Hundreds of millions head to polls on final day
of European elections
Voters in most EU member states called to polls on
Sunday, as far-right parties expected to gain record number of seats
Jennifer
Rankin in Brussels
Sun 9 Jun
2024 06.00 CEST
Hundreds of
millions of voters go to the polls on Sunday in European parliament elections
that are expected to tilt the assembly further to the radical and far right,
shaping the continent’s future course.
Voters in
most EU member states, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland, are
called to the polls on Sunday, the final day of a four-day election cycle that
began in the Netherlands on Thursday.
In the
first European election since Britain left the EU, voters are being asked to
elect 720 lawmakers to the world’s only directly elected transnational
parliament. Opinion polls suggest the mainstream, pro-European groups will
retain their majority, but see their clout and influence challenged like never
before, with nationalist and far-right parties on course to gain a record
number of seats.
Once
derided as a talking-shop, the European parliament has gained significant
powers over the last two decades. MEPs are joint legislators with national
government ministers on a swathe of EU policies, such as climate action,
artificial intelligence, workers’ rights and farm subsidies. The parliament,
which sits in Brussels and Strasbourg, will also have the final say on whether
the German centre-right politician, Ursula von der Leyen, gets a coveted
second-term as European Commission president, one of the most powerful
positions in European politics.
The largest
bloc is likely to remain von der Leyen’s centre-right European People’s party,
which is expected to roughly maintain its 176 seats in a parliament that is
slightly larger than the outgoing assembly. The centre-left Socialists and
Democrats group should retain their second place with about 139 seats. But the
centrist Renew group and Greens are forecast to lose seats, dragged down by the
weakness of national parties in the two biggest member states, France and
Germany.
In Germany,
which will elect 96 MEPs, the Greens – part of an unpopular coalition
government led by Socialist Olaf Scholz – have paid an electoral price for
controversies over domestic climate laws. The German Greens are expected to
lose some of their existing 25 seats, meaning the wider European parliament
group is likely to sink back from the historic fourth place it won in 2019 on
the back of protests for climate action across Europe.
In France,
which will send 81 MEPs to Brussels and Strasbourg, French president Emmanuel
Macron is polling far behind Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, which is
expected to repeat its feat of topping the poll with an even bigger lead than
in 2019 or 2014. The weakness of Macron’s party could see the centrist Renew
group – dominated by French MEPs – lose its traditional third place.
The Renew
faction could be supplanted by the nationalist, hard-right European
Conservatives and Reformists, thanks to the rising fortunes of Italian prime
minister Giorgia Meloni, increasingly seen as the kingmaker of European
politics.
The latest
polls suggest Meloni’s Brothers of Italy is on course to triple its percentage
share of the vote, at the expense of her coalition partners, the far-right
League.
While Le
Pen has made overtures to Meloni to create a nationalist “super-group”, most
analysts expect the Italian leader to shun that alliance in favour of a
smaller, more coherent right-wing group that could work with von der Leyen’s
commission. Polls suggest the nationalist and far-right parties could return a
record 165 MEPs, but these are likely to remain scattered over two, possibly
three groups as well as unaffiliated MEPs, blunting its influence.
Observers
will be watching whether Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán chooses to align
his Fidesz MEPs to a right-wing alliance. Fidesz, which has 12 seats, has been
politically homeless since quitting the centre-right EPP in 2021, before they
were kicked out over concerns about Hungary’s authoritarian drift.
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In the
Netherlands, Left and Green politicians hailed a narrow lead in exit polls on
Thursday over the far-right Freedom party, although the margin of error also
suggested a tie. In Thursday’s Dutch vote an exit poll showed the
Green-Left-Labour alliance winning eight of the Netherlands’ 31 seats, with
Geert Wilders’ PVV on seven seats, up from one in 2019. But the margin of error
of the poll, conducted by the Dutch National Broadcaster NOS, was one seat.
Nevertheless,
Frans Timmermans, parliamentary leader of the alliance, said: “It is not at all
a foregone conclusion that the radical right will win these elections. Look at
what the Netherlands is doing? Do the same.”
Turnout
will be a keenly watched metric in the election: the 2019 vote, which took
place against a backdrop of the UK’s chaotic departure from the EU and tensions
with Donald Trump’s White House, saw turnout reach 50.6%, the highest for 25
years. This election also sees an expansion in youth voting with Belgium and
Germany joining Austria and Malta in giving 16-year-olds the vote.
The
European parliament has attempted to motivate young voters with a powerful
campaign video featuring older people recalling the Nazi occupation, the
Holocaust and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Use your Vote video
had been viewed more than half a billion times on social media, TV, cinemas and
football stadiums in the five weeks to 2 June.
An
estimated 361 million people are voting during the four-day election cycle that
ends at 11pm CET on Sunday when Italian polls close. European parliament
officials expect to have a fairly definitive picture of the next parliament by
about 1am on Monday CET (midnight BST), with predicted results appearing
earlier in the evening.
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