String of sensational results rocks EU with far right triumphant in France, Denmark and Austria, and the hard left topping exit polls in Greece.
France’s nationalist extreme right turned European politics upside down on Sunday, trouncing the governing Socialists and the mainstream conservatives in the European parliamentary elections which across the continent returned an unprecedented number of MEPs hostile to, or sceptical about, the European Union in a huge vote of no confidence in Europe’s political elite.
According to exit polls, the Front National of Marine Le Pen came first in France with more than 25% of the vote. The nationalist anti-immigrant Danish People’s party won by a similar margin in Denmark. In Austria, the far right Freedom Party took one fifth of the vote, according to projections, while on the hard left, Alexis Tsipras led Greece’s Syriza movement to a watershed victory over the country’s two governing and traditional ruling parties, New Democracy conservatives and the Pasok social democrats.
The voting across four days in 28 countries, according to exit polls late on Sunday, delivered a string of sensational outcomes, with radical and nationalist anti-EU forces scoring major victories both on the far right and the hard left.
[…]
