Success of right-wing parties Recent European Parliament elections The incident has shocked countries across the continent and the world, and is a potential signal for the upcoming US presidential election.
Voters in the European bloc’s 27 member countries cast their votes between June 6 and 9, and the results have been declared. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) group remains in the majority with 189 of the 720 available seats, but the remaining groups are seeing significant shifts from left to right.
Here’s what happened in this surprising election result, and who the winners and losers were.
Europe’s voting agenda
Europe’s results, coming during one of the busiest election years ever, could signal a continuing global shift to the right: more than 50 countries had elections scheduled this year, even before France announced an early election because of the European Parliament results, According to the Associated Press,
US politics have become so tight ahead of the 2024 elections that analysts will look to other global contests to get some sense of universal voter sentiment — recall that the historic and surprising Brexit vote preceded Donald Trump’s stunning victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 — particularly because the same issues seem to trouble both Europeans and Americans, despite the transatlantic divide.
For example, the consistent victories of Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) in national and European elections have cemented the Netherlands’ right-wing tilt. Wilders withdraws his bid to become Prime Minister, but this appeared to have ensured a PVV-led government that would prove to be the country’s most conservative government in decades.
Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders speaks to the press after a meeting with the House Speaker at the House of Representatives in The Hague on November 24, 2023. After his shock election win, far-right Dutch firebrand Geert Wilders on Friday began the formal process of forming a government coalition, trying to persuade reluctant rivals to serve under him as prime minister. (Sem van der Wal/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
“The Greens and Liberals are the big losers,” Wilders wrote On the social media platform X, he wrote, “They will lose many seats in the European Parliament. On the other hand, the PVV is winning big, just like our friends in France, Belgium, Austria, Portugal and many other countries. It was a very beautiful election day!”
Chatham House, a London-based think tank Right-wing parties have cited immigration as the top issue on voters’ minds. They also cited “genuine” grievances about healthcare, housing and the rising cost of living as issues that were on voters’ minds when they voted this month.
Support for Ukraine also remains a key issue, though the think tank warns it is “probably the least controversial foreign policy issue”, with attention instead focused on the question of EU membership expansion: Russia’s aggression prompted Finland and Sweden to break decades-old policies of neutrality and join the union.
How does the European Parliament work?
The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) gained 21 seats to become the third-largest European party, and the Rassemblement National (NA) party in France will have 30 seats in total, giving right-wing parties a significant presence in parliament. Meanwhile, the progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the liberal Renew Europe, Independents and Democracy (ID) and the Greens/European Free Alliance (EFA) each lost more than a dozen seats.
Just like in the US House of Representatives, the number of MEPs depends on the population of their country of origin: for example, Austria has 20 seats, while Cyprus has only six. Germany and France top the list with 96 and 81 seats, while Italy has 76 seats, Spain has 61 and the Netherlands has 31.
Tino Kruppala and Alice Weidel, co-leaders of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party, celebrate at the AfD election evening gathering after preliminary election results were released in the European parliamentary elections, in Berlin, Germany, June 9, 2024. Elections for the European Parliament have been taking place in EU member states since June 6 and end tonight. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The ECR will have 83 seats, its largest lead ever, although the media tried to present the EPP’s lead as a bigger story, as the party had lost seats in the previous election. The ECR also recorded strong numbers in Poland, where it took 20 seats, finishing second only to the EPP, reflecting the divided nature of politics in many European countries.
National parties in each country take seats and then join one of the parliamentary groups, meaning that victories by parties such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) – which entered the European Parliament for the first time with 15 seats – and Wilders’s PVV helped strengthen the ECR’s position.
To have a presence in the European Parliament any party needs at least 23 Members of the European Parliament from seven Member States. According to ReutersThis means that in some countries even winning one seat – particularly in those where there are only a handful of MEPs to elect – often proves a crucial step in securing a place at the table.
What does a right-wing victory mean for Europe?
In Germany, the EPP won the most seats, followed by NA and the Greens, while in France ID took on the S&D and Macron’s own party, Renew. Italy gave the ECR its biggest win, while the S&D came in second by just a few seats. Spain gave strong support to both the EPP and S&D, while the Netherlands gave roughly equal support to Renew, the EPP and ID.
Left-wing politicians have expressed concern that the ECR’s great success has given the right a significant bargaining chip in future policy discussions, and that the ruling EPP may negotiate with them as needed to pass the legislation it wants, and give the right more help to advance its agenda.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks during the final media conference at the G7 in Borgo Egnazia, near Bari, southern Italy, Saturday, June 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
The ECR Party is a Eurosceptic party most closely linked to Italy’s right-wing parties: Brothers of Italy member Nicola Procaccini has served as the party’s president since 2019, and the group has achieved its largest gains in France, Germany and Italy.
The party also has a close relationship Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia MeloniHe has found himself a fierce rival on the continental stage to French President Emmanuel Macron, who faces a rising tide of right-wing opposition in his country as Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party — renamed from the National Front in 2018 after nearly five decades — look to make gains in an upcoming snap election.
Finding a compromise?
Macron had called snap elections for the European Parliament after the National Rally won 31.4% of the vote, outperforming any other party, as he was concerned that growing support for the party could jeopardise the remainder of his term, and argued that elections were “the most responsible solution”. France24 reported,
The ECR describes itself as a “constructive centre-right force”, According to Politico: The group includes Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s party as well as Spain’s right-wing Vox party. Romania added five new members to the group, proving once again that every win counts.
Jordan Bardella, president and leading MEP of the French far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, awaits the start of an interview on French TV channel TF1’s evening news broadcast in Boulogne-Billancourt, outside Paris, June 20, 2024. (LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images)
One of the most prominent new faces on the emerging far-right is Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, who has served as an MEP since 2019 and has played a key role in French politics over the past few years. The party’s “poster boy” And now he finds himself set to become prime minister if his party wins French elections in July. (Note: France has a president, Macron, who executes national and international policy, and a prime minister who guides the parliamentary agenda and domestic policy.)
Bardella has already sought to show a more moderate disposition, backing away from his party’s promise to prioritize a departure from a “unified NATO command” in 2022, instead stressing that such a move during a war would “significantly weaken France’s responsibility on the European scene and, of course, also undermine its credibility with respect to its allies.”
Von der Leyen herself belongs to Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, the party of former Prime Minister Angela Merkel, but analysts have warned that if she is to retain her role as European Commission president she will have to try to balance demands from both ends of the political spectrum to succeed.
Sandro Gozi, a leading European Parliament member in Renew, told Politico he did not believe the rise of the ECR at the expense of his own party would bring any fundamental change to the parliament’s policies and attitudes, arguing that a “pro-Europe majority” among left-wing parties would prove enough to keep things as they are.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
