Editor’s Note: The following column draws on a detailed study of terrorist attacks and plots against elected officials in Europe between 2015 and 2025. It is based on research originally published in the CIC Sentinel, the monthly publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and has been adapted for this format to highlight key findings and implications.
In October 2025, Belgian police arrested three young men near Antwerp who were allegedly preparing a terrorist attack inspired by jihadi ideology. Their plan was unusually complex: improvised explosives carried by a commercial drone. Yet the most striking element was not the method but the target. The cell was reportedly aiming to kill Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, and possibly other political figures. The case was immediately compared to other recent attacks on politicians, and it prompted a question that has been quietly circulating among security analysts: are we witnessing a new era of political violence directed at elected officials?
Violence against politicians is not new in Europe. In fact, the history of terrorism includes a long tradition of targeting state representatives. The term “terrorism” itself traces back to the French Revolution’s “Reign of Terror,” a period defined by political executions, including those of King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anarchists carried out a wave of assassinations that included the Russian Tsar Alexander II, French President Sadi Carnot, and U.S. President William McKinley. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, carried out by a member of the Serbian nationalist group Black Hand, is another reminder of how political murder has shaped European history.
The pattern continued through the twentieth century. Far-right groups attempted to kill French President Charles de Gaulle. The Italian Red Brigades kidnapped and later executed former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. The Basque separatist group ETA killed Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco, and the IRA came close to killing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the Brighton bombing. Across the ideological spectrum, terrorist groups have long viewed political leaders as legitimate targets because killing or harming them can deliver a powerful message and sometimes create a sense of crisis that advances their cause.
Recent years have seen a series of high-profile attacks and plots that seem to fit this pattern. In October 2021, UK Member of Parliament David Amess was stabbed to death by a man who identified as a supporter of the Islamic State. In June 2019, German regional governor Walter Lübcke was shot dead by a far-right extremist opposed to immigration policy. In May 2024, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot and seriously injured, an attack later treated as terrorism. In the United States, a Christian abortion opponent killed a state representative in Minnesota in June 2024. These cases received intense media attention, and they suggest a renewed willingness among violent extremists to target elected officials.
To understand whether this reflects a genuine rise in attacks, the author of this article assembled a dataset covering 2015 to 2025, focusing on Europe’s elected officials. The dataset includes attacks and plots in European Union countries, the United Kingdom, and European Free Trade Association states. It is restricted to terrorism and violent extremism, excluding broader categories of politically motivated crimes such as threats, harassment or non-ideological violence. This narrow focus is deliberate: the aim is to identify incidents that meet a scholarly definition of terrorism, rather than capturing the full spectrum of threats that politicians face.
The data shows 36 ideologically motivated incidents against elected officials over the decade. Nineteen were completed attacks and 17 were foiled plots. Fifteen cases were classified as terrorism, meaning they resulted in convictions for terrorist offences. Seventeen were coded as violent extremism, because they involved clear ideological motivation but did not result in terrorism convictions. Four cases were deemed unclear due to limited information, although the context suggested violent extremism. The distinction is legal rather than conceptual, since all incidents in the dataset fit a scholarly understanding of terrorism.
One of the first observations is that there is no clear upward trend. If anything, the number of incidents appears slightly lower in the second half of the period. Between 2015 and 2019 there were 23 incidents, while 2020 to 2025 saw 13. The years 2020 and 2021 were particularly quiet, which could be linked to COVID-19 lockdowns that reduced public gatherings and limited opportunities for attacks. However, it could also be a result of the small sample size. The dataset is too limited to make strong statistical claims, and the author warns that the findings should be treated as indicative rather than definitive.
Nevertheless, the data does reveal a change in the nature of incidents. The proportion of cases classified as terrorism increased after 2020. In the earlier period, only about a third of incidents led to terrorism convictions, whereas since 2020 more than half did. This suggests that while the number of incidents may not be growing, the incidents that do occur may be more likely to meet the legal threshold for terrorism, or to be pursued as terrorism by authorities.
The ideological distribution is striking. Far-right extremists were responsible for 64 per cent of incidents, making them the dominant threat. Jihadi attacks and left-wing extremism account for most of the remainder, with a small number of cases linked to anti-government extremism, state terrorism, or unclear motives. Far-right attacks peaked in 2019, not during the refugee crisis of 2015-2017 as might have been expected. This suggests that far-right violence against politicians does not simply follow the most visible political events; it may be driven by longer-term radicalisation and organisational factors.
Germany is the most affected country, accounting for 30 per cent of incidents. This may reflect its large population and number of elected officials, but it may also correlate with the size of its far-right extremist scene. Intelligence agencies estimate around 40,000 far-right extremists in Germany, roughly a third of whom are considered potentially violent. Greece also features prominently, which is surprising at first glance but consistent with the country’s well-documented extremist activity on both ends of the political spectrum.
National officials were targeted in 63 per cent of cases. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that national politicians are more visible and their attacks generate greater media coverage. Local officials may be attacked as well, but those incidents may receive less attention. The dataset also shows a strong gender imbalance: male politicians are targeted almost three times more often than female politicians, likely reflecting the underrepresentation of women in politics. Several politicians were targeted multiple times, with two individuals appearing twice and one appearing three times.
So what explains the persistence of attacks, even if they are not clearly rising? One factor is that elected officials remain symbolic targets for many extremist ideologies. Jihadi groups view government leaders as legitimate enemies. Far-right and far-left extremists also see them as representatives of systems they oppose. The far-right terrorist Anders Breivik, for example, identified political leaders as priority targets in his manifesto, which continues to influence far-right circles.
Another factor is the changing nature of terrorism in Europe. The threat is now dominated by young, isolated individuals radicalised online. These actors typically lack the networks, resources and training needed for large-scale attacks. As a result, they are more likely to carry out smaller attacks such as stabbings or shootings. But because these attacks are less dramatic, attackers may choose targets that maximise impact. Elected officials, as visible representatives of the state, fit this requirement.
This reasoning is supported by research showing that when terrorist networks are fragmented, attackers turn to symbolic targets, including state representatives. Political assassination can also be a “cheap” tactic: it does not require large resources, and it can produce immediate publicity. Terrorism scholar Arie Perliger argues that extremists may resort to assassination when other tactics have failed or when resources are limited.
At the same time, threats against politicians are rising even outside the realm of terrorism. Germany’s federal police recorded a 262 per cent increase in politically motivated crimes against state representatives between 2019 and 2024. In France, threats against local officials rose by 46 per cent from 2021 to 2024. In the Netherlands, a 2024 report found that 45 per cent of local officeholders experienced aggression in the previous year, up from 23 per cent in 2014. Similar patterns appear in Belgium and Norway. In the United States, threats against politicians have risen dramatically, with researchers noting a sixfold increase between President Obama’s second term and the early years of the Trump administration.
These trends matter because they create a climate in which violence against politicians becomes more acceptable. When threats and harassment become routine, the barrier to physical violence can fall. In an age of intense political polarisation and online radicalisation, a lone actor may interpret verbal attacks as permission to act.
The data does not show a clear rise in attacks against European elected officials, but it does show a persistent threat. Far-right extremists are the main perpetrators, and the incidents that do occur are increasingly likely to be treated as terrorism. Combined with the broader rise in threats and hostility against politicians, there is reason to fear that political violence could increase in the future. Europe’s democracies should not wait for a new wave of attacks before responding. Better data collection, stronger protection measures, and improved prevention and reporting systems are needed now, not later.
