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European Parliament - Election 09 June 2024 - Browning of Europe

The 2024 European elections took place from June 6 to 9 across the European Union's 27 member states. From Spain to Sweden, through Germany and Hungary, around 400 million voters will head to the polls to elect 720 Members of the European Parliament, including 81 MEPS from France.

The European Parliament is made up of 705 Members elected in the 27 Member States of the enlarged European Union. Since 1979 MEPs have been elected by direct universal suffrage for a five-year period. Each country decides on the form its election will take, but must guarantee equality of the sexes and a secret ballot. EU elections are by proportional representation. Voting age is set at 16 in Austria, Belgium, Germany and Malta, 17 in Greece, and 18 in the remaining Member States. Seats are allocated on the basis of population of each Member State. More than a third of MEPs are women. MEPs are grouped by political affinity, not nationality. MEPs divide their time between their constituencies, Strasbourg - where 12 plenary sittings a year are held - and Brussels, where they attend additional plenary sittings, as well as committee and political group meetings. The terms and conditions for Members are laid out in the Statute of 2009. Former Members are banned from lobbying Parliament for the first six months after the end of their mandate. If they do carry out lobbying activities after the six months, they must register on the Transparency Register. Former Members are permitted to enter Parliament buildings in that capacity, but may not use that access to carry out lobbying activities.

The EU parliament on 10 April 2024 adopted a contentious reform of Europe's asylum policies that will harden border procedures and force all the bloc's 27 nations to share responsibility. The parliament's main political groups overcame opposition from far-right and far-left parties to pass the new migration and asylum pact - a sweeping reform nearly a decade in the making. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the new rules a "historic, indispensable step" for the European Union. The migration minister for Greece, one of the countries worst affected by arrivals of growing numbers of undocumented migrants, echoed this comment. "This is a major breakthrough and a very important step towards a common, and therefore more effective, management of the migration challenges of our time," Migration Minister Dimitris Kairidis wrote on X, formerly Twitter. EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said the adoption of this reform was a "huge achievement for Europe". "Today is indeed a historic day," the European Commission president told a news conference after the European Parliament adopted the reform.

For the far-left, the reforms - which include building border centres to hold asylum-seekers and sending some to outside "safe" countries - were incompatible with Europe's commitment to upholding human rights. It was "a pact with the devil," said Damien Careme, a lawmaker from the Greens group. Far-right lawmakers complained the overhaul did not go far enough to block access to irregular migrants, whom they accuse of spreading insecurity and threatening to "submerge" European identity. "We won't allow ourselves to be replaced or submerged," Jordan Bardella, a lawmaker heading France's far-right National Rally party whose figurehead is Marine Le Pen, said in the pre-vote debate.

The new border centres would hold irregular migrants while their asylum requests are vetted, and speed up deportations of those deemed inadmissable. It would also require EU countries to take in thousands of asylum-seekers from "frontline" states such as Italy and Greece. Alternatively, they could provide money or other resources to the under-pressure nations. The German chancellor, commenting on X, the former Twitter, said the accord stands for "solidarity among European states" and would "finally relieve the burden on those countries that are particularly hard hit". A controversial measure is the sending of asylum-seekers to countries outside the EU that are deemed "safe", if the migrant has sufficient ties to that country.

Voters under 30 account for a sixth of Europe's electorate. That's an important group for political parties to win over during this EU election season. Young people are less likely to take part in European elections than older generations, which makes them a prize for parties that know how to clinch their votes. But those aged 18 to 30 aren't just a demographic. Their choices are a bellwether of what the priorities of Europeans will look like in the future, for instance on climate change and energy independence.

With just a few weeks to go before EU elections, the far right in France is on track for a comfortable win, if the polls are correct. The National Rally only just beat France's ruling party, Renaissance, in the last EU elections in 2019. This time, a wide gap has opened between the two, potentially striking a serious political blow to President Emmanuel Macron and his idea of a more powerful Europe. The National Rally has struck a chord with its campaign about purchasing power, standards of living and crime in French cities.

Austria's far-right Freedom Party has been leading the opinion polls for over a year, hovering near 30 percent ahead of June elections for the European Parliament. It's a rise of some 10 points from the party's showing in the 2019 European elections, fuelling the hopes of its leader, Herbert Kickl, for a victory in Austrian legislative elections in September. "Stop the EU madness," reads a slogan on a far-right Freedom Party (FPO) poster for the European elections, featuring European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky embracing - and flanked by a ruinous backdrop featuring a tank, helicopters, a syringe, wind turbines and a migrant boat. Now polling near 30 percent, the FPO is poised to win the most votes when Austrians cast their ballots to choose their representatives for the European Parliament on June 9.

The FPO's rhetoric - populist, Russophile, Eurosceptic and anti-vaccine - is favourably received by a significant share of the country's electorate. If it continues to make headway in the run-up to the country's September parliamentary elections, the far right could emerge as the ruling party in Austria next autumn.

Francois-Xavier Bellamy, the top candidate for the conservative Les Républicains party in the upcoming European elections, revealed 07 May 2024 that he had been targeted by an attempted cyberattack launched by a group believed to be linked to the Chinese government. Coming soon after Socialist Party candidate Raphaël Glucksmann's announcement that he was targeted by what seemed to be a mass disinformation campaign on social media, Bellamy's declaration is a stark reminder of the threat of foreign interference that continues to plague parties competing in the June elections. All seven are members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a group created in 2020 to coordinate action on different China-related issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the repression of the Uighur minority in Xinjiang and the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests. But the attack was only discovered at the end of March 2024, after the US Department of Justice published an indictment charging seven Chinese nationals with being part of a "prolific global hacking operation".

With just a few weeks to go before EU elections, the far right in France is on track for a comfortable win, if the polls are correct. The National Rally only just beat France's ruling party, Renaissance, in the last EU elections in 2019. This time, a wide gap has opened between the two, potentially striking a serious political blow to President Emmanuel Macron and his idea of a more powerful Europe. The National Rally has struck a chord with its campaign about purchasing power, standards of living and crime in French cities.

Just under 50 percent of French people are interested in the European parliamentary elections, with 48 percent declaring no interest in the June vote, according to a Viavoice survey published 06 May 2024. Moreover, a large proportion of respondents still fundamentally misunderstand the aims of the upcoming vote - and the nature of the European Parliament itself. Nearly half (46 percent) of French people surveyed think that the upcoming elections allow voters to elect the members of the European Commission - which is not the case - and just 40 percent correctly responded "false" to a question asking if the voting will take place over two rounds.

The French people's lack of information is also rather stark when it comes to the candidates themselves. Just 39 percent were able to confidently name the top candidate of the far-right National Rally party (Jordan Bardella). That number fell to 22 percent for the centre-right Renaissance party's top candidate (Valérie Hayer), 21 percent for the top candidate of the social democratic Socialist Party (Raphaël Glucksmann) and far-right Reconquest (Marion MarÃchal).

The top candidate of the left-wing French Unbowed party (Manon Aubry) could be named by 19 percent of respondents, with another 18 percent being able to confidently name the top candidate of the right-wing Republicans (Francois-Xavier Bellamy), 14 percent for the Green Party's top candidate (Marie Toussaint) and just ten percent for the top candidate of the Communist Party (Léon Deffontaines).

What's more, 82 percent of respondents were incapable of naming at least one French member of the European Parliament. And of the 18 percent who said they could, 10 percent named Marine Le Pen and six percent simply responded "Le Pen" without giving further details. Neither National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, his daughter Marine Le Pen nor his niece Marion Maréchal are currently seated in the European Parliament. The leading figures in Europe's lofty institutions didn't fare much better. Just 45 percent of French people said they were very well or fairly well acquainted with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, a figure that dropped to eight percent when it came to European Parliament president Roberta Metsola.

Far-right parties made major gains at the European Union parliamentary elections, dealing stunning defeats to 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 EU election, according to projections from public broadcaster ARD, underscoring the party's resilience ahead of next year's federal election. The Eurosceptic party was set to secure a record 16.5 percent of the vote, according to an exit poll published by ARD. That was 5.5 percentage points more than in the last European Union election in 2019, and more than all three parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition.

The conservatives, who are in opposition at the federal level, were forecast to come first, rising slightly to 29.5 percent. Germany's Greens were the biggest losers, falling 8.5 percentage points to 12 percent, punished by voters for the cost of policies to reduce CO2 emissions - in line with expectations for environmental parties across Europe. Scholz's Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the third coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), also fared poorly, expected to win 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 rightwards for the European Parliament across the bloc of 450 million citizens. The strong showing came as Germany's party landscape undergoes its biggest upheaval in decades, with new populist parties vying to take space vacated by the shrinking mainstream parties that have dominated since reunification in 1990. This looks set to make it much harder for established parties to form workable coalitions, and is coarsening the political climate, say analysts. The campaign was overshadowed by a surge in violence against politicians and activists.

The AfD was plagued by scandals in recent months, with its lead candidate having to step back from campaigning in May after declaring that the SS, the Nazis' main paramilitary force, were "not all criminals". "We've done well because people have become more anti-European," the AfD's co-leader Alice Weidel said. "People are annoyed by so much bureaucracy from Brussels," she added, giving a plan ultimately to ban CO2-emitting cars as an example.

In France, the National Rally party of Marine Le Pen dominated the polls to such an extent that Macron immediately dissolved the national parliament and called for new elections, a massive political risk since his party could suffer more losses, hobbling the rest of his presidential term that ends in 2027. Projected results from France put Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally around 33 percent, with 31 seats in the incoming European Parliament - more than double the score of President Emmanuel Macron's liberals, at 15 percent. Macron acknowledged the thud of defeat. "I've heard your message, your concerns, and I won't leave them unanswered," he said, adding that calling a snap election only underscored his democratic credentials.

Overall across the EU, two mainstream and pro-European groups, the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, remained the dominant forces. The gains of the far right came at the expense of the Greens, who were expected to lose about 20 seats and fall back to sixth position in the legislature. Reporting from Berlin, Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen said that the Eurosceptic parties appeared set to form a large bloc in the next European Parliament. "With this very large bloc of far-right parties, there can be an influence on climate policies, for example … Also, [the EU's] agriculture policies … and migration policies, which is a very important issue here in Germany and in the Netherlands," she said.

However, Vaessen noted that the far-right parties are not united. "They have a lot of divisions among themselves, and they have been trying to reach out to each other. We've seen [France's] Marine Le Pen, for example, reaching out to [Prime Minister] Giorgia Meloni in Italy," she said. "But after tonight, we will have to see how these groups will be formed and what kind of influence they will have."

The center-right grouping of European political parties, the European People's Party (EPP), is to remain the largest party in the European Parliament, according to projections released by Brussels following a 4-day EU-wide election. The EPP could secure 181 seats in the 720-seat parliament, while the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) in second place could pick up 135 seats. The result, if confirmed, will boost Ursula von der Leyen's chance of securing a second term as president of the European Commission, the bloc's executive arm.

Renew Europe, the liberal, pro-European group is projected to win 82 seats and the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) could receive 71 seats. The right-wing populist and euroskeptic Identity and Democracy Party (ID) is on course for around 62 seats, followed by 53 for the environmentally friendly Greens. The Left grouping is projected to win 34 seats, and non-attached parties, which includes the far-right Alternative for Germany, could pick up 51 seats. The remaining 51 seats are forecast to go to independents and newly elected parties.

The June 6-9 European Parliament elections have been held under severe elections, and the EU institution will keep "ideological basis" to continue its Russophobia-based policy after the results of the vote, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on 10 June 2024. "We have to say that the European elections took place under conditions of severe restrictions, lack of fair competition, cleansing of the information field from alternative sources of information and rampant anti-Russian campaign," Zakharova said in a statement, published by the ministry. Political forces that advocated against confrontation with Russia have faced discrimination, and even direct pressure, the spokeswoman added.

"The results of the European Parliament elections have generally preserved the ‘ideological base’ for further support of the current Russophobia-based, self-destructive political course of the EU," Zakharova said. The European Parliament’s confrontational stance towards Russia "has degraded to an unprecedented level of hostility" in the past few years, according to the spokeswoman.