Voters across Europe yeterday cast their ballots on the final — and biggest — day of elections for the European Parliament, with far-right parties expected to make gains at a pivotal time for the bloc.
Polling stations opened in 21 member countries, including heavy hitters France and Germany, for the vote that helps shape the EU’s direction over the next five years.
“These elections are crucial because the European Parliament must start to play its rightful role,” voter Kostas Karagiannis said as he emerged from a polling station in Athens.
Photo: AP
The elections come as the continent is confronted with Russia’s war in Ukraine, global trade and industrial tensions marked by US-China rivalry, and a climate emergency.
More than 360 million people were eligible to vote across the EU’s 27 nations in the elections that started on Thursday — although only a fraction are expected to cast their ballots.
The outcome would determine the makeup of the EU’s next parliament that helps decide who runs the powerful European Commission, with commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a German conservative, vying for a second term in charge.
While centrist mainstream parties are predicted to hold most of the incoming European Parliament’s 720 seats, polls have found they might be weakened by a stronger far right pushing the bloc toward ultraconservatism.
Official resultswould be begin to be published after the last polling stations close in Italy at 11pm, but a clear picture of what the new assembly might look like would only emerge today.
Many European voters, hammered by a high cost of living and fearing immigrants to be the source of social ills, are increasingly persuaded by populist messaging.
Hungarian voter Ferenc Hamori, 54, said he wanted to see the EU led more by politicians like right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — even though he said he expected him to remain “outnumbered in Brussels.”
In countries close to Russia, the specter of the threat from Moscow was a major motivation.
“I would like to see greater security,” doctor Andrzej Zmiejewski, 51, said after voting in Poland’s capital Warsaw.
France was set to be the EU’s high-profile battleground for the competing ideologies.
With voting intentions above 30 percent, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) is predicted to handily beat President Emmanuel Macron’s liberal Renaissance party, polling at 14 to 16 percent.
In the French city of Lyon, 83-year-old Albert Coulaudon said Macron was getting “mixed up” in too many international issues, such as the war in Ukraine.
“That scares me,” he said.
Le Pen, who has striven to shed the RN of its past reputation for anti-Semitism and xenophobia, has made overtures to far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni with an eye to teaming up.
However, Meloni, while fiercely opposed to undocumented asylum-seekers entering Europe, has cultivated a pro-EU position and publicly given little heed to Le Pen’s offer.
Unlike Le Pen, Meloni aligns with the overall EU consensus on maintaining military and financial assistance to Ukraine and encourages its ambition to one day join the bloc.
However, there has been some backlash against the surge in populism, and in Hungary, Orban faced a challenge from former government insider Peter Magyar.
“I think the public sentiment has changed; people who have been burying their heads in the sand are now standing up and coming forward,” voter Dorottya Wolf said in Budapest.
Polling data compiled by Politico suggest the center-right European People’s Party would win 173 seats in the legislature, with the center-left Socialists and Democrats on 143 and the centrist Renew Europe on 75.
The main far-right grouping, the European Conservatives and Reformists, in which Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party sits, was projected to win 76 seats. The smaller Identity and Democracy grouping that includes Le Pen’s RN was predicted to get 67.
Additional reporting by AP
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