what are the main lessons from the EU-wide vote?

If the far right makes a push, the environmental group appears to be one of the big losers in these European elections.

No earthquake in Europe. The European People’s Party (EPP, center right), the main political force in the European Parliament, once again won in the elections which ended on Sunday June 9. Its coalition with the social democrats and the liberal centrists of Renew Europe remains in the majority. And the outgoing president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, appears to be on her way to a new term.

But this election will still change the face of the European hemicycle. Progression of the extreme right, to be put into perspective but very real, decline of environmentalists and increase in mobilization… Here are the main lessons from these elections.

The far right is growing stronger

In 2019, the European far right achieved a historic breakthrough, sending around a hundred MEPs to Brussels and Strasbourg. Five years later, radical right and far-right groups are strengthening. Their two groups will have a total of 131 elected representatives, or 13 more than in the outgoing Parliament.

There are also other forces among the non-registered, such as the AfD, the German far-right party. Coming in second place in Germany with 15.9% of the vote, ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD, it went from 11 to 15 seats. Other far-right groups even emerged victorious in their country, including the National Rally in France (31.37%) or, in Italy, the Fratelli d’Italia party (28.77%) of the head of government. Giorgia Meloni, who made this election a referendum on her person.

“It is true that the far right is achieving good results, particularly in France and Germany, but this is less what the polls predicted” at the European level, explains Sophie Pornschlegel, director of studies for the Brussels branch of the Jacques-Delors Institute. In Hungary, the party of nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban recorded a relative setback with 44% of the vote, its lowest score since the country joined the European Union in 2004. Moreover, these performances vary greatly. “It is difficult to analyze the European elections as a single phenomenon because in reality there are 27 votes directly influenced by national issues”explains Sophie Pornschlegel.

In the European Parliament, the extreme right remains divided into two political groups: Identity and Democracy (ID) and European Conservatives and Reformists (CRE). This connection remains very uncertain. Three weeks before the elections, the National Rally had ended its alliance with the AfD, and the German party had been excluded by ID, after polemical remarks by its head of the list on the subject of Nazism.

The right remains the leading political force

Unsurprisingly, the European People’s Party (EPP) is strengthening its base in Strasbourg and Brussels. The leading political force in the European Parliament, the center-right bloc now has 185 elected representatives, five more than in the previous hemicycle (which had 15 seats fewer).

The training benefited from good results in Germany (30%), Spain (34.18%) and Poland (37.06%). “This victory of the right accompanies the surge of the extreme right: these two electoral phenomena combine, analyzes Sophie Pornschlegel. In Germany and Spain, conservatives have partly adopted the campaign themes of the far right.”

“The EPP is the most powerful political group. (…) We will build a wall against the extremes of left and right, we will stop them”assured Sunday the outgoing president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, from the EPP and candidate for its reappointment.

Negotiations and major maneuvers between the new MEPs begin on Monday and will last until the first session of Parliament in July. Over the summer, governments will have to agree on a name to lead the European Commission.

The Greens are losing ground

“This is the great disappointment of this election”, analyzes Sophie Pornschlegel. The fourth political force during the previous term in the European Parliament with 71 MEPs, the group of the Greens and the European Free Alliance (EFA) lost 18 seats and appears to be one of the big losers in these elections.

This result can be explained by the poor performance of environmentalists on the other side of the Rhine. “In total, Germany sends 96 deputies to Strasbourg and Brussels. Consequently, a poor score for the Greens has a direct influence on the composition and influence of the FTA”, this specialist in European institutions explains to franceinfo. The German delegation will be made up of 16 elected officials, nine seats fewer than in 2019. In France, Les Ecologistes-EELV achieved one of their worst scores in twenty years, barely reaching the 5% necessary to have deputies.

“The results in Germany and France are obviously a big blow, but at the same time, in many countries, voters elected MEPs from green parties, declared the vice-president of the European Greens, Bas Eickhout, in a press release. Environmentalists are recording victories in several Northern European countries. “We came first in Denmark and the Netherlands, and we will remain a strong green voice in Sweden and Finland.”assures Terry Reintke, co-candidate of the European Greens to head the Commission, in a press release.

In Denmark, in a very fragmented political landscape, the Socialist People’s Party (local component of the ALE) came first and showed a clear increase of 4.2 points compared to 2019. The Greens recorded other victories, notably in Sweden where they made a breakthrough (13.8%), and in the Netherlands, where the ecologists, allied with the social democrats, came in first and won four seats.

A high participation rate

Called to the polls between Thursday and Sunday, depending on the member states, European voters defied the forecasts which predicted a vote marked by abstention. The participation rate recorded a very slight increase compared to 2019, to stand at 50.8% of the approximately 360 million voters called to the polls, according to estimates from the European Parliament on Monday at midday.

There increase in participation is observed in particular in France. It reached 51.49% according to the Ministry of the Interior, or 1.4 additional points compared to 2019, where the trend was already upwards. In France as at European level, participation is the highest since the 1994 elections (52.71% in France and 56.67% on average in the EU).