In the run-up to the European Parliament elections that took place on 9 June, the big question was whether the hard right would perform even better than five years ago, when they did better than five years before that. When the results came in, a complicated picture emerged. In France and Germany – the two largest member states of the EU that together are traditionally thought of as the “motor” of European integration – the hard right did very well. But elsewhere in Europe it did not do quite as well as many people expected – and feared.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National was by far the largest party – which prompted President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the French National Assembly and call a snap election. In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland, which is so radical that Le Pen recently had it expelled from the Identity and Democracy (ID) grouping in the European Parliament, came second after the centre-right Christian Democrats.
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