The future of the EU is being jeopardised by people stirring up social tensions for short-term political gain, Spain’s environment minister has said ahead of next month’s European parliamentary elections.

Teresa Ribera, who is heading the list for the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ party in June’s poll, said the European project is at risk of “an implosion”.

She told the Guardian: “When you have people asking themselves what scapegoats they can use for their problems – rather than correctly identifying the causes of their problems and addressing them – the search for scapegoats ratchets up.

“And that breaks coexistence in a society. I think that’s the riskiest point we’re facing right now – the risk of an implosion of a European project that’s probably one of the most successful projects in history, and of course in recent European history.”

Ribera said that Europe, already struggling with “traditional, violent, enormously bloody and painful wars in both Ukraine and Gaza”, also faced threats from those who use energy, food, disinformation and social media manipulation as the tools of modern warfare.

At a time of such global upheaval and uncertainty, she added, centre-right politicians must resist the urge to ape the far right or to enter into alliances with it.

“I think it’s been shown that it’s a huge error – and historically always has been – to think that looking for common territory with the far right is a way to pacify the far right,” she said. “That never works. The French know that very well; I think the republican principle of a cordon sanitaire against things that aren’t tolerable is still the best answer.”

Ribera said she had been deeply troubled by the moderate right’s increasing embrace of the far right and its tactics and language. Although the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, recently criticised some on the far right for being “Putin’s proxies”, she refused to rule out working with the hardline European Conservatives and Reformists Group, which includes Spain’s far-right Vox party, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and Poland’s Law and Justice party.

“I think that’s very worrying and, up to a certain point, it was a betrayal,” said Ribera.

“When [European People’s party leader Manfred] Weber questioned the restoration of ecosystems, or in the words Von der Leyen has used in these pre-electoral moments, I didn’t see the classic Christian democracy that was at the fore of the construction of the European project, along with social democracy and the liberals. I think that’s very worrying and that we should avoid those kinds of temptations.”