France’s far-right National Front has won a nationwide election
for the first time, as far-right parties across Europe caused a political
“earthquake,” with a string of victories in voting for the European
Parliament.
The National Front, led by Marine
Le Pen, notched up 24.95% of the vote in France, according to official estimates, well ahead of mainstream
parties UMP and the Socialist Party. Le Pen said the win showed that people
want to see change in Europe.
France’s Socialist Prime Minister
Manuel Valls said the result was “more than a warning. It is a shock, an
earthquake.”
Right-wing parties also gained
ground in the UK, Denmark and Austria, according to projections posted on the European Parliament’s official elections website.
Voters across Europe have been
casting ballots for days in the parliamentary vote. There are 751 seats from 28
countries up for grabs.
With most of the ballots counted,
provisional results indicate that left-center and right-center parties will
still hold a majority of seats in the European Parliament, which plays a key role in shaping
European laws and will
weigh in on who the European Commission’s next President should be.
But right-wing parties and other
so-called Euroskeptic groups who oppose
the European Union are
gaining ground, said Simon Usherwood, an expert on European politics at the
University of Surrey.
“I think what’s really
changed is you’re seeing a lot more groups on the edges, particularly with the
far right, who are going to be much more of a feature of the next five years of
the parliament,” he said.
So what does that mean?
“They don’t have enough
votes to stop legislation going through,” Usherwood told CNN, “but
what they will get, particularly on the far right, is the time for speaking in
debates, the chairmanship of certain committees, which means that they’re going
to have much more of a platform on which they can sell their message to
voters.”
In France, which has 74 seats in
the European Parliament, the National Front won 24.95% of votes,according to official estimates,
coming in ahead of the center-right UMP, which scored 20.8%, and President
Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party, which came in third with 14%.
Even though the vote was for a
regional legislative body, the potential impact on France’s national political
landscape was clear on Sunday. The results sparked stunned reactions from some
French politicians and triumphant victory speeches from others.
PM Valls described the election
as “a very serious moment for France and for Europe,” noting that
projections indicate that voters are skeptical of the European Union.
“None of us can shirk their responsibilities,” he said, according to
a summary of his remarks posted
on the French government’s website.
Meanwhile, National Front leader
Marine Le Pen said the results showed that French voters wanted more control.
“The sovereign people have
proclaimed that they want to take back the reigns of their destiny into their
hands. Our people demand one type of politics: politics of the French, for the
French, with the French. They no longer want to be directed from outside,”
she said.
She said the vote shows that
President Francois Hollande should dissolve France’s parliament, where most
lawmakers come from mainstream political parties.
Nearly 400 million Europeans were
eligible to vote in the parliamentary elections. Turnout was just over 43%,
slightly higher than it was during the last vote in 2009, Parliament spokesman
Jaume Duch said.
“The clear message here is
that people are unhappy with the way mainstream political parties have handled
the economic crisis, and they’re giving them a good kicking,” said Petros
Fassoulas, chairman of the pro-Europe European Movement.
Before the election, analysts
predicted that protest parties were likely to triumph at the polls.
Those parties are demanding
tighter border controls, nationalized decision-making and a dissolution of the
currency union.
But they have little in common
aside from a dislike of the Brussels bureaucracy, so it’s difficult for them to
find much common ground, Usherwood said.
“They can agree they don’t
like the EU,” Usherwood said, “but they can’t agree what they like
and what the answer is.”
