Nationalist parties gain seats in EU's parliamentary election

last updated 27 May 2019

Preliminary results of the European Union parliamentary elections show that nationalist parties gained significant ground in the U.K., France, Italy, and Poland. Parties like Britain's Brexit party, led by Nigel Farage, and France's National Rally party, led by far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen, took the most votes in their home countries.

However, Reuters reported, these victories in individual countries still didn't "dramatically alter the balance of pro-European power in EU assembly." Pro-Europe groups, including the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats and the Greens/European Free Alliance party, held strong with 504 out of the 751 available seats in Parliament. The EU's new priority will be "the search for a majority," as no single party took enough seats to hold a simple majority.

Europeans managed to sharply buck the norm of low voter turnout at EU Parliament elections. This time, 51 percent of eligible voters cast their vote, the highest turnout in 20 years. Back in 2014, that figure was only 43 percent. But renewed nationalist sentiment, along with its opposition, seems to have invigorated European voters enough to reverse the trend of "falling participation since the first direct EU vote in 1979."