To mark the beginning of the 2025–2026 academic year, the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES) has organised an Opening Academic Year Lecture by Catherine E. De Vries, who will give a timely and thought-provoking lecture on the link between public service deprivation and the rise of populism across Europe. The event reflects ACES’s ongoing commitment to fostering interdisciplinary dialogue around the most pressing challenges facing the ­European Union and its member states. This lecture examines how public service deprivation fuels the rise of far-right parties in contemporary Europe. The thesis of the talk is that reduced access to essential public services, coined public service deprivation, helps explain why certain regions become strongholds of far-right and populist support. Drawing on evidence from multiple European countries, De Vries shows that areas affected by long-term disinvestment in public services and infrastructure are more prone to political discontent and radical voting behavior. This pattern is driven by the interplay of demand- and supply-side dynamics: citizens adopt zero-sum perceptions of resource competition, while far-right parties strategically frame service decline as the result of immigration and elite neglect. This lecture offers fresh insights into how spatial inequality and state retreat shape the electoral geography of the far right in Europe today.