The European Union election results on Sunday evening, have produced a mixed set of results, with the far-right surging across Europe.
Here is how Sunday night’s biggest winners and losers reacted to the vote.
Winners
France’s far-right National Rally, under Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, were arguably the biggest winners, handing Macron a stinging defeat.
Read more
Le Pen said that the vote sent “a very clear message” that the French people no longer want “a technocratic European project that denies its history … resulting in a loss of identity and freedom.”
Bardella called it “an unprecedented rout for those in power” that would “bring together all those wishing to initiate the recovery of the nation.”
In Italy, the far-right incumbent party, Brothers of Italy, under Giorgia Meloni, also emerged stronger from Sunday’s results.
Read more
“I am proud that the majority governing this nation has been able to grow together. This is an extremely important thing for me. The message from Italians is: ‘Go ahead’ with greater determination,” Meloni said.
Ursula Von Der Leyen, the experienced EU mandarin, also came out of the election in a promising position for her second bid at the EU’s top job, as the center right EPP held its ground.
Von Der Leyen told her supporters, yesterday evening, “We had a fantastic campaign, we were determined, united, and now we won the elections. We were convincing for the voters, and now all this has paid off.”
Losers
Macron was perhaps yesterday’s biggest loser, after a crushing EU electoral defeat, he called a new legislative election, stating in a televised address “I’ve decided to hand back to you [the French electorate], the choice over our future.”
Macron called this a “heavy, serious decision”, but “above all else, an act of confidence”.
He went on to say “the rise of demagogues is a danger to our nation… for Europe and for the world”, that is “unfathomable.”
Other big losers of the election were Europe’s Green and Liberal coalitions, who lost 20 and 22 MEP’s respectively.
The Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo resigned after the defeat of the Flemish Liberals and Democrats party.
“It is a particularly difficult evening. We lost. As of tomorrow, I will resign” he announced visibly emotional, in a speech to his supporters.
Bas Eickhout, one of two lead Green candidates told The Guardian, he was not disheartened by the results, saying that although the results were “mixed”, it is too simplistic to see it as a referendum on the EU’s raft of environmental policies, that have become a point of contention with many on the far-right.
Although The Guardian reports that German Green party officials are concerned that their vote, traditionally buoyed by young voters, are increasingly drifting to Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats, also lost out, being crushed by the center-right Christian Democrats and far-right AfD, recieving a paltry 14% of the vote, in their worst election result in a century.
Although Scholz himself has not publically responded to the defeat, the General Secretary of his party called it a “very bitter election result,” with Germany’s biggest tabloid Bild calling it “a slap in the face for the Chancellor.”
Bucking the populist trend, Hungary’s increasingly authoritarian populist Victor Orban, has also received his worst ever EU election result – with a new opposition challenger, Peter Magyar, receiving 30% of the vote.
Although, Orban still technically ‘won’ the vote, receiving 44%, Magyar claimed this was “the beginning of the end” for Orban. Orban, who was also campaigning in Hungarian local elections, later retorted in a political rally in Budapest, “we won both the elections today … we have won an important victory in a difficult battle.”
