Nationalist parties achieve major Victories in EU Parliament Elections
10 June 2024
Over the past week parliamentary elections took place in all 27 member states of the European Union. Held every five years, the European Parliament election is one of the world’s biggest, with 360 million eligible voters. Political parties in each country affiliate with a political group in the European parliament. These groups are organized along ideological lines, with the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, Renew Europe, the Greens-European Alliance, and the Left in the European Parliament all representing the Left, the European People’s Party group representing parties with centrist tendencies, and the right being represented by the European Conservatives and Reformists group as well as Identity and Democracy. Some parties also remain unattached with any of the aforementioned parliamentary groups, which most notably includes Alternative fur Deutschland and Victor Orban’s Fidesz.
The results proved to be a major breakthrough for the right. While the centrist European People’s Party remained the largest with 186 seats, the left lost 50 seats and ended up with only 303 of the 720 seats in the European parliament. The two decidedly right-wing groups together gained 13 seats in parliament, and now hold 131 seats in the European parliament. Unaffiliated groups acquired 100 seats. Together the 3 non-leftist parties in the European parliament therefore now hold 317 seats, 14 more than the Left.
Right-wing nationalist parties won the elections in the following countries:
- Austria, where the Freedom Party won 26% of the vote.
- Belgium, where Flemish Interest won almost 15% of the vote
- France, where the two nationalist parties, the National Rally (31%) and Reconquista (5%) together won 36% of the vote. The result proved to be such a setback for the Leftist French president Immanuel Macron that he felt compelled to dissolve the French parliament and call for a new national election.
- Hungary, where two Christian Nationalist parties, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz-KDNP alliance (45%) and Laszlo Toroczkai’s Our Homeland Movement (7%) together won 52% of the vote
- Italy, where Brothers of Italy (29%) and Lega Salvini (9%) won 38% of the vote
- Sweden where the Social Democrats won 25% of the vote.
Special mention needs to be made of the Reformed Political Party in the Netherlands, a theonomist party which gathered 230 000 votes amounting to 3.7% of the national vote—the best result in the party’s 106-year history. The party retained its seat in the European parliament.
The Pactum Institute would like to congratulate all these parties with their successful election campaigns and we sincerely hope that they will continue working for the good of their peoples in the European parliament. It must always be remembered, however, that good election results will be fruitless in the long run if unaccompanied by national-covenantal repentance, without which the glory of Europe will never be restored.