This has been the year of the populist revolt - of the advance of far-right parties and movements throughout Europe, with the same background of unsettled anxiety about the future, of concern about economic prospects which remain obstinately grim, of the feeling of insecurity generated by the migrant wave engulfing the continent, of fears about the loss of identity, and the terrorist threat.
In France, the National Front of Marine Le Pen registered its best score ever in regional elections, upsetting the political landscape and confirming that Ms Le Pen will be one of the two contenders in the second ballot for the presidential elections in 2017. Poland - the country which has fared economically among the best in Europe - has nevertheless put in power the most right-wing government on the continent in last fall's elections. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, heading another extremely right-wing government, had attracted the open contempt of his fellow European leaders for his drastic anti-migrant policies and his inflammatory statements. But his populist rhetoric has won him applause at home, and he now sees himself vindicated as one country after another builds anti-migrant fences, tightens controls and raises regulatory barriers against migrants and asylum-seekers.
While the municipality of Vienna is now in the hands of a far-right party, the whole of Scandinavia - undoubtedly until now the most hospitable part of Europe - is now tightening the screws as populist parties have gained the upper hand or are able to dictate tighter policies towards migrants in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. The victory of the Swiss People's Party, increasing significantly the number of its deputies, in the federal elections last October in Switzerland, reflected the same reality of popular feelings of unease and insecurity, and the same frustration towards the inability of the "elites", of the Establishment, to provide adequate answers to the worries of the man in the street.
Everywhere, across Europe, this populist revolt harbours the same scepticism about the ability of the European institutions to provide the much-needed solutions, and the same rejection of further transfers of national sovereignty to Brussels. In fact, European integration is now at a standstill economically with the inability to move towards a banking and financial union - as Germany remains adamantly opposed to any kind of mutualisation of risk. It is even in reverse mode with respect to the free movement of people, as the Schengen agreement is put into question by the border controls reinstated by many countries to fight the terrorist threat and restrict the movements of migrants.
This populist trend is not just a European phenomenon. Observers are mesmerised by the rise of Donald Trump in the United States' Republican presidential primaries. When Mr Trump declared his intentions last summer, almost everybody was dismissive of what was seen as a billionaire's fantasy which would soon fade away when confronted by "serious candidates". But the pundits were wrong and - more worryingly - the more outrageous the statements made by Mr Trump over the last few months, the more he has gained ground in the polls. As we enter the primaries season with the Iowa caucus in January, and then the New Hampshire primary, many observers still hope that the Trump campaign will fall by the sidelines. But while shunning the inflammatory rhetoric of Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz from Texas and Senator Marco Rubio from Florida - who might eventually emerge as the leading contenders for the Republican candidacy - will espouse hard-line policies as a result of a mix of political calculus and sheer conviction.
As worrisome that this populist revolt has been on both sides of the Atlantic, it has been even more dismaying to witness the inability of the moderate, centrist, political forces and voices to provide any convincing response or counter-offensive to it. What we have seen so far has just been an outcry of so-called political correctness and self-righteousness treating voters for rightist parties as outcasts, berating them for not thinking "the right way", and considering them as some kind of social and political aberration.
However, as repugnant as some expressions of this populist trend are, this does not diminish the fact that the anxieties and concerns that it reflects are not only real but perfectly legitimate and require answers that have not yet been provided so far by the powers that be. The disruptions generated by the cumulative impact of globalisation and the fast-running technology revolution are real, and the difficulties of most of the people - especially the middle class - to adjust to them are genuine. It is not by coincidence that the National Front in France has made significant inroads into the categories of workers who have been hurt by the impact of globalisation and the loss of competitiveness of the French economy just as they were hoping to see their social status consolidated. They feel betrayed by the unions and the Socialist Party in power, which has presided over a steady increase of unemployment levels.
In the same way there is nothing abnormal in the anxiety of people concerned by what happens to their identity in a hodge-podge of badly mismanaged pseudo-multiculturalism; and there is nothing artificial about their concerns about the ability of their government to face the terrorist threat when after almost each terrorist outrage it is revealed that the culprits had been previously identified as potential security threats, and that too lax laws are - under the guise of freedom of expression - allowing jihadist propaganda to sow hatred and incitation to bloodshed. In the same way, it is quite shocking for citizens to have European leaders vowing with a straight face "to regain control" of their borders - after one million migrants pouring into the continent and seven EU summits which have been a repeated spectacle of ineptitude and helplessness.
Each push of the populist forces has elicited the same message from leaders that they got the message from the voters, that it will not be "business as usual" any more... but soon, there's more of the same. The price is today being paid for this failure of leadership. However, the pressure keeps growing with more and faster technological, economic, geopolitical changes.
Moderate forces in Europe and the US have at long last to get out of their comfort zone, to think innovatively about responses to the questions and expectations of their people,If they want to be able to counter efficiently the populist revolt that has been let to foster.And the first priority is to restore confidence into the future by reviving economic dynamism and a sense of social resolve. In a context that renders obsolete many formulas of the past, indulging into the fantasy that more of the same with just some additional window dressing will "do it" will be a recipe for failure... and disaster.
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