Great Britain’s decision to dump the European Union has been met with warm praise from American conservatives, who understandably see the referendum results as a step towards renewed national sovereignty and away from the Ivory Tower bureaucracy in Brussels. Whether or not those goals are accomplished in the U.K., the European Union will now lose one of its most vocal and articulate proponents of free trade and the free market. As a result, it will find itself further under the sway of those countries that advocate government intrusion into the economy, France chief among them. Furthermore, this move comes at a time of rising anti-market sentiment across Europe. To put it simply, the decision could open new doors for Britain’s economic future but also puts the rest of the E.U. at higher risk of succumbing to protectionist demands.

One of the leaders of the Brexit campaign, Nigel Farage, gave an impassioned speech to the European Parliament last week in which he referred to Europe’s plans to, as he put it, “impose poverty on Greece and the Mediterranean”. This reference to the austerity measures spearheaded by Germany (and backed by David Cameron’s U.K.) misrepresents the programs, which successfully reduced decades of accumulated government pork and unsustainable public spending in profligate countries like Greece and Spain. Though Greece is often held up as an example of the failure of austerity by liberal sweethearts like Paul Krugman, countries that took their strict public spending diets seriously did far better. Latvia, Ireland, and the U.K. itself recovered much more quickly and effectively, even with comparable cuts in government spending. Northern Europe and southern Europe stand in contrast -- Latvia employed strict austerity measures early on in the financial crisis, whereas Greece’s measures were haphazard and half-baked. As a result, Latvia showed strong signs of recovery and growth by 2011 and 2012, while Greece is still just beginning a return to normal economic life. In places like Athens, nanny-state socialists find fertile ground appealing to populist sentiments despite evidence to the contrary.

After years of stubborn resistance to strong calls for austerity from David Cameron and the rest of Europe, Greece’s far-left Syriza party finally began to accept difficult but necessary changes. So far, these efforts include reductions in public spending, tax increases, and privatizing facilities such as ports, airports, and shipyards. Surprisingly, these new measures even include an automatic emergency break, meaning cuts in salaries, pensions, and other spending will occur automatically without a vote from the Greek parliament if fiscal targets are not met. These new measures have been embraced with little protest, showing that even the “lazy” Greeks have finally begun to accept the necessity of such changes. The small nation is willing to tighten its belt to stay in the Eurozone, and even the leftist government seems to realize this. However, that still buts up against the dogma of Greece’s ruling party, resulting in mixed signals and backpedaling on the part of Syriza (and leader Alexis Tspiras) that hurt the country’s fragile recovery.

As in Greece, Spain’s elections last December were widely interpreted as a rejection of austerity. The advance of the left, typified by the Sandersesque Podemos party of university professor Pablo Iglesias, was seen as a setback for pro-market political parties. Flying in the face of those assumptions, however, were the results that came in from the election rerun this past Sunday. Putting Spain’s conservatives back on top, voters ultimately opted for the steady hand of economic realism over the utopian promises of left-wing populists. Podemos, which has built its platform on far-left economic justice and was projected to become Spain’s second party, instead fell flat on its face. Even so, the ruling conservatives don’t have the seats to form a government on their own. Continued political turmoil in Spain could still throw that nation’s hard-won economic gains back into doubt. 

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, protectionist voices throughout Europe are doubling down on anti-market platforms to capitalize on public frustration. France’s Marine Le Pen, for one, has been emboldened by Britain’s decision to leave Europe. Her National Front party’s economic positions are particularly radical, including their insistence on the full-on nationalization of banks and her desire to see the collapse of the European Union. Capitalizing on the anti-immigrant parts of their platform while glossing over what can only be described as a nonsensical economic policy, the National Front has gotten a leg up from the terrorist attacks in France and Le Pen has a chance at winning the 2017 presidential elections. Even the Greeks, where it took the pressure of an entire continent to get Tsipras to agree to paying his country’s debts and implementing reforms, could take advantage of the preoccupied European Union by backtracking on privatizations. After going back and forth on privatizing shipyards last year, Athens has been suspected of planning to bring the whole lot together under one group -- which would involve seizing them from current owners Abu Dhabi MAR and undercutting the entire principle of private property in the country.

While a key message of the Brexit campaign was that a sovereign Great Britain could look beyond Europe to former deeper trade ties with the rest of the world, withdrawing from the European Union will ironically strengthen protectionist voices that want to stifle global trade, free enterprise, and the market. By ignoring economic realities, these forces could well make it more difficult to do business for both Europeans and their partners (in the U.S. and elsewhere). Agreements like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have already been stalled by anti-trade populism in both Europe and the U.S., and Brexit will be sure to throw up yet more obstacles. As a wave of inward-looking populists get closer to power across Europe, Britain’s vote for freer markets may ultimately result in more government interventionism on the other side of the English Channel.