EU elections 2024 live: Emmanuel Macron dissolves French parliament and calls snap elections after huge far-right gains | European elections

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has welcomed Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call a snap election.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has announced that he is dissolving the national assembly, and calling for legislative elections on June 30 and July 7.

The French president said that he can’t pretend nothing has happened, that the outcome of the EU election is not good for his government and that the rise of nationalists is a danger for France and Europe.

What do today’s results mean for Emmanuel Macron?

Jon Henley

The crushing defeat of Emmanuel Macron’s centrist list at the hands of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) is likely to make for an even more fraught end to his presidency, analysts have said.

Macron’s list is projected to score between 14.8% and 15.2% of the vote, less than half of RN’s tally of 31.5-33% – the party’s highest ever in a nationwide election – and only just ahead of the Socialist list on 14%.

Macron was due to address the nation later on Sunday evening. The head of the RN’s list, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, said French voters had “expressed a desire for change” and demanded snap legislative elections.

Macron was “a weakened president tonight”, Bardella told supporters, saying the “unprecedented gap” in the two scores reflected “a stinging disavowal and rejection of the president and his government”.

Analysts have said Macron, whose centrist alliance does not have a majority in the French parliament, could face a very complicated two-and-a-half years before presidential elections due in spring 2027.

Problems may start piling up for the president after the summer break, observers say, when the centre-right Les Republicains (LR) opposition have threatened to bring a censure motion against the government.

Such a confidence vote could well bring down the government, which would realistically leave Macron facing a choice between seeking a new prime minister and calling an early parliamentary election.

“France is a particular concern,” said Mujtaba Rahman of the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. Such a heavy defeat “could trigger censure motions, government collapse and even early (legislative) elections.”

An estimate has been published for Denmark:

Socialistisk Folkeparti (Green Left): 18.4%

Social Democrats, the party of the country’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen: 15.4%

Venstre – Denmark’s Liberal Party: 13.9%

The Liberal Alliance, a party planning to join the centre-right European People’s party: 7.8%

An estimate has been published for Spain:

Opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s conservative People’s party (PP): 32.4%

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist party (PSOE): 30.2%

The far-right Vox party: 10.4%

In Spain, the right has sought to turn the European election into a referendum on Sánchez.

Ahead of the vote, public attention has focused on a saga embroiling the prime minister’s wife, Begoña Gómez, who is being investigated over allegations of corruption and influence-peddling, which Sanchez has dismissed as politically-motivated and totally baseless.

A first estimate for the whole parliament, based on 11 member states’ estimates, has been published.

Centre-right European People’s party: 181

Socialists and Democrats: 135

Renew: 82

European Conservatives and Reformists: 71

Far-right Identity and Democracy: 62

Greens: 53

The Left: 34

What’s behind the French far-right’s win?

Angelique Chrisafis

The French far-right National Rally is heading for a massive win tonight, led by its 28-year old top candidate, Jordan Bardella.

Bardella, who was elected to the European parliament five years ago, has led the National Rally’s European campaign to unprecedented heights, taking 32.4% of the vote today based on the latest estimates.

He has taken a deliberately humble tone with voters, part of a strategy to deliver the final phase of far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s decade-long drive to soften the far-right party’s image.

Bardella does not seek to dilute the party’s hardline anti-immigration message, which has not changed since the 1970s; instead he wants to make it respectable and fully mainstream ahead of Le Pen’s fourth attempt at the presidency in 2027.

The French far-right National Rally’s high score in European elections is not new. From the mid-1980s, it has traditionally done well in European votes and topped the poll in France in the last two European elections, in 2014 and in 2019.

One major difference this time is that the rise of other far-right parties across the EU can give the French equivalent more international clout.

A second is that Bardella’s lead against French president Emmanuel Macron’s group is big – expected to be around 17 percentage points – whereas last time it was less than 1%. This shows not just that the far right has grown, but that Macron’s support has considerably fallen.

German far-right AfD welcomes party performance

Kate Connolly

The AfD leadership has welcomed the party’s performance in the European election, in which they look to have secured more than 16% of the vote according to exit polls.

Tino Chrupalla, its co-leader, described the result to broadcaster ZDF as a “super outcome”, saying his party had “accrued almost 50 per cent new voters”.

A sea of affairs and scandals around its leading candidates Maximilian Krah and Petr Bystron had clearly not dented the AfD’s attractivity to voters, he said.

Admitting that the party emerged with a poorer result than opinion polls had suggested ahead of the vote, some of which saw them with more than 20%, the party still gained 5.5% when compared to the 2019 vote, and as a result has emerged as the second strongest.

Alice Weidel, joint leader to Chrupalla, put her party’s strong standing down to an increasingly EU-sceptical stance amongst voters.

“All in all people are fed up with the fact that they are faced with so much bureaucracy from Brussels,” she told broadcaster ARD, citing in particular, its legislation to ban combustion engines.

Lisa O’Carroll

Here is the centre-right European People’s party internal projection based on available exit polls.

Update from our correspondent in Rome

Turnout in Italy neared 39% by 7pm, according to data from the interior ministry.

Italians have until 11pm to cast their ballot, and are also voting in a host of local elections including Bari, Cagliari and Florence, a traditionally leftwing city being challenged by Eike Schmidt, the former director of the Uffizi galleries who is running for mayor on behalf of Italy’s ruling far-right coalition.

Meanwhile, there was disarray at a voting station in Naples after a scrutineer decided to leave and not return, allegedly because the pay was too low. She was subsequently reported to police, according to reports in the Italian press. TGcom24 reported that pay for scrutineers ranges between €56 and €110.

The far-right has made significant gains in France, according to an estimate published just now, leaving Emmanuel Macron’s allies far behind in second place in a race that is closely-watched in France and around Europe.

The far-right National Rally, led by Jordan Bardella: 32.4%

Renaissance, Modem, Horizons, UDI led by Valérie Hayer: 15.2%

Socialists and Place Publique led by Raphaël Glucksmann: 14.3%

Young Germans desert Greens for far-right

Deborah Cole

Germany’s ZDF public television said German voters under 30 went in droves to the far right, with +10 points for AfD and -18 points for Greens compared to five years ago. Many also turned to smaller parties such as Volt.

The result was notable as it was the first time 16 and 17 year olds were allowed to cast ballots in Germany in a European election.

‘Look amongst ourselves to find the mistakes’: German SPD reacts to projections

Kate Connolly

Meanwhile the SPD‘s general secretary Kevin Kühnert said his party, which secured just 14%, would “look amongst ourselves to find the mistakes we’ve made,” he said. “But we won’t be putting on sackcloth and ashes.”

He said it would be wrong to push the blame onto SPD leader and chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

“We had an honest and upstanding campaign. It would be very bad style to now push the blame onto one person.”

Hermann Binkert, head of the polling institute INSA called the result – in which all three parties in Scholz’s coalition government, including the pro-business FDP (around 5%) were punished by the voters – the equivalent of the electorate “handing the receipt” to the government for their disgruntlement.

According to a recent INSA poll, 70% of Germans are currently dissatisfied with the government, compared to 22% who are satisfied.

“Never has a government been so unpopular with the electorate. It looks unlikely that this coalition will regain its majority in the coming year,” Binkert told German media.

German Green party co-leader reacts

Kate Connolly

The co-leader of Germany’s Green party, Ricarda Lang, has reacted with disappointment to her party’s performance at the European election, in which it slumped to 12%, (from 20.5 five years ago) according to exit polls.

“This is below the expectation with which we went into this election and we will review this together,” she said on broadcaster ARD.

Lang said the world was a very different place from the time in which the election in 2019 took place, saying people were feeling very unsettled by many things, especially the issues of war and peace.

But a change of her party’s course regarding the conflict in Ukraine would not be on the cards, Lang said. “If Vladimir Putin (the Russian president) was allowed to win this war, the future in Germany would be considerably less peaceful,” Lang said.