All the polls are closed for the European elections. It’s now becoming clear who the winners and losers are across the EU’s 27 Member States.
The biggest losers:
- The Greens in Austria and Germany, for performing a lot worse than expected.
- The liberal Renew group across the different member states, it lost 20 seats compared to 2019.
- The Social-Democrats in Germany: Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party finished on a shared second place with AfD, behind the EPP.
- Macron in France, as the political party of his competitor Le Pen, the National Rally (RN) party, has secured a whopping 31.5% of the votes.
And who won?
Italy’s leader Giorgia Meloni has cemented her role as a key Brussels power broker with an estimated 28% of the votes, while in France, President Emmanuel Macron has performed so badly he’s been pushed to call new parliamentary elections. The FPÖ is also predicted to top the poll in Austria, doubling its number of MEPs to six after gaining 25.7% of votes, the European Parliament projection said. Geert Wilders in The Netherlands is also among the big winners, as his party became 8 times larger than it was after the previous elections. The new centre-right Hungarian party of Peter Magyar came from nowhere to finish second with more than 30% of the vote, cementing his challenge to PM Viktor Orban’s ruling Fidesz.
Sensing a threat from the far right, the Christian Democrats of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had already shifted further to the right on migration and climate ahead of the elections.
There is a trend going on:
Those rightward trends are confirmed in Spain, where Vox is expected to increase its representation by two to three MEPs, while newcomers “The Party Is Over”, also identified as far-right populist, will gain their first ever two or three MEPs, exit polls suggest.
No single party has a majority in the European Parliament, and votes are often decided issue-by-issue by finding a coalition that commands the required majority. The chamber has always been dominated by its two large groups, the centre-right European People’s Party and centre-left Socialists. The two lost their combined majority in the 2019 elections, since when they’ve had to form informal alliances with parties such as the Greens and Liberals, and projections suggest they’re unlikely to regain it in 2024.
The European Union parliament has 720 seats in total, all of which are up for election. 361 seats are needed for a majority, with no single political group likely to pass this. Each country has a certain number of members of the European parliament (MEPs), allocated broadly based on population. People vote for national parties that then form largely Europe-wide blocs in the parliament. The political groups in the parliament are outlined below the map, starting with the most leftwing group. Before the election, polls predicted that Eurosceptic and anti-establishment parties in the ECR and ID groups were set to make significant gains.