LAST UPDATE | 9 Jun

WHILE THE OFFICIAL results of the EU elections won’t be published until all 27 member states have voted, with the Italians being the last to do so, we do have some exit polling data coming in from EU countries already this evening, and even a couple of actual results.

Projections of the EU Parliament’s makeup have indicated that Ursula von der Leyen’s European People’s Party is set to retain its position as the largest party while the Socialists and Democrats alliance is predicted to be the second largest grouping. Green parties meanwhile look set for significant losses across the EU.

A noticeable theme across the bloc has been the poor performances of government parties. 

Far-right parties are performing well in Germany, Austria, Italy and France, as had been expected. 

There are two countries where results are in: Spain and Slovakia, where the government parties have suffered defeat. 

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico suffered a surprise loss in the EU elections to the opposition liberals, weeks after he was gravely wounded in an assassination attempt.

Fico’s left-wing nationalist Smer-SD party expressed “congratulations to the winner of the election, Progressive Slovakia” and its new European parliament members, on its Facebook page.

Progressive Slovakia (PS) won 27.81% of the votes the EU election, meaning six seats in the European Parliament, according to results widely reported in Slovak media ahead of their official publication.

Smer-SD won 24.76%, yielding it five seats in the 720-member EU assembly. Far-right party Republika came third with 12.53% and two seats, the results showed.

Spain’s right-wing Popular Party has won, just beating Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists, official results showed.

With 99% of ballots counted, the opposition PP won with 22 seats ahead of the Socialists with 20 seats, while the far-right Vox came in third with six seats.

In Germany, where turnout was the highest since 1979 at 64%, exit polls point to a stinging defeat for Chancellor Olaf Scholz, with all three parties in his troubled coalition behind the conservatives and the far right.

The conservative CDU-CSU party has come out on top with 29.5%.On 14%, Scholz’s Social Democrats trail the Alternative for Germany (AfD) at between 16 and 16.5%.

In Austria meanwhile, the far-right Freedom Party is leading the vote count according to exit polls. If the exit polling figures bear out, it will be the first time the group has topped a nationwide ballot. 

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party came top in European elections, several exit polls have indicated – although with a wide margin of error.

The party was predicted to have anywhere between 25% and 31% of the vote, followed by the centre-left Democratic party in second place, and then the Five Star Movement.

Projected results from France put far-right Le Pen’s party around 33%, with 31 seats in the incoming European Parliament – more than double the score of President Emmanuel Macron’s liberals, who are expected to get 15%.

The Dutch were the first to vote in the EU elections on Thursday and the GreenLeft-Labour alliance is projected to win eight of the country’s 31 seats while the far-right Freedom and Democracy Party is set to take seven. 

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party lost ground in the EU elections, partial results showed, in what could be its worst-ever score in its 14-year rule.

With more than half of the votes counted, Fidesz stood at more than 43%, against the 52% it won in 2019.

The EU is also making projections based on opinion polls, past results and exit polls, which you can dig through here if you’re so inclined. 

In Croatia, an EU projection indicates the conservative Croatian Democratic Union has come out on top with 34% while the centre left Koalicija ‘SDP’ is in second place on 28%. 

In Cyprus, the Christian democratic, liberal conservative Democratic Rally and the communist Progressive Party of Working People are separated by less than 1 percentage point. 

Democratic Rally is on 24.4% while the Progressives are on 23.7%, according to an EU projection. Independents are in third place on 14.8%. 

 More to follow…

Includes reporting from AFP