Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
LAST UPDATE | 9 Jun 2024
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
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Europe needs change , the current policy isn’t working, politicians sit in their’s expensive houses, in expensive neighbourhoods… ordinary citizens have to deal with havoc of open borders
@michal heba: Havoc? Grow up.
@michal heba: you’re anti-immigrants gained zero support. While “open border” parties dominated. Your lot lost.
@9QRixo8H: Not in Austria, apparently! Sooner or later, Ireland will wake up to the consequences of unfettered illegal migration.
@frank dowling:
There was a fella from Austria a while back who was fairly far right. The early1940′s were a diificult time for Europe due to his beliefs. I wouldn’t look to Austria for guidance in this matter. It didn’t end well the last time.
@Paul O Connor: sure your man from Austria wasn’t far right, he was just a concerned citizen!
@9QRixo8H: a semiliterate comment if I ever saw one and an example of the level of intellect that supports open borders.
Here, I hope this helps youse
’Your’ is a possessive adjective that is used to describe something as belonging to ‘you’. ’You’re’ is a contraction of ‘you are’. Almost always followed by a gerund or a noun.
@Thomas Sheridan: guess who else supported ‘open border’ parties? The ENTIRE nation.
@frank dowling: Absolutely
@Paul O Connor: There was another guy from Georgia knocking around at the time, from the opposite end of the political scale, and he was great fun at a party!
@9QRixo8H: in local elections, tf are they supposed to do when it come to border issues
@frank dowling: Agree. When the situation gets out of control like the rest of Europe then we’ll wake up.
Too much left wing wokeism around in this country at the moment without looking at the real problems this will bring in the near future
@michal heba: that’s what the far right do, if anyone voting far right thinks it will sort their problems, they are in for a rude awakening
@Damien O’Sullivan: Look up what being woke means. If you’re perceived meaning is the opposite of woke then you’re the problem.
@michal heba: Don’t notice any havoc.
A slow rise on right leaning politics across Europe in general. This will trigger many commentators here but it’s evident that Europeans are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the ability of their existing political party’s to deal with the huge problem that is mass immigration. Ireland isn’t alone here, the problems we see in every town, village and city in Ireland….are evident in most other country’s across Europe. We need a zero tolerance, hard-line policy on immigration. No the half baked process we currently have in place. Deportation needs to swift and final.
@Mick Joe: Or neoliberal policies and the rich becoming richer at the expense of everyone else is squeezing the majority and some are taking the convenient bait of blaming vulnerable migrants rather than understanding the actual reason.
The mass migration sentiment receive zero mandate from the entire nation. Not a seat did the anti-immigrant parties get. Migration is an issue to *you*, not the people. “Open border” FFG won.
@Rochelle Hart: You’re conflating
@9QRixo8H: SF vote went down from 25% in the 2020 GE and 35% support last October to a mere 12% this week. What could have caused this collapse. Surely not their brave open borders rhetoric?
@Thomas Sheridan: Except it is not SF that have been responsible for any immigration Ireland has.
It has been FFG, with The Greens and Labour before that.
By all accounts, those FFG parties have done rather well in these elections, although the full results are not yet known.
I’ve been a frequent traveler to Germany and have seen how the landscape has changed massively in the last 10 years – public pools have almost become no go for young women and signs have been put up in Arabic that it’s not ok to harass women. Very weird to see groups of bearded men standing on corners in small eastern German towns. On the other hand, food options have improved and Germans are speaking more English than before
I’d say the article below where FG migrants were elected has you foaming with hate.
@9QRixo8H: Not really – the key is contribution and integration – any migrants that contribute and integrate always add to the economy and a nation. It’s the silos and ghettos and the ‘us vs them’ crowd that causes trouble. Most successful countries have healthy immigrant communities ( Healthcare professionals in Ireland from Philippines/India, Tech Professionals in Silicon valley from around the world, Manufacturing workers in the UK from Eastern Europe etc). The problem arises with a small subset of migrants who never want to venture out of their tribe for religious or other reasons ( like moving to a country to purely leech)
@9QRixo8H: and so it should bent elections
Anyone less than a standard deviation left of center is far right. It gets monotonous.
@Oh Mammy: FFG are right wing.
Those to the right of FFG are tending to the far right, depending on just how nasty they are.
Honest question – why is right always ‘far right ‘ but left is just left and not ‘far left ‘?
There’s loonie bins in the far right who want want everyone deported but there’s also same loonies in far left who want everyone welcomed in because john Lennon sang about it
@Kush OMeara: not true. PBP are far left. FF and FG are centre right. Niall Boylan is right wing, SF are “whatever you’re havin’ yourself” and Derek Blighe is far right.
Far right is a relative term. With popularity in the UK, Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria it begs the question as to whether they are truly far right or are some left leaning people unable to process alternative positions.
@Lewis Armstrong: in “The Road to Wigan Pier” Orwell explains why disillusioned left wingers were turning to fascism. Writing in 1937, he blamed the intellectual “crank leftists” for alienating the ordinary people and driving to the right. Fast forward to today and we have a name for those cranks – “Wokes” and they’re making the same mistake.
Those who don’t learn the mistakes of history..etc
@Lewis Armstrong: possibly slightly to the left, but leaning on the shoulder of the “traditional” right. Not much more than that. Although they’ll have to if they want to gain more seats and govern.
They’re very good at marketing themselves, and at highlighting the (perceived in places, real in others) islamisation of society. This goes down well with the electorate in general. Even left thinking friends of mine are veering to the far right when Daesh’s “lone wolf” attacks are amplified.
@Fran Ken: Why can’t you allow people to just get on with their lives?
Are you really such a snowflake that how someone chooses to live drives you nuts?
Calling someone who is bothered by how others choose to live their lives ‘woke’ simple shows us a great deal about you.
(And you probably call yourself a Christian too.)
@Lewis Armstrong: That’s about right, by the any historic standards neo liberal FFG are far right. The censorship of opposition speech tagged as misinformation and hate speech and closing of comments that oppose their narrative is typical of1930’s style far right parties,
How depressing. The EU is following the US down the right wing toilet.
@Sandra Duffy: been forced
The liberal elite in Europe hasn’t listened to the people for decades it’s no wonder people are turning in desperation to the far right. The old boys network that’s ruled western countries ( f.f f.g) are getting a bloody nose and quite frankly they deserve it.
Sure Hitler is from Austria, something in the water over there
@Sean Money: Austria has long been a reservoir of the far-right.
The death camps were a result of academic politics, so somehow, wider society manages to ignore the role the academic community plays in maintaining prejudice by trying to hide natural selection behind eugenics or social darwinism.
Yesterday, A commenter said I should take my views to one of the prominent Universities in Ireland; however, I was always content to remain with commenters here even if they find it difficult to stomach what natural selection actually looks like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy_xWKJubuY&t=3s
So there is no far right and far left, just cowardice, silence and watching comments erased.
@Gerald Kelleher: I hope that all the journal Hamas supporters will take the time to watch the linked video and realise that the Hamas forefathers were only too willing to collaborate with the Nazi regimes.
@Thomas Sheridan:
The Nazi regime was neo-darwinist.
https://www.azquotes.com/author/12265-Cecil_Rhodes
The worst part of it is that the Victorians derived their ideology from the neighbouring islands of Britain and Ireland and that nobody will face and I mean nobody.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Descent_of_Man_(Darwin)/Chapter_V
With SS levels of compliance to Vuctorian natural selection, how could the world be any other way?
@Thomas Sheridan: stupid comment
@Thomas Sheridan: The Palestinians are simply trying to defend themselves from the israeli colonist.
As we would do if what the isreali have done to the Palestinian were done to us.
As any would do.
Immigration .. immigration and politicians and profiting from immigration
Great news
have your say