Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz have been hit with defeat in European Parliament election exit polls.
The French President suffered a heavy defeat in the exit polls, with Marine Le Pen's National Rally party sealing a definitive win that underlines her credentials as frontrunner forFrance's 2027 presidential vote.
National Rally ]won around 32 per cent of the votes, a 10 point increase on the last EU election in 2019 and some 17 points ahead of President Emmanuel Macron's party, according to the first exit polls.
In Germany, the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) took second place behind the opposition conservatives with 16.5 per cent of the vote, up from 11 per cent in 2019, according to an exit poll published by public broadcaster ARD.
National Rally president Jordan Bardella said: "Emmanuel Macron is a weakened president, already deprived of an absolute majority in the French parliament and now restricted in his means of action within the European Parliament.
"The President of the Republic must choose to follow the spirit of the institutions, solemnly take note of this new political situation, return to the French people and organise new legislative elections."
French Socialist MEP Raphaël Glucksmann said: "The far right in France today represents 40 per cent of the vote in France. Across Europe, we are witnessing a wave that is profoundly shaking our democracies."
In the Netherlands, which voted on Thursday, exit polls showed nationalist Geert Wilders' anti-immigration party was set to win seven of the 29 Dutch seats in the EU assembly, just one short of the combined seats of a Socialist Democrat-Greens alliance.
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Meanwhile, in Austria, the hard-right Freedom Party is the likely winner of the ballot, according to a poll based on surveys carried out over the past week and published as voting there closed on Sunday evening.
More to come...
