The results at 2.45 am on Monday 10 June confirmed the projections of recent months for the Greens, who have lost 19 seats in the European Parliament. Down to 52 elected members, a figure slightly below the latest projections by Europe Elect, which estimated 55, the Greens/EFA group has thus returned to a contingent close to that of 10 years ago, far from the wave that carried it into 2019.
It was an expected defeat, as the co-leader of the ‘European Green Party’ list, the Netherlands’ Bas Eickhout, admitted: “In 2019, we had record results. We knew we wouldn’t reproduce them”.
However, the Green co-’Spitzenkandidat’ was keen to qualify this defeat: “To be perfectly fair, this was mainly due to the losses we suffered in Germany and France. We have also achieved very good results, if you look across Europe”.
The German delegation, which remains the largest with 16 elected members, lost nine, while the French delegation, which also caused a surprise 5 years ago, lost seven of its 12 seats, barely exceeding the 5% required to send representatives to Parliament. Other less significant losses were also seen in Austria, Belgium and the Czech Republic.
But there were some breakthroughs: Latvia and Croatia, with one MEP each, have brought in new members for the Greens.
Denmark also won a seat, with three MEPs. In the Netherlands, the combined Green and Social Democrat list, GroenLinks-PvdA, came out on top, enabling the Greens to retain their four seats.
The Spanish, Italian, Swedish and Luxembourger Greens also retained their seats.
These victories testify to the resilience of environmentalist ideas. Nevertheless, Mr Eickhout acknowledged that: “In 2024, the tide turned and some parties immediately abandoned the climate issue or even campaigned against it”.
In fact, the Greens/EFA Group, until now the fourth largest political force in the European Parliament, now finds itself lagging behind the European Conservatives and Reformists Group and the far-right Identity and Democracy Group.
Faced with this rise of the radical right, Bas Eickhout called on “progressive forces to work together”.
To see the results of the European elections and the latest projections of the future European Parliament hemicycle: https://aeur.eu/f/cl2 (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)