In France, Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie, had taken over as leader of the National Front, shifting its emphasis to a centre ground that had already shifted to the right.

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  MARINE LE PEN

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  Marine Le Pen is a French politician who is the president of the National Front (FN)

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  She took over leadership of the FN after her father and the party’s founder Jean-Marie Le Pen stepped down in January 2011.

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  He was later expelled from the far right movement by his daughter after repeating the claim that the Holocaust was “a detail of history”.

The National Front would amplify its anti-EU credo under Marine Le Pen and in a bid to exploit the perceived mood of the French people, she renounced her father’s anti-semitism, and reclaimed the anti-Islamic rhetoric now part of mainstream politics.

The twin-pronged attack on Muslims and the European Union gave Marine Le Pen 18% of the vote in the 2012 French Presidential elections – proving that she was not only capable of emulating her father’s achievements, but also had a chance of going beyond them…

The political mood in France was volatile, but in 2015 it would be darkened by violence in its capital city,

2015 would begin and end with targeted attacks in Paris that would make Europe’s Muslim ‘other’, Europe’s enemy No 1.

• 1. 03/2012, TOULOUSE & MONTAUBAN

  French gunman Mohammed Merah, 23, killed seven people in March 2012. After shooting three French paratroopers on March 11 and 15, he killed a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school on March 19. Merah was killed by police on March 22, during a siege at his apartment in Toulouse.

• 2. 05/2013, LA DEFENSE, PARIS

  23-year-old soldier Cédric Cordier was stabbed in the neck by Alexandre Dhaussy, 21, who has been described as a recent convert to Islam. Cordier survived the attack.

• 3. 12/2014, JOUE-LES-TOURS

  Bertrand Nzohabonayo, 20, walked into a police station and attacked three officers with a knife, shouting, "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest"). He was shot and killed by police.

• 4. 12/2014, DIJON

  At least 11 people were injured after a driver, who also shouted, "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest"), drove into pedestrians in eastern France.

• 5. 12/2014, NANTES

  Sébastien Sarron, 37, ran over pedestrians at a Christmas market in western France, injuring at least 10 people, before attempting suicide by stabbing himself.
  This was the third attack in three days by individuals against civilians or security forces in France. The attacks were treated as unrelated.

• 6a. 01/2015, CHARLIE HEBDO OFFICES, PARIS

  Two French brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, attacked the Paris offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people. The brothers were shot dead by police two days later during a siege in Dammartin-en-Goële.

• 6b. 01/2015, HYPERCACHER SUPERMARKET, PARIS

  Two days after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices, Amedy Coulibaly, 32, killed a policewoman in Moutrouge, and then held up a Jewish supermarket in Paris, killing four hostages. Coulibaly, who had links to at least one of the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, died during the police raid on the Hypercacher supermarket, after which 15 more hostages were freed.

• 7. 02/2015, NICE

  Three French soldiers were attacked by a man wielding a knife outside a Jewish cultural centre in Nice.

• 8. 04/2015, VILLEJUIF, PARIS

  French-Algerian student Sid Ahmed Ghlam, 24, was arrested for planning attacks on churches in the suburbs of Paris, and for the murder of a woman found dead in her car.

• 9. 06/2015, SAINT-QUENTIN-FALLAVIER

  Yassin Salhi, 35, decapitated his employer, and then drove a vehicle into a building containing flammable liquids at a chemical plant, injuring several others. A French state prosecutor said Salhi had a “terrorist motive” and links to ISIL fighters in Syria. Salhi committed suicide in prison in December 2015.

• 10. 08/2015, OIGNIES

  An attack on a Paris-bound train was averted when several passengers overpowered gunman Ayoub El-Khazzani.

• 11. 11/2015, PARIS

  130 people were killed and 352 wounded in a series of attacks across Paris on the night of November 13. It was described by French president François Hollande as an “act of war”. The Bataclan concert hall, a major stadium, restaurants and bars were targeted by three coordinated teams of gunmen and suicide bombers.

• 12. 01/2016, VALENCE

  A man drove his car at four soldiers guarding a mosque in southeastern France, injuring one of them. The driver was shot and wounded.

• 13. 01/2016, PARIS

  Police shot dead a man carrying a meat cleaver and wearing a fake suicide vest, who tried to attack a police station on the anniversary of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks.

• 14. 06/2016, MAGNANVILLE

  A French police chief and his wife were stabbed to death at their Paris home by a man convicted of terrorist offences and claiming allegiance to ISIL.

• 15. 07/2016, NICE

  At least 84 people were killed when an attacker drove a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice. Police shot and killed the driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian resident of France.

• 16. 07/2016, SAINT-ETIENNE-DU-ROUVRAY

  Two knife men killed an 84-year-old priest and took four other people hostage at a Normandy church. The attackers, who were reportedly members of ISIL, were shot dead by police.

In 2015, attacks in Paris would claim 146 lives. In May 2014, a French gunman shot and killed four people at a Jewish museum in the Belgian capital Brussels.

The attacker had returned from the war in Syria where he had fought with rebel groups against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

The Syrian conflict would also bring more than a million refugees to Europe’s doorstep, while European economies remained mired in troubles of their own.

Europe was ill-prepared for a mass intake of new people as weaker nations, many at the coalface of the refugee crisis, continued to struggle economically.

For the European Union, the confluence of crises around violence, refugees and failing economies was a troubling brew that called for tighter control.

For Europe’s far right, it would yield timely opportunity.

GERMANY

In Germany, the far right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) Party looked to challenge Angela Merkel’s willkommenskultur refugee policy.

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  "WILLKOMMENSKULTUR": "WELCOME CULTURE"

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  Coined by politicians a few years ago, it was originally meant to be the siren call that would attract people from other countries to come to Germany and compensate for a big shortage of skilled workers in sparsely populated areas.

  These days Willkommenskultur is used to encourage help for the hundreds of thousands of refugees coming to Germany.

A welcoming culture was far removed from what the AfD stood for.

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  VICTOR ORBAN

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  Viktor Orban is a Hungarian politician and jurist. He is the leader of the Fidesz Party.

  He has been prime minister of Hungary twice: from 1998 to 2002 & 2010 to the present time.

Hungary’s prime minister stepped up and changed the game, talking up the merits of illiberalism, undermining the key principle of European solidarity.

ALINA POLYAKOVA

Western Europe’s liberalism was being challenged by right-wing governments and far right radicals.

For Russian leader Vladimir Putin, long regarded as an illiberal force by the West, this would be an opportunity to serve Russia’s interests and widen cracks in Europe’s unity.