Europe swings to the right — led by France

“The president of the Republic cannot remain deaf to the message sent this evening by the people of France,” National Rally’s President Jordan Bardella told his supporters at the Parc Floral in Paris.

In Germany, the center-right is cruising to a comfortable victory, with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) coming second and beating Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Socialists into third place.

Voters across 27 nations have voted over the past week to select 720 members of the European Parliament, who will serve over the next five years. Their first main role with be to approve or reject the main candidate for Europe’s top job: president of the European Commission.

In a Continent that has sought to exorcise the ghosts of fascism for eight decades, the scale of the presence of far-right will be one of the hottest topics of conversation.

Even though they are highly unlikely to be able to coordinate as a unified group inside the European Parliament — thanks to divisions on topics such as Russia — they will still be able to influence the overall direction of the EU, on everything from immigration to climate policies.   

Collected together, the radical right parties would theoretically represent the second biggest bloc in the Parliament — being on track to come first in France and Italy, and second in Germany, the three biggest and most important countries in the 27-nation bloc. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing party secured the most support, projected to be about 28 percent.

The far-right is also expected to win in Hungary, and picked up five more seats in the Netherlands. The center-right was comfortably first in Greece and Bulgaria.

The single most ominous warning signal for the future of the EU is France, given the scale of the far right’s win over Macron. All eyes will now be on whether France’s populist wave can maintain its momentum through the impending parliamentary elections and on to presidential elections in 2027 — where a victory for far-right leader Marine Le Pen would threaten to throw the whole EU into turmoil.

The official winner of the evening looks set to be European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen whose center-right European People’s Party will still make up the single-biggest bloc in Parliament. 

With early projections showing the EPP will secure about 181 out of the 720 seats in Parliament, the center right will be the dominant force but can hardly govern alone as it will be miles from an absolute majority in the chamber.

The main challenge for von der Leyen in the coming days and weeks will be whether she can strike a deal with the traditional centrist parties — the socialists and liberals — to build a majority of 361 or more in the Parliament.

“Today is a good day for [the] EPP. We won the European elections, my friends. We are the strongest party, we are the anchor of stability … Together with others we will build a bastion against the extremes from the left and from the right. We will stop them!”

Her supporters replied with chants of “Five more years.”

In all, the three big center groups look set to have just over 400 seats. That means von der Leyen’s reapproval will go down to the wire, because she will be rejected if only about 10 percent of lawmakers from the main parties rebel against their party lines. The rebellion rate is normally higher.

This raises a big question of whether she will need to fish around for other allies, ranging from the Greens to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy.

Von der Leyen’s center-right is quick to reject the xenophobia and euroskepticism of the far right, but it knows its voters share the same concerns on the cost of living, migration and a sense that Europe’s traditional core businesses — manufacturing and farming — are being strangled by green regulation.

Staking out its ground in the culture war over the EU’s identity, the EPP opened its EU election manifesto with its commitment to Europe’s “Judeo-Christian roots.”