Far-right parties made big gains in the European Union’s parliamentary elections, inflicting stunning defeats on two of the bloc’s most important leaders: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron.
In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was on track to take second place in Sunday’s European elections, according to projections from public broadcaster ARD, underlining the party’s resilience ahead of the federal elections. of next year.
The eurosceptic party was expected to secure a record 16.5 percent of the vote on Sunday, according to an exit poll published by ARD.
That was 5.5 percentage points more than in the last European Union elections in 2019, and more than all three parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition.
The Conservatives, who are in opposition at federal level, are predicted to come first, rising slightly to 29.5 percent.
Germany’s Greens were the biggest losers on Sunday, falling 8.5 percentage points to 12 percent, punished by voters for the cost of policies to reduce CO2 emissions – in line with expectations from environmental parties across Europe.
Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) and third coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), also fared poorly, expecting to get 14 percent and 5 percent of the vote respectively, down from 15 .8 percent and 5.4 percent in the previous election.
The results are in line with an expected broader shift to the right in the European Parliament across the bloc of 450 million citizens.
The strong performance comes at a time when Germany’s party landscape is undergoing the biggest upheaval in decades, with new populist parties competing to fill the space vacated by the increasingly smaller mainstream parties that have dominated since reunification in 1990.
This appears to make it much more difficult for established parties to form viable coalitions and is worsening the political climate, analysts say. The campaign was overshadowed by an increase in violence against politicians and activists.
The AfD has been plagued by scandals in recent months, with its main candidate having to abandon the campaign in May after declaring that the SS, the Nazis’ main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals”.
“We performed well because people became more anti-European,” AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said on Sunday.
“People are uncomfortable with so much bureaucracy in Brussels,” she added, giving as an example a plan to ban cars that emit CO2.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party dominated the polls to such an extent that Macron immediately dissolved the national parliament and called new elections, a huge political risk, as his party could suffer further losses, damaging the rest of his party. presidential term. which ends in 2027.
Projected results in France put Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally at around 33 percent, with 31 seats in the new European Parliament – more than double the score of President Emmanuel Macron’s liberals, at 15 percent.
Macron recognized the blow of the defeat. “I heard your message, your concerns, and I will not leave them unanswered,” he said, adding that calling early elections only reinforced his democratic credentials.
Overall, across the EU, two dominant and pro-European groups, the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, continued to be the dominant forces. The far right’s gains came at the expense of the Greens, who were expected to lose around 20 seats and fall to sixth place in the legislature.
Reporting from Berlin, Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen said Eurosceptic parties appeared poised to form a large bloc in the next European Parliament.
“With this very large bloc of far-right parties, there could be an influence on climate policies, for example… Furthermore, [the EU’s] agricultural policies… and migration policies, which is a very important issue here in Germany and the Netherlands,” she said.
However, Vaessen noted that far-right parties are not united.
“They have a lot of divisions between them and have tried to get closer. We saw [France’s] Marine Le Pen, for example, contacting [Prime Minister] Giorgia Meloni in Italy,” she said.
“But after tonight, we will have to see how these groups are formed and what kind of influence they will have.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
