Right-wing extremism has become a virulent phenomenon in Central and Eastern Europe in the last years. Political parties like Hungary’s Jobbik and Ataka in Bulgaria won seats in national parliaments and succeeded in dominating parts of the political discourses. In these weeks the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung publishes a set of studies presenting the situation in most of the countries of the region by identifying the actors of right-wing extremism, their influence on the respective political landscape and state-driven or civil society-based counterstrategies.

Our last set of studies contains Bulgaria, where the most visible extreme right organization today is the Attack Party (“Ataka”), which exists since 2005. Since its emergence, voter support for the Attack Party has significantly grown and in 2006 its leader, Volen Siderov, made it to the run-off in the presidential election. After 2009, however, the populist-right-wing GERB Party (the incumbent governing party in Bulgaria) managed to attract a considerable number of former Attack supporters.