Shortly after 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani won the election to become mayor of New York City, various far-left-wing parties in Europe celebrated his victory as a blueprint for what could be possible for their agendas in Europe.
“Whether New York or Berlin: We all want affordable rents and a good life for our families and friends,” Germany’s The Left party wrote in a post on X.
In France, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, Manon Aubrey, declared Mamdani’s victory as “a lesson for the left everywhere: it is not by watering down economic liberalism that we win, but by fighting it tooth and nail”.
But not everyone agrees that Mamdani’’ss platform, which includes a rent freeze, free buses and universal childcare, represents radical left-wing policies. Some social media users argued that many of his proposals already exist in some form under centrist or even centre-right governments in Europe.
“Mamdani would be considered centre-right in Europe,” one X user said in a post that has been viewed more than 627,000 times.
Others described Mamdani as a “normal leftist politician”. According to Alexander Verbeek, a Dutch environmentalist, “taking care of one another through public programmes isn’t radical socialism. It’s Tuesday”.
Europe is highly diverse, so any comparison is inevitably approximate — but we have taken three of Mamdani’s main policy points, compared them to what exists or has existed in European countries and asked experts if Mamdani’s programme would stand out if transported to the old continent.
Rent freeze: Not mainstream in Europe
Key to Mamdani’s programme is his plan to freeze rents across nearly 2 million rent-stabilised apartments in New York City — a city consistently ranked as having among the most expensive rents in the world.
Critics argue that the policy would damage the city’s housing supply. Similar measures have existed, and failed, in parts of Europe.
In 2020, Berlin’s state parliament, composed of the Social Democrats, The Left and the Greens, passed legislation that set rent limits in each area and froze rent increases for a period of five years. The law was later struck down by Germany’s highest court, which ruled it unconstitutional.
Berliners are still protected by the “Mietpreisbremse” — a law that caps rents for newly rented apartments to 10% above the local comparative rent, although campaign groups say it’s easily circumvented and prone to misuse.
Other European capitals have also tried to limit rents. In Paris, a 2019 rent control law, later extended to Montpellier, Lille and other cities, imposed limits on the price of rent in over-rented areas.
In the UK, the centre-left Labour government introduced the Renters’ Rights Act, which aims to strengthen tenant security. While it doesn’t bring in rent freezes, it does limit rent increases by allowing them only once a year to the market rate.
Across Europe, measures to control rent are common, although full rent freezes are rare and politically divisive.
Far-left parties such as Germany’s Die Linke and Spain’s Podemos have pushed for broader freezes, although these would go further still than Mamdani’s proposal to freeze rent on only rent-controlled flats and encompass a broader range of landlords. The majority of European governments, both centre-left and right, have leaned towards rent caps.
“Rent freezes are not applied in most European cities,” said Javier Carbonell, a policy analyst at the European Policy Centre. “They’re normal for some far-left or green parties to propose, but they’re not a standard policy in Europe.”
In sum, Mamdani’s rent freeze would not be considered mainstream in Europe. It goes further than what most governments have implemented, and overlaps with demands from parts of the European far-left.
Universal childcare: Closer to Europe’s centre-left
Mamdani has pushed for free childcare for all children in New York City from six weeks to five years old, expanding on existing programmes for three and four-year-olds.
If implemented, it would be a big shift in the US and in New York City, where the annual cost of privately provided childcare in 2024 is estimated to be around $16,900 – $26,000 annually (€15,500 to €18,000).
In much of Europe, subsidised childcare is already the standard, and, in some cases, it’s free.
In Denmark, every child from around six months old has a legal right to a publicly subsidised childcare place, with municipalities guaranteeing access and capping parental fees at roughly 25% of total costs
Germany guarantees every child a childcare place from the age of one. In some states — such as Berlin — childcare is completely free from that age, with parents only paying for extras like meals, excursions, or extracurricular activities.
Whilst in Portugal, an initiative launched in 2022 gives children born on or after 1 September 2021 the right to attend nursery school free of charge, although a severe shortage of spaces has made it difficult for parents to find a spot.
In Europe, these policies are not confined to the far-left; many were introduced by centre-left governments and maintained by centre-right coalitions.
“Europe is very diverse; it would be very normal for the Nordic countries, Belgium and France to offer higher levels of child support,” Roberta Haar, professor of foreign policy analysis and transatlantic relations at Maastricht University, told The Cube, Euronews’ verification team.
“But in the Netherlands, for example, child care measures aren’t as comprehensive, so it would be hard to say that Europe in general would see Mamdani’s childcare policy as normal or radical.”
She added that Americans tend to see the biggest difference between the US and Europe in healthcare, which is more complex than childcare.
“In Europe, you’d expect to get a lot of assistance for procedures like giving birth, unlike in the US, where Americans have to consider how much it’s all going to cost.”
“But even that is kind of made up, because the US has Medicaid and Medicare – government health insurance programmes – albeit for a smaller part of the population,” she added. “So European-type healthcare is not a completely alien concept.”
In short, Mamdani’s universal childcare proposal would broadly align him with the mainstream centre-left consensus, especially in Nordic and some Western countries. The concept of fully free childcare would still go further than what exists in parts of Europe today, and is far from a universal policy across Europe.
Free buses: Relatively rare in Europe
Mamdani made free buses a signature policy proposal during the mayoral race — a proposal that critics have called unrealistic and too costly.
In Europe, fully free public transport is rare: in 2020, Luxembourg became the first country in the world to make public transport free for visitors and residents alike. Malta followed in 2022, extending free travel to its residents.
A handful of cities, including Dunkirk and Montpellier in France, have also rolled out free transport initiatives under centre-left mayors Patrice Vergriete and Michaël Delafosse.
Researchers found, over time, that people used public transport significantly more after these policies were introduced, although, overall, they remain isolated local experiments.
By European standards, Mamdani’s proposal would still be rare. Whilst elements of the idea do exist in some European cities and smaller countries, social-democratic governments have typically prioritised cheaper fares and free travel for specific groups such as seniors and students, rather than fully free transportation.
So where would Mamdani sit?
Online, some have argued that because parts of Mamdani’s agenda resemble European social policies, he would be considered centre-right on the continent. The experts The Cube spoke to say that is an overstatement.
“There’s this argument that Mamdani is a moderate left-winger in Europe, that his policies are more mainstream here — which is true, but only to a point,” Carbonell told The Cube.
On economics, he said, Mamdani’s proposals are closer to the centre-left in some countries than in others: “I would say he is closer to the Spanish centre-left than to the German centre-left,” Carbonell said, pointing to Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE) governing in coalition with the left-wing Sumar alliance. “His policies are similar to exceptions you find in Europe — like in Spain — rather than the average.”
Carbonell stressed that rent freezes in particular are not common in Europe, even if they are regularly touted by far-left and green parties. Where Mamdani stands out in Europe, he argued, is in cultural politics and identity.
“On the multicultural element, he is way more left-wing than most of Europe,” he said. “There’s a much more explicit emphasis on the fact that he is a Muslim politician and on multiculturalism. That is much less common among standard left European parties.”
Haar told The Cube that while it is radical for a US city to want to bring in these measures, as she understands, Mamdani also wants to reduce the burden of regulation, which is almost more akin to Trump’s policies of deregulation and removing red tape.
Carbonell noted that the thread running through Mamdani’s platform is affordability and the rising cost of housing, transport and basic services, particularly for young people.
In Europe, both the far left and right have pointed to the cost-of-living crisis and housing shortages during campaigning.
“The housing crisis, for example, is now everyone’s problem,” Carbonell said.
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