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the European Union held its parliamentary elections, and some startling trends are emerging as the results have come in. Various right-wing parties made gains in the EU parliament, and one left-wing politician despaired, calling it « a bitter evening » that left leftists like her « disappointed. »
In France, National Rally, the party led by polarizing figure Marine Le Pen, won roughly twice as many votes as President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance. The results so shook Macron that he called for national assembly elections set for June 30 and July 7, a move that The Spectator’s John Keiger suggests is “an attempt to scare French voters into rejecting Le Pen.”
A German coalition of center-right parties won 30% of the vote, while the far-right AfD outperformed the country’s leading Social Democrats to the tune of 16% to 14%. These results don’t bode well for the Social Democrats just over a year before national elections.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy increased its support, winning 29% of the votes. Spain’s right-leaning People’s Party claimed just over a third of the vote, while two other parties on the right, Vox and the entertainingly named Se Acabó La Fiesta — “The Party’s Over” — made impressive, if low, showings.
Europeans are fed up with unfettered immigration and crippling inflation — why does that sound familiar? — so they’re rejecting the left-wing status quo and turning to various parties on the right.
