BRUSSELS — Across Europe, anti-EU populists and proponents of closer unity made a final push for support Sunday as 21 nations went to the…
BRUSSELS — Across Europe, anti-EU populists and proponents of closer unity made a final push for support Sunday as 21 nations went to the polls in a continent-wide battle for influence at the European Parliament.
Right-wing nationalists who want to slash immigration into Europe and return power to national governments are expected to make gains, though mainstream parties are tipped to hold onto power in the 751-seat legislature that sits in both Brussels and Strasbourg.
The election began on Thursday, but most of the EU’s 28 member states, including the biggest of all, Germany and France, are voting on Sunday, and the results are expected overnight. Some 426 million people are eligible to vote.
“I don’t want to see a right-populist Europe (that) wants to destroy the idea of togetherness,” said Manfred Weber, the lead candidate of the Christian Democrat center-right EPP group, currently the biggest in the legislature.
Leading the challenge to the established order is Italy’s hard-line interior minister, Matteo Salvini, head of the League party, who is assembling a group of like-minded parties from across Europe.
“We need to do everything that is right to free this country, this continent, from the illegal occupation organized by Brussels,” Salvini told a rally in Milan last weekend that was attended by the leaders of 11 nationalist parties.
