Far right makes gains in Germany, France – DW – 06/09/2024

France’s far-right National Rally (RN) is predicted to be the winner of the country’s vote for the European Parliament election, an initial estimate showed on Sunday evening.

Far-right firebrand Marine Le Pen’s party is seen receiving 32.4% of the vote, versus President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance Camp at 15.2%.

If confirmed, the RN has won a 10 percentage point increase from the last European elections in 2019.

Le Pen and her 28-year-old lead candidate, the increasingly popular Jordan Bardella, had sought to frame the vote as a mid-term referendum on Macron’s mandate, tapping into discontent with immigration, crime and a two-year inflation crisis.

The Socialist-led camp is set to receive 14.3%, according to the IFOP estimate for TF1 Television.

Macron was set to address France later Sunday over the results, the presidency said.

The co-leader of Germany’s environmentally friendly Green Party, Ricarda Lang, has reacted with disappointment at her party’s loss of votes in the European elections.

“This is not the standard we set ourselves when we went into this election, and we will work through this together,” Lang told public broadcaster ARD.

According to exit polls, the Greens are on track to receive around 12% of the vote.

In 2019, they achieved their best result ever in a European election with 20.5%.

The situation today is very different to the previous EU-wide election, Lang said.

People are unsettled, the issue of war and peace was hugely important to voters this time, she said. 

A change of policy over the war in Ukraine should not be expected from her party now, said Lang, because if Russian President Vladimir Putin were to win this war, the future would also be less peaceful in Germany, she argued.

The center-right European People’s Party (EPP) was in the lead in the European Parliament elections in Austria, Cyprus, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands, exit polls and projections from these countries showed on Sunday.

The EPP could end with around 180 of the 720 seats in the new European Parliament, a stable result compared with the 2019 election results. 

The result is a boost for Ursula von der Leyen’s chances for another term as president of the European  Commission, the bloc’s executive arm.

The second strongest group in the new parliament remains the center-left Social Democrats, who could end up with around 135 seats, according to exit polls and projections.

They will be followed by the liberal Renew, which will slip to between 81 and 87 seats, projections show. 

The far-right Identity & Democracy (ID) is predicted to get around 70 seats, and the less radical but euroskeptic European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group would return just under 80 seats. 

The Greens would lose significantly and end up with far fewer than 60 seats in the European Parliament. 

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is counted among the non-attached parties, as it was excluded from the ID group shortly before the EU elections.

The co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) said a strong expected showing by her party in European Parliament elections was driven by growing skepticism of the European Union.

Exit polls released on Sunday evening put the AfD in second place at around 16%.

Alice Weidel said that her party had made significant gains compared to 2019 — when the far-right populists won 11% of the vote — and had become the strongest force in eastern Germany. 

The main reason for this was that voters “have become more critical of Europe overall,” she said.

Weidel also credited the AfD with making a strong finish “after a bumpy start to the election campaign,” in which the party was dogged by negative headlines tied to several scandals involving AfD candidates.

Prosecutors in Germany are investigating possible money payments from pro-Russian networks to Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s lead candidate in this election, and Petr Bystron, who the delegates voted into second place on the list of candidates. 

In addition, a former top aide to Krah was arrested on suspicion of spying for China.

German opposition leader Friedrich Merz of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) said his party’s expected victory in the European Parliament election shows German voters want a change of course.

His remarks came shortly after the first exit polls were released showing his conservative CDU/CSU bloc with a clear lead at around 30% and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in second place.

“Making a real course correction now is urgently necessary in the interests of our country, and I call on the federal government to do so in the coming days,” Merz said.

“With this European election, we are back in first place among the German parties by a wide margin.”

“Things can’t go on as they have over the last two and a half years,” he added. The vote is “really the last warning” for Scholz’s three-party coalition ahead of German parliamentary elections scheduled for the fall of 2025.

Merz contended that the results showed voters turning against the government on issues including migration and economic policy. 

Merz also contended that the far-right AfD, which appears set to gain seats in Brussels, has peaked in popularity.

DW’s Chief Political Correspondent Nina Haase said discontent among German voters has been brewing for more than a year as the government struggles to maintain unity among the three parties of the governing coalition amid numerous crises.

“It’s not a new phenomenon that German voters use the EU elections as a way of telling the government that they are doing a bad job,” she said.

“Only 22% [of voters] think the government is doing a good job … especially the way the [coalition] parties are dealing with each other. There’s a lot of infighting. The government, led by theSocial Democrats, will have to get their act together if they want a better result at the federal elections next year,” Haase said.

DW’s Chief Political Editor Michaela Küfner, reporting from the CDU’s headquarters in Berlin, described the party’s reaction to the exit poll showing the conservatives as the largest party in the European Parliament election in Germany.

“There was a moment of silence as people realized that the gain [for the CDU/CSU] wasn’t that significant. It is likely to be 1 or 2%. It’s not elation here but self-confidence that they are on a trajectory that could see them governing again here in Germany [next year].”

DW correspondent Matthew Moore was at the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) when the exit poll came through showing a 5% gain for the party compared to the 2019 election.

“They [party leaders] say that this result is vindication that they are striking the right note with voters with policies — tough on migration and frankly anti the EU … they want to abolish the European Parliament. They’re going to be in a really strong position to win state elections in eastern Germany in September.”

An increase in political violence in Europe may be driven by the many elections taking place this year, Kimberly McArthur from the Berlin-based nonprofit Apolitical Foundation told DW.

In an interview, she said the uptick in violence narrows the diversity of voices in the political system and democracies. Instances of  political violence in Germany have doubled in the last five years, affecting politicians across the political spectrum, she added.

“You have this danger of democratic silencing, essentially where politicians and campaigners do not wish to host public consultations or are not interacting as much with citizens because of fear of physical violence, or we might have politicians change how they vote in parliament because of fear of reprisals,” McArthur said.

The fact that several elections are taking place in Europe this year may be driving political violence, she added: “It being a super election year and politics and politicians are essentially much more in the limelight in the public discourse in the media and social media as well.”

Increasing polarization also doesn’t help, she said. “This is where people see those with a different political attitude as the enemy or as simply a bad person, someone that needs to be taken out of the public realm,” McArthur told DW.

Social media is amplifying these problems, and the impact goes beyond the people working in politics, she said.

“This violence sends a very stark message to people considering going into politics, especially if you are a woman or a person from another group that is unrepresented in political power.”

The general secretary of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD), Kevin Kühnert, said his party was bracing for “a very bitter result” in the European parliamentary elections.

Exit polls suggest the party is on track to finish in third place with 14% of the vote — behind the conservative opposition CDU/CSU bloc and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

“This is a tough defeat for us today,” Kühnert told public broadcaster ARD.

If confirmed, the result would mark the party’s worst performance in a democratic German nationwide election.

Kühnert said the SPD needed to come to terms with the result and review any mistakes.

DW correspondent in Rome Bernd Riegert reports that the main question in Italy this EU election concerns the performance of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

“Her slogan is just ‘Vote for Giorgia,’ so voters think this is a referendum on the performance of the right-wing government that has been in office for 18 months and has been quite successful and stable,” said Riegert.

Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy is expected to put on a strong showing in the EU vote. And Meloni is running as the preferential candidate for her party, even though she has no intention of taking a European parliamentary seat.

Bernd added that Meloni wants to know from her constituency if they like what she is doing. “So far it seems this is the case because she will win the biggest chunk of votes in this election,” he said.

He also noted that her decision to take a more moderate course compared to other right-wing parties in Italy seems to be attracting voters.

Polling stations in Italy are due to close at 11 p.m. local time (2100 UTC/GMT). 

Germany’s opposition conservative alliance is likely to win the national vote for the European Parliament election, an exit poll published shortly after voting stations closed Sunday predicted.

The center-right CDU/CSU bloc is projected to receive some 30.5% of the vote.

The far-right Alternative for Germany Party  (AfD) is forecast to come second, with 16.5% support — a 5.5% increase on 2019.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz‘s Social Democrats (SPD) are set to come in at around 14%, the exit poll from Infratest Dimap showed.

The projection shows a nearly 2% loss for the SPD since the 2019 election, with the CDU/CSU bloc picking up 1% support.

The prospects are not much better for Scholz’s two other coalition partners.

At around 12% in the exit polls, the Greens are nearly 9 percentage points below the impressive 20.5% they achieved in 2019.

The liberal Free Democrats (FDP), meanwhile, are projected to garner only 5%, down slightly from the last election.

The populist leftist BSW party started last year by former Socialist party lawmaker Sahra Wagenknecht is expected to win about 5.5% support, according to the exit poll.

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) is leading in the country’s election for the European Parliament, projections showed Sunday evening.

The forecast puts the FPÖ on 27% support, the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) on 23.5% and the Social Democrats (SPÖ) on 23%.

The projection shows support for the FPÖ up nearly 10 percentage points since the last European elections in 2019. Support for the ÖVP, which governs Austria, is down 11.1% compared to 2019.

During the election campaign, theFPÖ often emphasized its skepticism towards the EU under the slogan “Stop the EU madness” and portrayed the EU as a warmongering force in the Ukraine conflict. 

The forecast suggests that the environmentally friendly Greens will win 10.5% support, while the liberal NEOS could get around 10.5%.

The forecast is based on surveys of 3,600 people carried out in the past week for national broadcaster ORF, Puls 24 TV and news agency APA.

The poll has a margin of error of 2.5% percentage points.

Austria has 20 of the future 720 seats in the European Parliament.

Preliminary results from across the EU are expected later Sunday evening.

One in three eligible German voters had exercised their right to vote in the EU elections by the early afternoon, suggesting greater interest in the polls than five years ago. 

By 2 p.m. local time (1200 GMT/UTC), 32.3% had cast their ballots, the Federal Returning Officer announced. The provisional turnout figure was determined on the basis of the turnout at selected polling stations and excluded postal votes. 

In 2019, the Federal Returning Officer reported a voter turnout of 29.4% at 2 p.m. The overall voter turnout for the 2019 European elections was 61.4%. 

Polling stations in Germany are open until 6 p.m. local time.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has cast his ballot for the European Parliament elections in Potsdam.

According to DPA photographers, Scholz came with his wife Britta Ernst and posed standing in line at the polling station in the east German city, where the chancellor also has his constituency. 

In total, 65 million citizens in Germany are eligible to vote in the EU-wide elections.

Polling stations are open until 6 p.m. local time (1600 UTC/GMT).

Ninety-six of the European Parliament’s 720 seats will go to representatives from Germany, where around 1,400 candidates from 35 parties are running.

Scholz’s center-left coalition is expected to lose ground, while the opposition conservative CDU/CSU bloc is predicted to come out on top. 

In addition to the European Parliament elections, voters in several German states are going to the polls on Sunday to elect local officials. 

In Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, voters are deciding on representative bodies such as county councils, city councils or district assemblies. 

In the eastern states of Brandenburg and Saxony, the vote is seen as a test of public opinion ahead of state elections in September, in which the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is expected to do well. 

In Thuringia, where local elections were held two weeks ago, many citizens are to vote in a runoff to determine their future district administrator or mayor. In nine cases, AfD candidates are also on the ballot. 

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen cast her vote in the European Parliament elections on Sunday morning at a polling station in Burgdorf, near her home in the German state of Lower Saxony.

Afterward, she took to social media to once again encourage people to participate in the polls.

“Let’s show the power of our democracy,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“Let’s make Europe, our common home, stronger than ever.”

Von der Leyen is hoping to keep the EU’s top job for a second term as president of the European Commission. She is the center-right European People’s Party’s leading candidate for the position.