France's nationalists triumphant in EU vote - exit polls
25 May 2014, 22:26 -- France's far-right National Front was projected on Sunday to win European Parliament elections in France with around 25 percent of the vote, with President Francois Hollande's Socialists in third place behind the center-right UMP, three exit polls showed.
If the National Front score is confirmed, it will be the first time that the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party has won a national election, according to Reuters. The UMP was projected to score around 21 percent while the ruling Socialists were seen scoring just 14 percent, down from the 16.5 percent they won last time in 2009.
Survey group Ifop said the abstention rate was 59 percent, lower than many pollsters had expected.
Merkel's center-right set to be big winner in EU elections - exit polls
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives were on course for major victory in European Parliament elections on Sunday, despite gains for the centre-left Social Democrats and the rise of a new anti-euro party, exit polls showed.
Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party the CSU - who won a landslide victory at the national level last September - between them scored 36 percent, down from 37.9 percent in the 2009 European parliament vote, the polls showed, according to AFP.
Their new governing partners in a 'grand coalition,' the Social Democrats (SPD), scored 27.5 percent, a strong gain from the last EU vote in 2009 when they won 20.8 percent, public broadcasters ARD and ZDF estimated.
Since teaming up with Merkel, the party has pushed social reforms including a national minimum wage in Germany. It also boasted among its ranks the European candidate for European Commission president, Martin Schulz.
The election saw a new anti-euro party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), make its entry into the European Parliament with 6.5 percent of the vote, exit polls said.
The AfD celebrated the result as a popular endorsement of its demands, including Germany's return to the Deutschmark and the orderly dissolution of the euro common currency system.
'The AfD in this election blossomed into a new people's party in Germany, as a liberal party, as a social party, and as a value-oriented party,' said party leader Bernd Lucke, an economics professor.
Germany, the most populous country in the EU, sends 96 legislators to the European Parliament.
21 countries vote in European parliamentary elections on Sunday
Twenty one European Union member states voting in European Parliament elections on May 25 2014. Voters in Greece, Romania and Lithuania got the final leg of the European Union's massive four-day parliamentary elections under way, with 18 other member states set to follow suit later Sunday.
The countries voting on May 25 are Austria, Belgium (which also has federal and regional elections), Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece (which also has local elections), Hungary, Italy, Lithuania (which also has the second round of its presidential elections), Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia (also has presidential elections), Spain and Sweden.
In Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg and Cyprus, voting is compulsory.
Together, these 21 EU countries will be electing 593 out of the 751 members of the next European Parliament.
The other seven EU countries voted on May 22, 23 and 24.
No results will be announced until all polling is finished at 9:00 pm GMT.
If opinion polls prove correct, the eurosceptic parties could treble their presence to around 100 seats in the new 751-seat EU assembly.
In Denmark, France and Italy, anti-EU parties are poised to take first or second place Sunday, shaking up national politics and preparing to battle Brussels from the inside.
In Britain, the eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) led by Nigel Farage - a party without a single seat in the national parliament - surged Thursday in local council polls held in parallel with the EU vote, rocking the establishment.
Turnout too is likely to reflect growing popular exasperation with the EU, dropping even further from the record low of 43 percent in 2009.
'There is a legitimacy problem,' Carnegie Europe director Jan Techau told AFP.
'But a win for the fringe parties won't derail or change the way the parliament works,' Techau said.
'It will change a country's domestic political scene and possibly affect the way national leaders act within the EU.'
The polls suggest the mainstream parties, the centre-right conservatives and centre-left socialists, will hold about 70 percent of the seats in the next parliament.
Traditionally they have worked together much of the time and should be able to continue to do so, analysts said.
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