A voter in Romania prepares to cast her ballot during European Parliament elections at a polling station in Bucharest, 9 June 2024. Photo: AFP
Eurosceptic nationalists made the biggest gains in European Parliament elections on Sunday while the Greens and liberals lost ground, an aggregated exit poll showed, a shift that may complicate EU policymaking and attempts to deepen integration over the next five years.
Far-right parties in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and elsewhere performed strongly in a vote that will see the balance of power shift rightwards in the 720-seat parliament that helps shape and approve legislation across the bloc.
The impact of the EU vote was seen immediately in France where President Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly called a snap parliamentary election, after his party suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of the far-right National Rally.
Eurosceptic nationalist groups European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and Identity and Democracy (ID) and hard-right lawmakers not yet affiliated to an EU political family from
Germany's AfD secured together 149 seats, a gain of 22, a first centralised exit poll showed.
Voting to close in EU Parliament elections
The exit poll projected that pro-European centre-right, centre-left, liberal and Green parties will retain a majority of 451 seats, but one which is significantly slimmed down compared to their 488 in the outgoing chamber.
Europe's Green parties in particular suffered heavy losses, subsiding to 53 deputies from 71 in the outgoing parliament.
The European Parliament co-decides with the intergovernmental European Council on laws governing the 27-nation bloc of 450 million people.
A rightwards shift inside the parliament may make it tougher to pass new legislation that results in more EU resource sharing or cooperation that might be needed to respond to security challenges, the impact of climate change or industrial competition from China and the United States.
Exactly how much clout the euro-sceptic nationalist parties will have will depend on their ability to overcome differences and work together. They are currently split between two different families, and some parties and lawmakers for now lie outside these groupings.
Like Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also suffered a painful night. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) shrugged off a string of scandals to take second place behind the conservatives while Scholz's Social Democrats scored their worst result ever.
Power balance
Political observers attribute the shift to the right to the rise in the cost of living, concerns about migration and the cost of the green transition as well as the war in Ukraine -- worries that nationalist and populist parties have seized on.
The centralised exit poll showed the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) will be the biggest political family in the new legislature, gaining five seats to field 181 deputies.
The EPP result is good news for EPP member Ursula von der Leyen who seeks a second five-year term at the helm of the powerful EU executive arm. Von der Leyen will need the backing of both EU leaders and the parliament.
However von der Leyen may still need support from some right-wing nationalists, such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy to secure a parliamentary majority, giving Meloni and her European Conservative and Reformists (ECR) allies more leverage.
The centre-left Socialists and Democrats are poised to be the second biggest political family, even as they lost four lawmakers to end up with 135, the exit poll showed.
In contrast, the exit poll gave the ECR two more deputies than in the last parliament for a total of 71 and the far-right ID group 13 more seats for a total of 62.
The number of non-affiliated deputies who may choose to join other groups, including the euro-sceptics, jumped by 40 to 102, the exit poll said.
- Reuters