The conservative group EPP, which includes Sweden’s M and KD, will be the largest in the EU Parliament with a preliminary 181 seats, shows a first estimate from the parliament.
The far right is growing at the same time. SD’s party group ECR gets 71 mandates, while Marine Le Pen’s ID lands on 62. In addition, there is a large number of far-right mandates even among those without a group and the parties that have not yet announced which party group they want to sit in.
However, the figures are so far only based on polling station surveys and previous opinion polls.
According to the estimate, the EU’s social democratic and environmentalist groups seem to make somewhat better choices than expected before the EU elections, with 135 and 53 mandates respectively. The liberal group RE loses to 82 seats, while the left provisionally lands on 34 seats.
The mandates of the various party groups in the EU Parliament according to a forecast from 8:35 p.m. Stable in the middle?
The great uncertainty concerns how the various far-right parties will form and who are willing to cooperate with each other. For example, the German AFD was recently thrown out of the ID group after several scandals surrounding the top candidate Maximilian Krah.
If the estimate were to come true, the three middle groups – conservatives, liberals and social democrats – would receive a total of 400 of the 720 mandates, which could in principle be enough for a stable majority behind, for example, Ursula von der Leyen as continued president of the European Commission.
“Only Trustworthy”
Among many conservatives in the EPP, however, there has been a desire to cooperate more to the right within the ECR – which, however, both social democrats and liberals wanted to say no to. Even the Greens think that the cooperation should rather take place in their direction instead.
— I have always had difficulty understanding how a coalition with ECR should work. The only credible, stable and democratic coalition that is possible is with the Greens, says Dutch environmentalist Bas Eickhout at a short press conference inside the EU Parliament.