With polls now closed for European elections, it's now becoming clear who the winners and losers are across the EU's 27 Member States.
Italy's leader Giorgia Meloni has cemented her role as a key Brussels power broker with an estimated 28% of the votes, while in France, President Emmanuel Macron has performed so badly he's been pushed to call snap elections.
The winners:
- France's National Rally, for winning in France. The election result triggered snap elections.
- The EPP group, for remaining the biggest group in the Parliament, and gaining 13 seats compared to 2019.
- Italy's Giorgia Meloni, for securing her role as kingmaker in the elections.
The losers:
- The Greens in Austria and Germany, for performing a lot worse than expected.
- The liberal Renew group across the different member states, it lost 20 seats compared to 2019.
- The Social-Democrats in Germany: Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party finished on a shared second place with the far-right AfD, behind the EPP.
First estimate
A first estimate of election results produced by the European Parliament suggests the Green and liberal Renew parties each losing around 20 MEPs, potentially endangering the pro-European majority needed to back top officials and support EU laws.
A projection released just after midnight, produced after all polls closed, shows the Green party taking just 53 MEPs, compared to 72 in March 2024.
Renew, spearheaded by Macron, fell from 102 seats to 83, the figures suggest, leading the President to take the surprising move of dissolving the country's National Assembly.
That collapse is accompanied by rising support for the extreme parties, even if some of those have not yet been allocated to political groups.
In France, projections suggest the far-right National Rally (RN) party, has secured a whopping 31.5% of the votes — more than twice the number gained by Macron, who released a message on Twitter.
"France needs a clear majority to operate in calm and and concord," Macron said. "I've understood your message, your preoccupations, and I won't leave them without a response."
The far-right FPÖ is also predicted to top the poll in Austria, doubling its number of MEPs to six after gaining 25.7% of votes, the European Parliament projection said.
In Germany, the Christian-Democrat CDU and CSU party is projected to get just over 30% of the vote, similar to its 29% from 2019. In the latest forecast, far-right Alternative for Germany comes third with 14.2%, up from 11% in 2019, and just behind the Social Democrats of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Exit polls suggest Meloni's Brothers of Italy, which belongs to the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists grouping, has performed much better than the centre-left Democratic Party opposition, whose support is estimated at 23.7%.
Forza Italia and Lega, two other parties in Meloni's governing coalition, don't appear to have fared so well, with 10.5 and 8% respectively.
Those rightward trends are confirmed in Spain, where Vox is expected to increase its representation by two to three MEPs, while newcomers "The Party Is Over", also identified as far-right populist, will gain their first ever two or three MEPs, exit polls suggest.
After four days of voting, the projections for the new legislative chamber are still not final.
Netherlands already confirmed swing to the right
In countries such as the Netherlands, voting took place on Thursday — and the latest projections suggests Geert Wilders' right-wing PVV party will scoop six seats.
That swing was not as extreme as some had expected, enabling the GreenLeft-Labour alliance, which is forecast by the exit poll to take eight Dutch seats in the European Parliament, to claim victory.
The elections, the world's largest multi-state democratic exercise, determine which 720 Members of the European Parliament get to deliberate on EU legislation over the next five years.
It takes place after a turbulent period dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic and full-scale invasion of Ukraine — not to mention a soaring cost of living that came to dominate voter concerns.
Tasks ahead
Among MEPs' first tasks will be to approve the candidate to lead the European Commission, with incumbent president Ursula von der Leyen hoping to secure a second term.
No single party has a majority in the European Parliament, and votes are often decided issue-by-issue by finding a coalition that commands the required majority.
The chamber has always been dominated by its two large groups, the centre-right European People's Party and centre-left Socialists.
The two lost their combined majority in the 2019 elections, since when they've had to form informal alliances with parties such as the Greens and Liberals — and projections suggest they're unlikely to regain it in 2024.
MEPs will also get to amend or oppose new legislative proposals — leaving the fate of the EU Green Deal, an ambitious set of laws to cut carbon emissions, in the balance.
Each country is allocated a set number of MEPs in line with population, ranging from 96 for Germany, to just six each in Cyprus, Malta and Luxembourg.
For the first time since direct elections began in 1979, the count won't include the UK — whose 73 MEPs left after Brexit day in February 2020.
