The far-right Greek National People’s Front doubled its seats to eight in the 56-member parliament after winning 10.9% of the vote, but the more important fact is that the island’s established parties did not stop it from becoming the third-biggest force. That is not a protest blip. It is what happens when mainstream leaders borrow the hard right’s language on migration, tolerate its presence in coalition arithmetic, and then act shocked when voters reward the original copy instead of the imitation.

Mainstream caution did not contain the far right

ELAM did not win because Cyprus suddenly became more extreme overnight. It won because it turned a long-running grievance machine into parliamentary leverage. The party has pushed for closing checkpoints on the divided island and has built its identity on being vocally anti-Turkish and anti-immigrant. In a legislature of 56 seats, doubling from four to eight is not symbolic; it is enough to matter in every close vote, every committee fight, and every coalition calculation.

The real warning sign is that this happened while the established parties held their ground. Disy and Akel remained the two dominant forces, and the collapse many had predicted never came. That means ELAM’s gains were not just a backlash against elites. They were a sign that the far right can grow even when the old parties do not implode, as long as those parties leave a political lane open and allow xenophobia to sound like common sense.

ELAM’s rise is a product of elite normalization

Cypriot politics has spent years making ELAM look less like an outlier and more like a usable partner. President Nikos Christodoulides has been accused of flirting with the party, and his government has made immigration a signature hardline issue. That matters because far-right movements rarely need formal endorsements to gain legitimacy. They need only to be treated as acceptable conversation partners by people who claim to defend the democratic center.

The warning from Manfred Weber, the European People’s Party leader, is telling. If a president who wants to remain inside the European center-right is seen as relying on ELAM, the boundary between mainstream conservatism and extremist politics has already been crossed in practice, even if no one says it aloud. ELAM does not need to imitate Golden Dawn’s street violence to be dangerous. It only needs to become the party that serious politicians quietly need to get things done.

The incentives now favor more extremism, not less

ELAM’s new standing changes the math for the next presidential race. Christoforos Christoforou, a leading electoral analyst, said the party has gained increased say in passing legislation. Hubert Faustmann, a political scientist at the University of Nicosia, went further and argued that Christodoulides is now structurally more dependent on ELAM if Disy withholds support in 2028. That is the key point: once a far-right party becomes a plausible kingmaker, moderation stops being rewarded.

There is also a broader European pattern here. Anti-system parties do not need to win outright to reshape the agenda. They only need enough seats to make migration tougher, public debate uglier, and coalition-building more cynical. Cyprus is the EU’s easternmost state and currently holds the EU presidency, which makes this rise more than a local embarrassment. It is a stress test for how quickly European institutions adapt when a far-right party gains influence without ever needing to storm the gates.

The counter-argument

The strongest defense of the Cypriot establishment is that ELAM is not Golden Dawn. It has not been associated with the organized street violence, criminal conduct, or terror that led to prison terms for Golden Dawn leaders in Greece. Faustmann’s description of them as “kindergarten fascists” captures the point: they are ugly, but not the same thing as a militant neo-Nazi organization. On that reading, treating ELAM as an existential threat risks inflating its power and handing it the martyrdom it wants.

That argument is partly right. ELAM is not a paramilitary gang, and democratic systems should not pretend every hard-right party is identical. But the absence of overt violence is not a defense of its politics. ELAM’s danger lies in normalizing exclusion, hardening anti-Turkish sentiment, and pulling the center right toward a politics of resentment. A party does not need broken windows and batons to damage democracy. It only needs enough legitimacy to make xenophobia look governable.

What to do with this

For Cypriot politicians, the lesson is simple: stop treating ELAM as a usable instrument and start treating it as a cost. If you are a minister or party leader, draw a public line, refuse coalition dependence, and stop laundering far-right ideas through migration policy. If you are a voter, punish any mainstream party that borrows ELAM’s framing while pretending to oppose ELAM itself. The far right grows fastest when respectable politicians do its messaging for it.