The tally from Europe-wide elections deciding members of the European Union parliament are in and, from the vote, Europeans clearly aren’t all that excited about Europe. The results show large gains for far right nationalist—so called Eurosceptic—groups across the continent signaling choppy waters ahead for the 21-nation bloc.
Here’s more on the results from the New York Times:
Members of the European political elite expressed alarm on Monday over the strong showing in European Parliament elections by nationalist and anti-immigrant parties skeptical about European integration, a development described by the French prime minister as an “earthquake.”
In France and Britain in particular, anti-immigrant parties opposed to the influence of the European Union emerged in the lead. In France, the National Front won 26 percent of the vote to defeat both the governing Socialists and the Union for a Popular Movement, the center-right party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy. In Britain, the triumph of the U.K. Independence Party, or UKIP, which won 28 percent of the vote, represented the first time since 1910 that a nationwide vote had not been won by either the Conservatives or Labour.
Official results released overnight showed that populist parties strongly opposed to the European Union also trounced establishment forces in Denmark and Greece and did well in Austria and Sweden. The results, a stark challenge to champions of greater European integration, left mainstream political leaders stunned.
The radical left-wing Syriza coalition in Greece beat the party of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, while Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi outfit that the Greek authorities have tried in vain to outlaw, also picked up seats, bringing Holocaust-deniers and belligerent xenophobes into the European Parliament.
