The Austrian Freedom Party's Norbert Hofer. Credit:Ronald Zak/AP A few days later Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders is fined 5000 euros for inciting hate against Moroccans. But he gets his revenge in March 2017 when his Freedom Party triumphs in the Netherlands general election, and pushes anti-EU, anti-immigrant policies onto the agenda. His country votes on "Nexit", the first European Union founding member state to do so. But not the last. Two months later France chooses a new president: Front National's Marine Le Pen. She begins a mass deportation of illegal immigrants and turns away refugees, brings back the French franc and calls a "Frexit" poll. Later in 2017 Germany, an increasingly lonely bastion of European solidarity and liberalism, faces a choice. Another term for German chancellor Angela Merkel, and policies out of step with most allies and neighbours? Or a leap into the arms of the right-wing nationalist, anti-euro Alternative for Germany?

Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders tweeted after Donald Trump's election win: "The people are taking their country back. So will we." Credit:Peter Dejong/AP Whether they are appalled or delighted by the prospect, most observers agree the same forces behind Brexit and Donald Trump are at work in Europe. "It's the end of the West as we know it," former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt wrote this week. Marine Le Pen, leader of the French National Front, is considered an outside chance in next year's presidential election in France. Credit:Marlene Awaad/Bloomberg "Dark forces in various countries [are] trying to undo what generations of US and European statesmen have worked to achieve … A Europe that starts fracturing will be a less stable and, in the longer perspective, also a more dangerous Europe."

European parliament president Martin Schulz says the EU is under threat "like never before … from both inside and from outside". Frauke Petry, left, with fellow party leader Joerg Meuthen in Berlin in September last year. Credit:AP "We now have politicians telling us that 'our countries must come first' and wanting to put up fences and walls around their countries. We have to fight this sort of thing." In a rare speech, made to a Vatican anti-poverty seminar in 2014, now-soon-to-be White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said he believed "very strongly that there is a global tea party movement". Soon-to-be White House chief strategist Steve Bannon believes what is happening in Europe and American is part of "a global reaction to centralised government". Credit:AP

His Breitbart conservative news site was finding audiences of "middle-class and working-class people" in Europe's Low Countries, in France and Germany. "We were the first group to get in and start reporting on things like UKIP and Front National," he said. He admitted "a lot of them bring a lot of baggage, both ethnically and racially" – but predicted the unpalatable parts of the new political movements "will all burn away over time and you'll see more of a mainstream centre-right populist movement". "The central thing that binds that all together is … the middle-class, the working men and women in the world who are just tired of being dictated to by what we call the party of Davos." He added: "I think you're seeing a global reaction to centralised government, whether that government is in Beijing or that government is in Washington, DC, or that government is in Brussels." Fabian Zuleeg, an EU think tank chief who predicted Brexit more than a year before it happened, expects some of the above scenario will happen. Probably not all of it. But he's worried.

The head of the European Policy Centre doesn't trust polls because they rely on assumptions about voting behaviour that may not be true any more. Also, a lot of people seem to be making their minds up at the last minute, even in the ballot box. Generally, Europeans are wracked with insecurities, says Zuleeg – insecurities about the economy, culture, technology, terrorism. "On top of that we have increasing polarisation within societies so we have bigger differences which are then exploited by populist forces. "[People] are increasingly turning to populist, easy solutions to these complex problems. The political discourse is becoming more aggressive, more brutal and that is continuing to drive a wedge between different groups in society." But Zuleeg warns against drawing a broad brush across the whole continent. Each country has local issues and idiosyncrasies, he says. It might come down to the individual personalities of the populist leaders.

Beppe Grillo, the stand-up comedian who founded Italy's insurgent Five Star Movement, described Trump's election as an "apocalypse" for the media and intellectuals. It was a "f--- you" to those "anchored to a world that no longer exists", he said, lending it his "Vaffanculo" slogan and promising a similar revolution. "We're going to govern and they will ask 'but how did they do it'?" he said. "They said we were sexist, homophobic, demagogues, populists … We are the real heroes, who bring together the misfits and the failures. The world has already changed." The December 4 referendum in Italy is on reforms to speed up the law-making process by stripping the Senate of many of its powers. But the progressive, anti-establishment, anti-corruption Five Star Movement (M5S) is gaining traction by painting the referendum as Renzi's expensive power-grab.

Recent polls give "No" a lead of 2 to 3 per cent, with an astonishing 50 per cent of respondents yet to make up their mind. If the referendum fails Renzi has said he will resign, leaving a power void that may have to be filled by an early election. Grillo's potential heir, 29-year-old Neapolitan Luigi di Maio, told the Financial Times M5S was no longer a protest movement: "We want to govern." And the polls give them a real chance. Renzi is clearly worried. In a recent Q&A on Facebook, the 41-year-old made sure to remove the EU flag that usually sits behind his desk during official announcements. After Brexit, Dutch right-winger Wilders tweeted: "Hurray for the British! Now it's our turn." After Trump's win, his message was: "The people are taking their country back. So will we."

He called Trump's win "the Patriotic Spring sweeping the Western world", attacking the "out-of touch media pundits and elites" who had lost touch with the "worries and fears of ordinary people". He wants an EU referendum to be the main theme of the Dutch elections in March. In April two-thirds of the country rejected a Ukraine-European treaty, in a referendum that turned into a protest vote against the EU establishment. Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders told Fairfax Media last month he expected a lot of debate in the 2017 election campaign about the integration of immigrants into Dutch society. "There is a rise of xenophobia and nationalism," he said. "The best way is to take it seriously and to bring the counter-arguments to the fore, not by saying there is no issue.

"For the population the distress last year was not so much that the refugees were coming to the Netherlands but that it seemed to be unmanageable. "We have to be in defence of globalisation, but globalisation that is fair and people feel there is enough attention for the losers, the people who do not win out." Zuleeg says the Dutch electoral system will likely prevent Wilders becoming the Netherlands' leader, though a strong result in the elections would give him new influence. Brexit may even have helped the establishment. "It has clarified in many people's minds what it means to be outside the European Union – but it is still very unpredictable." Le Pen was one of the first European politicians to tweet her congratulations "to the new President of the United States Donald Trump and to the American people – free"!

Her chief strategist said: "Their world is collapsing. Ours is being built." French political analyst Nicolas Bouzo has predicted that the "American nightmare campaign of 2016 will be re-enacted in a French nightmare campaign of 2017". Le Pen is considered an outside chance. "There is a certain level of safeguard in [the French elections]," says Zuleeg. The two rounds of voting tend to prevent extremist success. But Le Pen has worked hard to "decontaminate" the FN, shifting it to a more centrist force. "She is seen as nationalistic, as hard on certain issues like migration, but not necessarily any more as far to the extreme right as her father was – that makes her a lot more dangerous, a lot more electable," Zuleeg said. A lot depends on her opponent in the second round of voting. Former prime minister Alain Juppe would likely beat Le Pen comfortably, but much of the left simply couldn't stomach voting for former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

The high turnout at French elections means there is no Trump-style hidden "voter hinterland". Nevertheless, after Trump's win, Ladbrokes cut the odds on Le Pen from 5-1 to 7-4. Frauke Petry, leader of Germany's right-wing Alternative fur Deutschland, said Trump's victory was "encouraging for Germany and for Europe". "Like Americans, citizens of Germany must have the courage to put a tick in the ballot box and not remain resigned at home." Her opponents are worried. Foreign minister and likely next German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier called Brexit and Trump "political earthquakes [which] upset us, but they could also galvanise us". He spoke almost as if he felt a weight falling on his shoulders and on the shoulders of Germany: the besieged fortress of liberal democracy.

"Our country embodies – like perhaps no other country in the world – the experience that war can be turned into peace, that separation can lead to reconciliation, and that the furies of nationalism and ideologies can be followed by something like political reason," Steinmeier said, optimistically. Earthquakes are rare in Germany. The AfD did well in regional elections, but the major parties are used to sharing government across the central political divide. Germany also has a stronger firewall against populist complaints because, after a horrific 2015 struggling with a million new refugees, it appears to be managing better. The number of asylum seekers continues to fall – applications are down almost 40 per cent year on year, and asylum claims are being processed more than twice as fast as a year ago, official figures say. Zuleeg expects that, surprises aside, a centrist coalition is the most likely result in Germany. Former Finnish ambassador to Germany, Rene Nyberg, agrees the Bundestag elections will be "less spectacular than their French counterpart". "I have a feeling that Angela Merkel's position within her party and in the coalition and in the country will be strengthened by what we saw in America," Nyberg said. "The Germans rally around the leader. Angela Merkel is the undisputed leader of Europe today. She is the nemesis of Putin."

In Germany, they're taking very seriously the possibility of Russia attempting to influence their 2017 elections. Russian flags are often seen at anti-Muslim Pegida protests. Russia also reportedly funds Front National, Italy's Northern League, Hungary's Jobbik and the Freedom Party in Austria. The Atlantic Council has called such parties "the Kremlin's Trojan Horses", saying they are used to "sow discord among European Union [EU] member states, destabilise European polities, and undermine Western liberal values – democracy, freedom of expression, and transparency – which the [Russian] regime interprets as a threat to its own grasp on power." This week German intelligence agency chief Hans-Georg Maassen told Reuters that Russia's influence on public opinion was seen in 2015 – notoriously in the case of the invented, but widely reported story of the Russian girl who was supposedly kidnapped and raped in Berlin by "southern-looking" asylum seekers. Similar propaganda campaigns "could also take place next year, and we're alarmed," Maassen said. "We feel that this is part of a ... hybrid threat, where public opinion and decision-making are being influenced."