Far-right parties in France and Germany have made striking gains in the European parliament elections, exit polls showed, as data trickled in before official results later on Sunday.
The success of the far right in the EU’s two largest member states comes ahead of expected gains for the hard-right Brothers of Italy party of the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
Although the centre-right alliance has taken a decisive lead in Germany, exit polls indicate the far-right Alternative für Deutschland has made significant gains, while the governing Greens and Social Democrats has slumped.
In France, exit polls suggest Marine Le Pen’s far-right party is on course for first place for the third successive European election in a row, with a better score than in 2019. National Rally (RN) was forecast to take a 32.4% share of the vote, well ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance group on 15%. In 2019 there was less than a percentage point between the two.
“Emmanuel Macron is a weakened president tonight,” said RN’s president, Jordan Bardella, at a victory party on Sunday night. The projected results, he added, showed French people wanted the EU to change course.
While the results were largely expected, Macron may take comfort from hanging on to second place, just ahead of Raphaël Glucksmann’s Place Publique/Parti Socialiste ticket on 14.3%.
According to an initial projection from the European parliament, MEPs from the four pro-European mainstream groups were forecast to retain a majority of seats in the assembly, but a smaller one than in 2019, making it increasingly difficult for them to pass laws.
The European People’s party, Socialists and Democrats, the centrist Renew group and the Greens were on course for 451 of the 720 seats, a 62.6% share, compared with their 69.2% share in the slightly smaller outgoing parliament. These groups often find themselves on opposing sides; the Greens, for example, did not support Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission president in 2019.
However, exit polls indicated widespread gains for the far right. In Austria, the far-right Freedom party was forecast to have come top, with a projected 27%, ahead of the conservative People’s party and the Social Democrats, on 23.5% and 23% respectively.
In the Netherlands Geert Wilders’ far-right party was running a close second behind a Left-Green alliance. Wilders’ Freedom party looked set to win 17.7% of the vote, but it came second to the Left-Green alliance led by the former EU Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans, which has 21.6%.
On Sunday, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who leads a stridently nationalist and anti-immigrant government, told reporters after casting his ballot: “Right is good. To go right is always good. Go right!”
In Germany, exit polls showed the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, now in opposition, with 29.5% of the vote, while the AfD had jumped to 16.5% from 11% in 2019. The AfD’s success comes despite a slew of scandals, including its lead candidate saying that the SS, the Nazi’s main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals”.
The parties of Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition were on course for a disastrous night, with the Social Democrats sliding to 14%, worse than its weakest ever result in 2019, according to the exit poll. The Greens, who came second in 2019 with 20.5%, were knocked down to fourth place with 12 %-12.5%.
Tens of thousands of Germans took to the streets in cities including Berlin, Dresden and Munich to protest against rightwing extremism on Sunday, the final day of European elections in 21 countries.
In Greece, the governing centre-right New Democracy party was comfortably in the lead with 30% of the votes, while the radical left Syriza party, which led the country during negotiations on the third EU bailout, was on 16.7%, pushing the Socialists (Pasok) into third place with 12.4%.
The data is based on exit polls, which are not yet available in most countries. The first provisional results are expected at 11.15pm CET (2215 BST).
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While the centre-right European People’s party is in the lead in Germany, Greece and Cyprus, the results point to narrowing overall majorities for mainstream pro-European parties.
That could endanger the passing of ambitious laws on climate action. It is also likely to complicate the German conservative Ursula von der Leyen’s hopes of winning a second term as European Commission president, as she needs to win the support of at least 361 of the new members of parliament.
In a tweet after the exit poll, von der Leyen said she was happy about the “excellent results” for her CDU/CSU alliance. “We had the right topics. The voters have confirmed this.”
Bas Eickhout, a Dutch MEP who is one of the two lead candidates for the Greens, said he was disappointed with the projected result in Germany “In 2019, we had 10%. We knew we would not reach that. I think if we are around 7% or 8%, that would still be a pretty good result for us, I would say,” he told reporters.
Voters in most EU countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland, were called to the polls on Sunday, the culmination of a four-day electoral exercise that began last Thursday in the Netherlands.
In the first election since Britain left the EU, an estimated 361 million Europeans had the chance to vote. That included 16-year olds in Belgium and Germany for the first time, who joined counterparts in Austria and Malta and 17-year-olds in Greece.
In some countries there were signs of a higher turnout than last time. Voter turnout in France was 42.6% at 5pm, an increase of more than two percentage points on the same time in 2019. In Hungary, 33.1% of voters had cast their ballots by 1pm, compared with 24% in 2019.
In 2019, against a backdrop of Britain’s chaotic EU exit negotiations and tensions with Donald Trump’s White House, turnout rose to 50.6%, the highest in 25 years.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, urged voters to go to the polls after casting his vote. “It’s worth remembering that the response to the [2008] financial crisis, the social response to the pandemic, the responses to the different economic crises triggered by the war in Ukraine and the war in the Middle East all came from the same capital – which is Brussels,” the Socialist leader told reporters. “Do we want a Europe that continues to come together in solidarity to face the challenges ahead, or do we choose a reactionary Europe of cuts and of regression and reaction?”
