Election officials empty boxes to count postal ballots for the European Union elections in Frankfurt, Germany, on Sunday.
Michael Probst/AP
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Michael Probst/AP
Voters in more than 20 European countries will cast their ballots over the next few days to choose their members to the European Parliament for the next five years.
In the largest democratic elections on earth, some 360 million voters elected 720 members of parliament across the 27 member states. Parliament’s ability to influence policy on the continent is limited, so protest votes against national governments are common.
National parties are forming alliances across the continent based on common values and policy proposals to form larger parliamentary groups. Results released so far in several major economies, including France, Germany and Italy, show a surge in public support for parties on the far right of the political spectrum. However, the largest political groups in the next European Parliament will likely remain the center-left and center-right.
Below are some key points from the overnight vote count, in which turnout exceeded 50%.
Macron bets on early elections
French President Emmanuel Macron dissolved parliament in so-called snap parliamentary elections due to begin later this month after his centrist Renaissance party and its allies received less than half the votes as the country’s right-wing National Rally party. Announcing the decision in a televised address late Sunday, Macron said “we can’t act as if nothing happened.”
Macron will remain president for the rest of his term, but he may be forced to work with his political opponents as prime minister if the far-right populist Rally National party wins a majority in the French parliament. The far-right party’s candidate for prime minister, Jordan Bardella, is only 28 years old.
“I believe that the French people have the capacity to make the fairest choice for themselves and for future generations,” Macron wrote in a social media post on Monday morning.
One French newspaper described Macron’s decision as “Paris Extreme“This is an extreme gamble.”
Far-right forces also gain ground in Italy, Germany and Austria
Italy’s populist far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Italian Brotherhood party has seen its vote share increase fourfold since the last European elections in 2019. Despite low voter turnout, Meloni’s share of the vote in Italy was better than it was in 2022, when he came to power at the head of a right-wing coalition.
With Meloni’s closest rival, the Democratic Party, trailing by a few points, political analysts say the result could strengthen his position on domestic policymaking and strengthen his international standing when he hosts G7 leaders near the southern city of Bari later this month.
Meanwhile in Austria, the far-right Freedom Party narrowly beat its conservative rival the People’s Party, with the Social Democrats following in third place.
In Germany, support for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) was low, the conservative opposition party (CDU), formerly led by his predecessor Chancellor Angela Merkel, won the most seats in parliament, and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won the second-largest number of seats in the country and significantly increased its support in the east and among young people.
Belgium’s liberal Prime Minister, Alexander de Croo, surprised the nation by resigning after a national party called the New Flemish Union performed well in the Brexit vote and in simultaneous local and regional elections.
Centre parties remain the biggest players in the EU Parliament
Despite successes by far-right parties in some countries, the center-left and center-right political groups that have historically dominated the European Parliament remain the two largest factions in the Brussels-based parliament, with the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) increasing its number of seats. Ursula von der Leyen, current president of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, is in the EPP group and said the continent’s political center was holding as the vote count got underway.
In Spain, the center-right conservative Popular Party narrowly defeated Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Party, but the country’s far-right Vox party performed less than expected.
In Poland, another continental economic powerhouse, Donald Tusk, a one-time star on the European stage, returned to domestic politics as a centrist prime minister, and his party and coalition government fared well in the face of narrow defeat for the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party that had long dominated the European Parliament. PiS is one of a number of political movements across Europe that have challenged the European Union’s role in domestic policymaking.
Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO) won the most votes, but exit polls showed the far-right Coalition party was the most popular among voters under 30.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban addresses media after receiving the results of the European Parliament elections, Monday, June 10, 2024, in Budapest, Hungary.
Denes Erdos/AP
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Hungarian Prime Minister Orban faces stronger opposition
Another party that has occasionally tested the EU status quo on key issues such as aid for Ukraine and judicial independence is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party.
Orban, a rare populist in Europe who has openly supported presidential candidate Donald Trump, claimed victory in both the European Parliament elections and Hungary’s local elections, which were held at the same time as the Brexit vote.
But he now faces a growing new opposition party under Peter Magyar, a young lawyer who has been holding massive rallies across the country to criticise Orban’s power grab.
Just three months after it was founded, Hungary’s centre-right Tisza party won 30% of the vote and is aiming to join the European People’s Party group in the European Parliament.
Environmental policies unpopular with voters
While left and Green parties have made big gains in the EU’s Nordic countries of Finland, Denmark and Sweden, senior political leaders acknowledged that some of their more progressive climate-focused policies do not appear to have gained much support elsewhere in Europe.
Farmer protests have erupted in many European countries, prompting European Union leaders to rethink a plan known as the European Green Deal to tighten environmental standards and cut emissions by 2040. The protests have grown into a broader movement in countries such as the Netherlands, influencing national politics.
“Perhaps an invisible line has been crossed,” Roberta Metsola, Malta’s president of the European Parliament, told the BBC, acknowledging that the social and economic impacts of the climate policies proposed by her and other MPs had not been taken into account.
“We lost people doing that,” she said.
