The victories of right-wing parties in the recent European Parliament elections have sent shock waves across the continent and the world, and may serve as a harbinger for the upcoming US presidential elections.
Voters in the 27 member states that make up the European Union voted from June 6 to 9, and the results showed that the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) bloc led by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen maintained its majority with 189 of the 720 seats, but the remaining bloc saw a major shift from left to right.
Here’s what happened, along with the winners and losers of this surprising election result.
European Voting Agenda
The European results could signal a continuing global shift to the right in one of the busiest election years on record. More than 50 countries were due to hold elections this year even before France announced its general election following the European Parliament results. According to the Associated Press.
As the US political climate tightens ahead of the 2024 elections, analysts will look to other global elections to understand the universal sentiment of voters. They will recall that there was a historic and surprising Brexit vote before Donald Trump’s surprising victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, especially as similar issues seem to plague both Europe and the US despite being separated by the Atlantic Ocean.
For example, the successive victories of Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) in national and European elections have cemented the Netherlands’ shift to the right, and although Wilders has declined to become prime minister, a PVV-led government is set to be the most conservative in decades.
Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), speaks to reporters after meeting with the speaker of the House of Representatives at the House of Representatives in The Hague, Nov. 24, 2023. Dutch far-right firebrand Geert Wilders began the formal process of building a government coalition on Friday after a shock election victory as he struggles to convince reluctant rivals to work under him as prime minister. (Sem van der Wal/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
“The Greens and Liberals are the big losers.” Wilders writes: “They will lose many seats in the European Parliament. Meanwhile the PVV is winning big, just like our friends in France, Belgium, Austria, Portugal and many other countries. What a great election day!” he posted on social media platform X.
Chatham House, a London-based think tank He cited immigration as one of the main issues that right-wing parties are pushing to the forefront of voter attention, along with “real” frustrations over health care, housing and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis as issues that were on the minds of voters who went to the polls this month.
Aid for Ukraine also remains a key issue, but the think tank warns that this is “probably the least contentious foreign policy issue”, focusing instead on the issue of EU membership enlargement: Russian aggression prompted Finland and Sweden to abandon decades of neutrality and join the EU.
How does the European Parliament work?
The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) gained 21 seats, making them the third-largest party in Europe. France’s National Rally (NA) gained a total of 30 seats, strengthening the presence of right-wing parties in Parliament, while the Social and Democrat Progressive Alliance (S&D), the liberal ID and the Greens/European Liberal Alliance (EFA) lost more than 10 seats each.
Like the US House of Representatives, the number of MEPs is determined by the population of their home country: Austria, for example, has 20 seats, while Cyprus has just 6. Germany and France lead the way with 96 and 81 seats respectively, followed by Italy with 76, Spain with 61 and the Netherlands with 31.
Tino Krupalla and Alice Weidel, co-leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, celebrate at an AfD election night rally after the announcement of the first round results of the 2024 European Parliament elections in Berlin, Germany, on June 9, 2024. The European Parliament elections have been running in European Union member states since June 6 and will end tonight. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The ECR won 83 seats, its largest number of seats ever, but the media tried to make the EPP’s gains bigger news after it lost seats in the last election. The ECR also performed well in Poland, coming in second to the EPP with 20 seats. This speaks to the fragmented state of politics in many European countries.
National parties win seats and then join parliamentary groups, meaning the victories of parties such as Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD), which entered the European Parliament for the first time with 15 seats, and Wilders’ PVV have helped strengthen the ECR’s position.
To be represented in the European Parliament, a party needs at least 23 MEPs from seven member states. According to ReutersThis means that in some countries, winning even one seat is often a crucial step towards securing a seat at the table, especially in countries with only a small number of electable MEPs.
What does a right-wing victory mean for Europe?
In Germany, the EPP won the most seats, followed by the NA and the Greens, while in France ID took the lead over S&D and Macron’s own party Renew. In Italy, the ECR won the biggest victory, with S&D coming 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 will give the right an important bargaining chip in future policy talks, giving the ruling EPP more leverage to push through its policies, negotiating with them if necessary to get legislation passed.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks during the final G7 press conference in Borgo Egnazia, near Bari, southern Italy, Saturday, June 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medicini)
The ECR is the eurosceptic party most closely linked to Italy’s right-wing parties. Nicola Procaccini of the Italian Brothers party has been its chairman since 2019, and the party has won the most support in France, Germany and Italy.
The party also has close ties to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is French President Emmanuel Macron’s main rival on the continental stage, as he also faces a rising right-wing opposition in his native France, where Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party (which renamed itself from the National Front in 2018 after nearly 50 years) are seeking to expand their influence in upcoming general elections.
Finding a compromise?
Citing concerns that a surge in support for his Rally National party, which won a landslide victory in the European Parliament elections with 31.4% of the vote, could threaten to undermine his term in office, Macron called for elections and called them the “most responsible solution.” Reported by France24.
The ECR describes itself as a “constructive centre-right force”. According to PoliticoThe group also includes the party of Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and the far-right Spanish party Vox. Five new members from Romania have joined, proving once again that every win counts.
Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party and leading MEP, waits for an interview to begin on French television station TF1’s evening news broadcast in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt on June 20, 2024. (Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)
One of the most visible new faces on the rising right is Jordan Bardella, head of the National Rally. He has been a member of the European Parliament since 2019 and has played a provocative role in French politics in recent years. The party’s “poster boy” And he is poised to become prime minister if his party wins the French elections scheduled for July. (Note: France has both a president, Macron, who runs domestic and international policy, and a prime minister, who directs the parliamentary agenda and domestic policy.)
Bardella has already tried to project a more moderate stance, rejecting his party’s pledge to prioritize withdrawal from the “NATO Joint Command” in 2022, arguing that such action in wartime “would seriously weaken France’s responsibility on the European stage and clearly weaken its credibility vis-à-vis its allies.”
Von der Leyen herself is from Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, but analysts warn she will need to balance the demands of both ends of the political spectrum to be successful if she remains European Commission president.
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Sandro Gosi, ReNew’s leading MEP, told Politico that he didn’t believe the European Liberals’ surge at the expense of his own party would bring about any fundamental change in parliament’s policies or approach, arguing that a “pro-European majority” among left-wing parties would be enough to keep the situation more or less as it is.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
