18 June 2024

UKansdEU's Hobolt: The 2024 European Parliament elections

Sara Hobolt analyses the results of the European Parliament elections, highlighting that although populist radical right parties performed well, the real winners were the centre-right European People’s Party. She explores the implications for EU policymaking and subsequent national elections.

Around half of the 357 million eligible voters across the EU’s 27 member states voted to select the 720 members of the European Parliament in elections on 6-9 June 2024. As predicted, there was clear shift to the right. The most striking result was perhaps Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally topping the polls in France. With 31% of the vote, the National Rally gained more than double the votes of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party and prompted him to call snap legislative elections in France.

Elsewhere, the populist radical right also had successful elections with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy taking the largest share of the national vote in Italy (29%), and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) had their best election to date, coming second in Germany with 16% of the vote.

But looking across Europe, who are the winners and losers? What drives voters in European Parliament elections? In what ways do these elections matter for policy making in the EU?  And what are the ripple effects across member states?

Who are the winners and losers?

While most of the media’s attention has focused on the successes of the far right, in many ways it was the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) who emerged as the election’s real winner. Not only has the EPP remained the largest party group in the European Parliament with an increased seat share, the overall shift to the right also means they are the true king makers.

The other election winners are the Eurosceptic conservative European Conservatives and Reformist (ECR) group – where Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and the Polish Law and Justice (PiS) form the largest national parties – as well as the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group, dominated by the victorious French National Rally, the Austrian Freedom Party and the Matteo Salvini’s Italian League. Until very recently, the German AfD also belonged to the ID group, but they were expelled for being too extreme when their lead candidate told Italian newspapers that the Nazi SS were “not all criminals”.

The losers are all on the centre-left, especially the liberal Renew Group, where Macron’s party sits, and the Greens that had a bad election in both France and Germany. The centre-left Socialist & Democrats (S&D) remained relatively stable.

The incoming European Parliament is therefore more fragmented and polarised. It is not uncommon for parties in opposition, and those on the fringes, to perform better in European elections than they do nationally – not least as many voters treat them as ‘mid-term elections’ where they can express their dissatisfaction with the incumbent. Yet, Europe-wide issues such as immigration, climate change action, energy prices, economic woes and military assistance to Ukraine also played a role in the campaigns.

 

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