Far-right parties made striking gains in European Union elections on Sunday, while the ultimate losers were French President Emmanuel Macron — and the Greens.
Here are five takeaways from the vote which saw Europe’s centrist political groups emerge relatively unscathed and higher turnout than in 2019 among the bloc’s 27 states.
Europe’s far-right parties were winners in many places, coming out on top in France, Italy and Austria, while Germany’s AfD came second — but still ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD party — and the hard-right also did well in the Netherlands.
But experts warned against reading too much into their success.
“The far right did well but not excellent — let’s not forget these are second order elections,” said Francesco Nicoli, a visiting fellow at Bruegel think tank.
“We cannot say that this is a very, very significant push as things stand,” Christine Verger, vice chair of Jacques Delors think tank said. “There may be movements within the political groups. We don’t know where some MEPs will end up.”
A big question being raised is whether two main far-right groups in the parliament — Identity and Democracy (ID) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) — can unite, creating a supergroup.
Verger dismissed that notion out of hand.
“I absolutely do not believe in a unification, it is out of the question for ID and ECR to merge,” she told AFP.
The ECR includes Italian far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party came top in the elections.
As to the far right’s likely impact on lawmaking in the European Parliament, experts appeared sanguine.
“The rising number of far right MEPs will likely have only a limited impact on the EU,” predicted expert Marta Lorimer. “They do not form a blocking minority.”