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- Far-right parties make significant headway in European Union elections
Far-right parties make significant headway in European Union elections
France's President Emmanuel Macron called for elections after his party failed to perform in the elections
![The first provisional results for the European Parliament elections are projected on a large screen during an election event at the European Parliament in Brussels](https://cdn.i24news.tv/uploads/84/49/1a/42/e5/94/1e/22/45/85/f6/9e/ce/e5/8c/f5/84491a42e5941e224585f69ecee58cf5.jpg?width=1000)
Far-right parties made significant headway in European Union elections, which ended Sunday.
While the gains were not enough to upset the control of centrist parties, the victory of France's Rally National over other established parties caused President Emmanuel Macron to call for elections.
Far-right parties hostile to the EU made the biggest splash in Germany, France, and Austria. All the while, centrist mainstream parties – Renew, S&D, and EPP – still maintain a fairly comfortable majority with 403 seats out of 720.
Exit polls in Germany show the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, now in opposition, leading with 30.3 percent of the vote. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) jumped to over 15 percent from 11 percent in previous elections in 2019.
AfD candidate Maximilian Krah earlier in the campaign stirred a scandal for saying that "not everyone was a criminal" in the Nazi's Waffen-SS.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party fell to 14.1 percent, its worst result. The Greens, who came in second place in 2019 with 20.5 percent, were relegated to fourth place with 12 percent.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni gained strength in these elections as her national conservative Brothers of Italy party winning almost 29 percent, ahead of her rivals from the center-left PD earned 23 percent.
Meanwhile, the far-right party Austrian Freedom Party came in first place with 25.7 percent, ahead of the conservative People's Party and the Social Democrats, with 24.7 percent and 23.2% percent, respectively.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' far-right Party for Freedom was second to a left-green alliance and did not seem to live up to expectations. The Party for Freedom received 17.7 percent of the vote, while the left-green alliance, led by former EU Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans, received 21.6 percent
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party also performed below expectations. Provisional results showed that his ruling coalition came in first place with 44.3 percent, a worse result than the 50 percent predicted by the polls. The new Respect and Freedom party, led by his up-and-coming younger opponent, Peter Magyar, received 30 percent.
Performances in other countries solidified the mainstream, pro-European parties' control, despite the shake-up in France. The center-right European People's Party (EPP), which leads in Spain and Poland, won the largest number of seats, boosting its chances that its candidate, Ursula von der Leyen, will secure a second term as president of the European Commission.
The Socialists won the largest share of the vote in Malta, Romania and Sweden, helping the center-left maintain its position as the second largest group in parliament, albeit much weaker than in the 1990s.