EU elections: far-right gains in Germany, Austria
and Netherlands, exit polls show
Strong showing for AfD in Germany while Freedom party
leads projected results in Austrian poll
Jennifer
Rankin, Lisa O'Carroll and Lili Bayer in Brussels
Sun 9 Jun
2024 18.36 BST
Far-right
parties in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands have made gains in the European
parliament elections, exit polls show, as data trickles in before official
results later on Sunday.
Although
the centre-right alliance has taken a decisive lead in Germany, the far-right
Alternative für Deutschland has made significant gains, while the governing
Greens and Social Democrats have slumped, according to the exit polls.
In Austria,
the far-right Freedom party topped an exit poll, and in the Netherlands Geert
Wilders’ far-right party was running a close second behind a Left-Green
alliance.
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,
currently 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 series 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 have done badly, 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%, have been 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 Austria,
the Freedom party topped the poll with a projected 27%, ahead of the
conservative People’s party and the Social Democrats, on 23.5% and 23%
respectively.
Wilders’
Freedom party looked set to gain seats in the Netherlands, with 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%.
In Greece,
the governing 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).
Pro-European
mainstream parties on the left, right and centre are expecting to see their
majorities narrow, with gains expected for nationalist and far-right 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.
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?”
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