What you need to know about the upcoming results: EU election projection

While a centrist majority of the centre-right, liberals, and socialists in the new European Parliament still prevails, the expected far-right surge is poised to tip the balance of power in favour of the European People’s Party (EPP): What Europe Elect’s last projection for Euractiv says before the EU election on 6-9 June.  

Centrist majority prevails

The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) seems set to clinch first place with 182 seats, followed by the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) at 136. Together with the liberal Renew Europe group, with 81 seats, this centrist majority, which has dominated the European Parliament in the last five years, prevails with 399 seats out of 720.

Despite disagreements on how to deal with the far-right – as the EPP has opened the door to close collaboration with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia – the three forces have made it clear that they seek to stick to their three-way coalition. This means that they will keep control of the Parliament’s policymaking cycle and call the shots on key internal decisions, such as the budget.  

Liberals drop, races right-wing for third place

While both EPP and S&D roughly maintain the same seats they currently hold, Renew Europe is set to lose 20 seats, from 102 to 81, its worst result since the group was created in 2019. This pits Renew against hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) in the battle for third place.  

The losses can be partly explained by the electoral death of Spain’s liberal party Ciudadanos – formerly the largest national delegation in the group with eight seats – which saw their MEPs and leadership leaving the party to join Spain’s centre-right Partido Popular (EPP). At the same time, the liberals face heavy losses in France, where President Emmanuel Macron’s liberal coalition is shrinking from 23 to 15 seats. 

Greens consolidate 6th place following losses

The Greens’ current projected result is 55 seats, 17 less than they held in the last term. While the Greens played a major role in passing Green Deal files, their seat loss risks reducing the groups’ relevance and leverage in the Parliament. Major losses in this case come from Germany, due to their participation in what has become a very unpopular coalition government with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Socialists, and France, where a battered economy has pushed green policies at the bottom of the queue. 

While the Greens have welcomed new members from the East and South of Europe in the last five years, this will only partly compensate losses, with around five seats coming from Spain, Latvia, Croatia, and Slovenia.  

“Some polls suggest that we might not reach the same levels as 2019, but the polls did not predict our record-breaking success in 2019 then either,” Greens co-president and lead candidate Terry Reintke told Euractiv, nostalgic of the unprecedented “Green wave” of 2019 that lifted the group to become the fourth force in the Parliament.  

More leverage to the right with blocking majority

The Liberals’ and Greens’ expected losses, mixed with a surge of hard- and far-right parties, will water down the traditional centrist majority and shift the balance of powers to the right. 

The hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party Fratelli D’Italia, are projected to rise from 68 to 79 seats.

The far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) also gains 10 seats to 69, despite having recently expelled its largest national party (projected to have 15 seats), Germany’s AfD, over a series of scandals.

Enhanced ID and ECR groups will likely give the EPP ability to pressure Socialists and Liberals into giving concessions when drafting legislation. 

The ID and ECR will give the EPP a chance to block legislation if they all team up together against the Socialists and Liberals, as they tried to do in the outgoing Parliament with the nature restoration law. This time around, however, the right-wing bloc will count enough seats to reach a majority, when needed.  

Mind the right-wing reshuffle ahead

With Meloni, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, France’s far-right opposition leader Marine Le Pen, and Poland’s opposition leader Mateusz Morawiecki all calling for some sort of right-wing unification to counterbalance the pro-European forces, speculation is rife of an impending reshuffle at the extreme right of the hemicycle.  

While some would like to see a right-wing supergroup bringing ECR and ID together, making the extreme right the second political force with around 160 seats, such option is unlikely due to wide disagreements over policy areas and long-lasting internal bickering between national parties.

However, here’s how this could work in practice, looking at past and current group arrangements at the EPP and Greens.  

Left remains stable, but cracks loom 

The Left political group is poised to score 38 seats, roughly the same figure as now, but with limited manoeuvring space for broader coalitions. But the future of the group is uncertain. 

A new populist left-conservative party born in Germany, Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), recently confirmed it had found enough support to create a new group on the left side of the hemicycle, which has shocked The Left group as some of its members could jump ship to join BSW. 

*Data processing by Tobias Gerhard Schminke and Jakub Rogowiecki, Europe Elects

[Edited by Aurélie Pugnet/Zoran Radosavljevic]

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