In light of all this, many now claim that right-wing populism has peaked, and the European Union has walked back from the brink of self-destruction. But while there are many positive lessons to be drawn from the recent elections, triumphalism, which leads to complacency, would be dangerous and misplaced.

Something hasn’t peaked until it has started to decline — and to date the far right has only been ascendant. Ms. Le Pen’s National Front added around 1.2 million votes to its first-round result in 2012. Mr. Wilders’s Freedom Party now has 20 seats in the Dutch Parliament, a gain of five from 2012. The previous candidate from Mr. Hofer’s party received about 15 percent in the last presidential poll in 2010, while Mr. Hofer topped the vote in the first round and got 46 percent in the run off.

And the far right’s influence isn’t felt only at the voting booth. Derogatory language once unthinkable in a union shaped by its experiences during World War II are now commonplace. The second biggest party in the Netherlands is led by a man who has called people of Moroccan origin “scum.” Violent attacks by far-right extremists are on the rise. Germany reported nearly 10 hate crimes a day against migrants and refugees in 2016. Mayors across the Continent are under police protection because of threats from the extreme right. (And anyone under the illusion that the values of human rights, tolerance and dignity for all — enshrined in European Union treaties — can be taken for granted should visit the camps in Greece where around 62,000 refugees are trapped, many of them in dire conditions.)