Far-Right, as in Conservatives, Rock European politics, sparking a snap election in France, Resignations elsewhere! Precursor to US Election?
by The Associated Press, June 10, 2024
Far-right parties made big gains in the European Parliament in election results that rattled the traditional powers and made French President Emmanuel Macron call snap legislative elections.
Macron’s party suffered a heavy defeat from the far-right National Rally party, while in Germany support for Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats sank to a projected 14%, behind the extreme-right Alternative for Germany, which surged into second place.
Millions of Europeans voted for candidates to serve five-year terms in a new European Parliament, the legislative branch of the 27-member trade bloc. Provisional results from the voting that ended Sunday showed the Christian Democrats would have 189 seats, up 13, the Social Democrats 135, down 4 and the pro-business Renew group 83, down 19. The Greens slumped to 53, down 18.
Currently:
— France’s Macron calls a snap election after heavy defeat
— Italy’s Meloni will welcome the G7 summit fortified by an EU vote that shook French, German leaders
— Far-right Alternative for Germany make gains
— Poland’s centrist premier Tusk is strengthened by EU election win
— Orbán’s party takes most votes, but challenger scores big win
— Complex coalition talks loom after Belgium’s federal election
— Bulgaria’s center-right party leads in both national and European elections
— What happened in some of the key races
Here’s the latest:
THE LEADER OF SPAIN’S LEFT-WING SUMAR PARTY STEPS DOWN
MADRID — The leader of Spain’s left-wing Sumar (“Joining Forces”) has stepped down following her party’s poor showing in the European Parliament elections. Yolanda Díaz made the announcement the day after Sumar won just three of the 61 seats going to Spanish lawmakers.
Díaz said she will continue as Spain’s labor minister and as a deputy prime minister of the nation’s left-wing government, where Sumar is the junior member of the Socialist-led coalition.
Sumar only got 4% of the vote, or some 800,000 ballots, and just a handful more than a new platform launched by a far-right social media influencer.
Díaz helped found Sumar in March 2023 to regroup and rebrand anti-austerity progressive parties. But Sumar suffered from the splintering with the Podemos (“We Can”) Party. On Sunday, Sumar and Podemos combined for five seats, one seat less than in 2019’s EU elections when they ran under one ticket.
GERMANY’S AfD CALLS FOR NEW NATIONAL ELECTIONS
BERLIN — The far-right Alternative for Germany party, which finished second in European Parliament elections, called for a new national vote Monday after the parties in the country’s unpopular governing coalition sank to dismal results.
“People are fed up” with the current government, AfD’s Alice Weidel said during a news conference with the other party leader, Tino Chrupalla.
The government has rejected calls for an early election and says the vote would take place as planned next year in the fall.
Weidel and Chrupalla credited their party’s success to understanding voters’ worries like migration, the war in Ukraine, or the party’s opposition to climate friendly regulations. The AfD has been exploiting fears over migration by lobbying for tough rules and quick deportations of those who don’t qualify for asylum.
Despite the AfD’s increase in votes, the party is still some way short of its poll ratings at the beginning of the year. The party has seen a string of setbacks since then, including scandals surrounding its two lead candidates for the European Parliament.
FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTER SAYS SNAP ELECTION IS MACRON’S ‘BET ON CONFIDENCE’ IN THE FRENCH PEOPLE
PARIS — France’s foreign minister said Monday that President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call snap elections after the far right’s triumph in the European elections was not “a poker move” but “a bet on confidence in the French people.”
Stéphane Séjourné said Macron did not take lightly the decision to dissolve the lower house of parliament and call for early elections, which are to start with a first round on June 30 and a second round on July 7.
He said the president’s coalition partners are now discussing election plans internally while also seeking cooperation with “reasonable people” on the left and right. The aim of the moderate forces is to win, he said.
But it’s the French people who will decide “on the economic and political future of France and its role in world,” Séjourné said in an interview with public broadcaster France Info on Monday.
AUSTRIA’S FAR-RIGHT PARTY CELEBRATES FIRST WIN IN A NATIONWIDE VOTE
VIENNA – Austria’s far-right Freedom Party is celebrating a narrow win in the European Parliament election as the country looks forward to a national vote expected in September.
The Freedom Party took 25.7% of the vote on Sunday, finishing in first place in a nationwide election for the first time. It was followed by Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s conservative Austrian People’s Party with 24.7% and the center-left opposition Social Democrats with 23.2%. The Greens, Nehammer’s junior coalition partners, took 10.7% of the vote.
Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl said in a statement that “this election result means nothing less than that Austrians have made history today.” He said the party will continue to work to take the chancellor’s job later this year.
Nehammer acknowledged that there is “great dissatisfaction,” the Austria Press Agency reported. He vowed that his party will convince voters it takes their concerns seriously over the coming months by acting against irregular migration and overregulation.
ANTI-IMMIGRANT PARTY ALIGNED WITH HUNGARY’S ORBAN DOES WELL IN SLOVENIA
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia – The right-wing opposition Slovenian Democratic Party has won the most votes in the EU election in Slovenia, dealing a blow to the ruling liberal Freedom Movement of Prime Minister Robert Golob.
The opposition SDS won 30.8%, or four out of Slovenia’s nine parliamentary seats, while Golob’s party won 22.1%, or two mandates, according to the election authorities. The remaining three seats went to smaller parties.
SDS leader Janez Jansa, a staunchly anti-immigrant ally of Hungary’s hard-line Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, urged the ruling coalition to dissolve parliament and call a snap election.
Golob, however, said he was happy with the result and that overall center-left parties won more votes than right-leaning groups.
MAINSTREAM CONSERVATIVES WIN IN GERMANY, WITH SECOND-PLACE FINISH FOR FAR RIGHT
BERLIN – Final results in Germany confirm a clear win for mainstream opposition conservatives, a second-place finish for the far-right Alternative for Germany party and a dismal showing by the three governing parties in the European Parliament election.
Official figures Monday showed the center-right Union bloc taking 30% of the vote. Alternative for Germany took 15.9%.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats won only 13.9% of the vote for their worst post-World War II showing yet in a nationwide election. Their two coalition partners, the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats, took 11.9% and 5.2% respectively.
All were significantly below their results in Germany’s 2021 national election. The Greens suffered painful losses compared with the 2019 European election.
The new BSW party took 6.2% of the vote.
Germany has 96 of the new European Parliament’s 720 seats. Of those, 29 went to the Union, 15 to Alternative for Germany, 14 to the Social Democrats, 12 to the Greens, five to the Free Democrats and six to BSW. The rest went to a string of smaller parties.
WIN FOR DONALD TUSK’S CENTRIST PARTY IN POLAND AMID GROWTH OF FAR RIGHT
WARSAW, Poland — The centrist party of Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk won the most votes, according to official results, giving it its first electoral victory over a right-wing populist party in a decade.
Many people across Europe hailed Tusk’s return to power last year as a rare case of a democratic party prevailing over populist and authoritarian forces. While Sunday’s voting solidified Tusk’s position, the results published Monday also showed that his lead is small, and that support for the far right is rising.
His Civic Coalition took 37.1% of the votes in Sunday’s EU election. Law and Justice, the party led by Jarosław Kaczyński that held power from 2015 until last year, got 36.2%. That underlined the continued attraction of its nationalist and conservative worldview to many Polish voters, despite reports of corruption during its years in power.
Meanwhile, a far-right party, Confederation, had its best result ever, coming third with 12.1% — in line with an EU-wide surge of support for nationalist, anti-EU parties.
INITIAL PROJECTIONS INDICATE ITALIAN PREMIER GIORGIA MELONI’S PARTY HAS WON THE MOST VOTES
ROME — Initial projections based on 18% of votes counted in Italy indicate Premier Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party has won the largest percentage of votes in the European parliamentary elections.
The projection released by public broadcaster RAI puts Brothers of Italy as the most popular party with 28.5% of the vote, while the center-left opposition Democratic Party (PD) was second with 23.7%.
The other main opposition party, the 5-Star Movement, won 10.5%, while Forza Italia, founded by late premier Silvio Berlusconi, was fourth with 10%, followed by the far-right League at 8.3%.
HUNGARIAN PRIME MINISTER ORBAN’S NATIONALIST PARTY APPEARS SET TO TAKE MOST VOTES
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s nationalist party appeared set to take the most votes in Sunday’s European Parliament elections, a race that pitted the long-serving leader against a new challenger that has upended Orbán’s grip on Hungarian politics in recent months.
With 55% of votes counted, Orbán’s Fidesz party stood at 43% of the vote, enough to send 11 delegates of Hungary’s 21 total seats in the European Union’s legislature.
While Fidesz took a plurality of votes, it was down nearly 10 percentage points from its support in 2019 EU elections and looked set to lose two seats in what was widely seen as a referendum on Orbán’s popularity.
While Fidesz has dominated Hungarian politics since 2010, many are deeply dissatisfied with how it has governed the country. A deep economic crisis and a recent series of scandals involving Fidesz politicians have rocked the party, which prides itself on upholding family values and Christian conservatism.
SPAIN’S MAIN OPPOSITION CONSERVATIVES PULL AHEAD OF GOVERNING SOCIALISTS
MADRID — Spain’s leading opposition conservatives pulled ahead of the governing Socialists in the European Union’s parliamentary elections, with the far-right making significant gains amid the surprise appearance of a new extremist party led by a social media influencer.
With 99% of votes counted, the right-wing opposition Popular Party (PP) had 34% of the votes, four percentage points more than the center-left Socialists of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. That translated into 22 seats for the conservatives, nine more than in the previous European election, and 20 for the Socialists.
Spain has the fourth largest number of parliamentary seats allocated in the EU’s assembly: 61 out of 720.
The results were a significant improvement for the PP conservatives, who had likened the European vote to a referendum on Sánchez’s administration. But the biggest gains were on the far-right of the political spectrum.
EUROSKEPTIC CENTRIST OPPOSITION WINS EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ELECTION IN CZECH REPUBLIC
PRAGUE — The centrist opposition ANO (YES) movement led by former populist Prime Minister Andrej Babis has won the European Parliament election in the Czech Republic.
Euroskeptic Babis defeated the center-right Together coalition that consists of three partners in the Czech governing coalition: the conservative Civic Democratic Party of Prime Minister Petr Fiala, Christian Democrats and the liberal-conservative TOP 09 party.
ANO won 26% of the votes, for seven seats, while Together claimed 22%, for six seats.
DUTCH RESULTS CONFIRM FAR-RIGHT, ANTI-IMMIGRATION PARTY FOR FREEDOM IS THE BIGGEST WINNER
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Near complete Dutch results confirmed Sunday night that Geert Wilders’ far-right, anti-immigration Party for Freedom was the biggest winner in elections for the European Union parliament.
Wilders’ party won six seats, up from one in the last European parliament, according to a near complete count of the Dutch vote, national broadcaster NOS reported. That is one seat less than projected by an exit poll after the Dutch voted Thursday.
That one seat difference did not dampen Wilders’ delight. “Still the very biggest winner with five more seats!” he wrote on social media platform X.
OPPOSITION PARTY CLAIMS VICTORY IN SLOVAKIA
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — The major opposition Progressive Slovakia has claimed victory in the European Parliament elections in Slovakia, topping the leftist Smer (Direction) party of populist Prime Minister Robert Fico.
The vote took place just weeks after Fico survived an assassination attempt.
Progressive Slovakia, a liberal and pro-Western group, won 27.8% of the vote, for six parliamentary seats.
Smer, which refuses to send any arms to Ukraine to face Russia’s invasion and is critical of mainstream European policies, followed with 24.8%, for five seats.
