Dutch voters cast their ballots Thursday in European Parliament elections at a polling station in Castricum, The Netherlands, as three days of voting gets underway across the 27-member country political and economic bloc. Photo by Ramon van Flymen/EPA-EFE
Voters were heading to the polls in 27 European Union-member countries Thursday for elections to the bloc’s 720-seat parliament in Strasbourg as the legacy parties on the center-left battle to counter the challenge from right-wing populist parties.
The Netherlands is one such battleground where Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party, or PVV, and the GreenLeft and Labor alliance (GL-PvdA) are slugging it out for the largest share of the 31 seats allotted to the European Union’s fourth-largest economy. Advertisement
The two parties are expected to win eight seats apiece, marking the first foray into pan-European government for the PVV having previously campaigned for pulling the Netherlands out of the EU. Wilders has since abandoned efforts to get a “leave” referendum in favor of tackling the power of the EU from the inside.
The PVV heads a four-party coalition government formed six months on from a national election in November in which Wilders’ anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party won a clean sweep, bagging the largest number of seats in the House of Representatives.
Wilders urged his countrymen, of whom only four in 10 normally cast ballots in European Parliament elections, to go to the polls “and make the PVV become the biggest party today” and not that of his GL-PvdA rival and former EU commissioner Frans Timmermans. Advertisement
A strong turnout is seen as critically important for Wilders’ PVV.
The election will see 373 million eligible voters elect Members of the European Parliament, choosing among candidates selected by the parties in their own country with provisional results due late Sunday after the last polls close in Italy.
Speaking at a Party of European Socialists gathering of the continent’s center-left leaders in Italy, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez issued an impassioned warning that “the very soul of Europe is at risk.”
The number of EU member states with center-left or left-wing governments has dwindled to just four — Germany, Spain, Denmark and Malta — and although moderates are currently over-represented in the European Parliament their longer-term prospects do not look bright.
While the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats grouping of center-left parties is expected to retain its 139 MEPs their future is under threat, based on performance in domestic elections.
In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats are expected to trail not only its conservative rival, the Christian Democrats, but also the radical-right Alternative for Germany, while Pedro Sanchez’ socialist candidates are expected to be overtaken by the Popular Party in Spain. Advertisement
Right-wing parties are expected to win the lion’s share of European Parliament seats everywhere, with the exception of Sweden, Lithuania, Malta and Denmark where Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrat Party is still braced for a collapse in support.
Prof. Marc Lazar of Sciences Po in Paris and Rome’s Luiss University said that a quarter century of decline meant the left was now in “poor health.”
