"Should the National Rally come to power in France and the AfD in Germany, the EU may well be finished" [AfD in Germany]
The explicit terminal outcome — EU dissolution — named alongside specific parties in the two anchor states directly supports the claim that populist capture of key member governments is a structural threat to supranational institutions, not merely a political cycle.
Reasoning from this article
The article maps a self-reinforcing structural dynamic: economic insecurity generates populist support, populist governments block integration reforms, blocked reforms perpetuate economic underperformance, which deepens populist support. This is not specific to Europe — it is the generic failure mode of any supranational project that requires unanimous consent among member states with diverging domestic political trajectories. The unanimity requirement functions as a veto point that populist-captured governments can exploit to paralyze collective action.