BRUSSELS — The year 2019 is a crucial one for democracy in Europe, with 14 elections, probably the most important of which will be in late May for the European Parliament.

With turnout traditionally low in those elections, there is anxiety that the passionate anti-Europeans will vote while many others will stay home, helping the far right and the so-called populist parties, which are nearly universally nationalist.

So a form of fighting back has begun, led, in a very European way, by some of its most prominent writers and intellectuals.

Thirty of them signed a pro-European manifesto, published on Friday in Libération, the French daily, that warns that “Europe is in peril” from “the populist forces washing over the continent.”