Anti-European parties are set for EU victory: Populist politicians are predicted to win the most votes in nine countries in June’s European parliament elections in nightmare result for Brussels, polls show

Opinion polls show that ‘anti-European’ populist parties are on course to make big gains across the continent in this year’s European Union elections.

A report on the findings from all 27 EU member states said the bloc was likely to see a “sharp turn to the right” in June, which would be a nightmare for Brussels.

It suggests that radical right parties are on course to finish first in nine countries, including France, Poland and Austria, and second or third in a further nine countries, including Germany, Spain, Sweden and Portugal.

Populists, Eurosceptics and conservatives are expected to jointly capture almost half of the European Parliament’s seats in June – an outcome that would dramatically change the composition of the EU legislature.

The report, released on Wednesday by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), confirmed other polls that have already suggested that far-right parties will make major progress in the elections, thus pushing back left-wing and centre-left parties.

“There is a high chance of pro-Russian party representation in the coming legislature,” the ECFR said, pointing in particular to three seats that could go to Bulgarian MEPs sympathetic to the Kremlin.

Other resulting policy shifts could include a weakening of Europe’s enforcement of the rule of law and the bloc’s actions to combat climate change, and a tougher anti-immigration stance, according to the report’s co-authors, Simon Hix and Kevin Cunningham.

The polls show that radical right parties are on course to finish first in nine countries, including Austria, France and Poland.

And its expected second or third place in another nine countries, including Germany, Spain, Portugal and Sweden, could for the first time see a right-wing majority coalition in parliament of Christian Democrats, radical right and conservative members of the European Parliament.

Such a shift in Europe could happen five months before the United States votes to potentially restore Donald Trump as president, sparking populist and protectionist echoes across the Atlantic.

A Trump victory combined with the expected swing to the right could result in a rejection of “strategic interdependence and… international partnerships in defense of European interests and values,” the authors warned.

“Against a backdrop of incendiary populism, which may reach a new peak with the return of Donald Trump (as president in the United States) later this year, parties from the political mainstream need to wake up,” Hix said.

“They must clearly take stock of voters’ demands, while recognizing the need for a more interventionist and powerful Europe on the world stage.”

“They put their fingers in their ears and said, ‘No, no, no,'” Hix said. ‘The real question is how political leaders and the EU respond.’

The ECFR’s statistical look at opinion polls in the 27-nation EU suggested that parliament’s largest political grouping, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) – from which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen comes – would be the largest after the vote would stay.

But both the country and the second largest party, the Socialists and Democrats, would lose seats, with more radical movements on the left and right gaining ground to become mainstream voter options.

The left-wing grouping of communists, eurosceptics and social democrats, and the populist right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) and Identity and Democracy (ID), would have ‘a real opportunity to be part of a majority coalition. ‘, the report said.

Hix and Cunningham said they “expect populist voices, especially from the radical right, to be more vocal and involved in decision-making,” to a point unseen since the creation of parliament in 1979.

Together, a “populist coalition” of the EPP, ECR and ID would control 43 to 49 percent of the next parliament’s 720 seats, they said.

The far-right ID group is expected to win a further 40 seats for a total of 98, which could make it the third largest group in the EU.

Anti-European populists are likely to top the EU voting list in nine countries – including France, where Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant National Rally is well ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance Party in the polls.

“The risk of an ungovernable Europe is quite real,” Stéphane Séjourné, the new French foreign minister who heads the centrist Renew Europe group of MEPs, said this month.

‘If the populist parties ever manage to get a blocking minority in the European Parliament, there is a risk that it will be very difficult to put together a majority.’

The same will be the case in Italy, where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party is on the verge of consolidating its power.

Austria’s radical right Freedom Party (FPÖ) is expected to double the number of members of the European Parliament to six.

The other countries where populist Eurosceptics are likely to come first are Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia.

Populist parties were predicted to come second or third in a further nine countries, including Germany, where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is expected to double its score, while Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats come in fourth or fifth will come.

The AfD co-leader said earlier this week that Britain was “absolutely right” to leave the EU and that Germany should hold a “Dexit” referendum.

“It is a model for Germany that they can take such a sovereign decision,” Alice Weidel said in an interview with the Financial Times newspaper.

Weidel, 44, leader of the AfD since 2022, said the party wanted to reform EU institutions to curb the power of the European Commission and address what it saw as a democratic deficit.

She said the vote would take place if an AfD government failed to implement reforms to prevent the “unelected” European Commission from going too far.

“If reform is not possible, if we fail to rebuild the sovereignty of EU member states, we must let the people decide, just as Britain did,” she said.

But if the AfD’s desired changes could not be achieved, “we could hold a referendum on ‘Dexit’ – a German exit from the EU,” she added.

The election victory of Geert Wilders, the far-right Dutch populist leader, last November was seen as a warning of what senior pro-European MEPs have called a “dysfunctional EU”.

“The threat of a European parliament with the far right at the helm is real,” said Malik Azmani, a Dutch MEP who heads the liberal Renew Europe parliamentary group dominated by Macron.

Meanwhile, Viktor Orbán’s populist conservatives in Hungary are expected to win four times more seats than their rivals, with right-wing MPs seen as a battle for the soul of Europe.

“We are ready to lead the old continent back to the path of common sense, together with the sovereigntist forces of Europe,” said Judit Varga, the former Hungarian justice minister who led Orbán’s campaign.