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All to the right? The 2024 European Parliament elections

Introduction

Nonna Mayer et Gilles Ivaldi
p. 17-24

Texte intégral

Context

1The European Parliament (EP) elections of June 2024 marked a significant milestone for the European Union (EU). The elections took place amidst a prolonged period of “polycrisis” shaped by the Great Recession, the migration crisis, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and, more recently, the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza.

2These multiple and interrelated international disruptions have deeply changed the European political landscape, offering both opportunities and constraints for political parties across Europe (Nicoli and Zeitlin, 2024; Genschel, 2025; Moise and Wang, 2025). They have heightened voter anxiety and socio-eco­nomic vulnerability, while also increasing the salience of issues such as inflation, migration, climate change, and foreign policy.

3Such issues were pivotal in the 2024 EP elections (Beaudonnet et al., 2025), more broadly reflecting the deeper “existential crises” that trouble European voters, i.e. migration, economy, climate, health, and security (Krastev and Leonard, 2024). Across Europe, inflation and the rising cost of living, weakening the most vulnerable segments of the electorate, came ahead of voters’ motivations in those elections. In countries like Germany and France immigration resurfaced as an impactful issue, fueling support for the far-right.1 The farmers’ protests of winter 2023 further illustrated growing resistance to EU environmental policies and called into question the very goals of the European Green Deal. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine and the Hamas-Israel conflict emerged as major geopolitical issues, exposing deep fault lines within European political parties and public opinion.

A shift to the right in European politics

4Against this backdrop, the June 2024 EP elections represented a crucial test for the EU and for many European governments grappling with global and domestic uncertainties.

5The elections results revealed significant voter mobilization across most EU member states, with turnout reaching 50.7% EU-wide—matching the rate seen in 2019. Five years earlier, the elections had been marked by a revival in participation (+8 percentage points), reversing a decades-long decline in turnout. As in 2019, however, abstention rates remained highly uneven across EU member states. Leaving aside countries with compulsory voting such as Belgium and Luxembourg, turnout rates varied from 64.7% in Germany down to only 29% in Lithuania, with France at 51.5%, just above the European average.

6Regarding the party balance, the mainstream political blocs in the EP—the European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists & Democrats (S&D), and Renew Europe—retained a majority, collectively securing just over 55% of seats in the new legislature. The EPP conservative right reaffirmed its dominance not only in Parliament but also within the European Council, holding 11 seats, compared to only 4 for the left and 5 for centrist-liberals in Renew. Despite the ongoing eco­nomic crisis, the European left failed to present itself as a credible alternative during these elections. Meanwhile the Greens and Renew Europe emerged as the biggest losers, falling to 53 and 77 seats respectively—down from 70 and 98 in 2019.

7The center of gravity in the new EP thus shifted to the right in a European context increasingly marked by political polarization and the rise of radical and Eurosceptic parties (Hix and Cunningham, 2025). In addition to the strong performance of conservative parties, the results confirmed the anticipated progression of radical and populist actors (Ivaldi and Zankina, 2024). Throughout Europe, parties of the far-right were the most successful in capitalizing on perceived failures of EU governance (Nicoli and Zeitlin, 2024), making significant gains in countries like France, Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Belgium and the Netherlands.

8The far-right surge did not amount to a sweeping wave, however, and it varied also in magnitude from one country to another (Mudde, 2024; Ivaldi and Zankina, 2024). In total, these parties secured 183 seats, or 25% of the Parliament, however spread across three groups—the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR, 79 seats including other non-far-right parties), Patriots for Europe (85 seats), and Europe of Sovereign Nations (27 seats)—without counting the Non-Registered.

What can we learn from the 2024 EP elections?

9The aim of this thematic section of the European Journal of Social Sciences is to draw the main lessons of the June 2024 EP elections. Adopting a comparative lens with a special focus on the French case, the articles examine the key electoral dynamics of the 2024 vote, looking at patterns of both participation and electoral choice. The methods across the ten articles that constitute this thematic section also reflect a variety of approaches—survey analysis, ethnography, electoral geography, political institutions—which are key to under­standing the electoral outcomes of the 2024 EP elections, and their broader implications for the future of the EU.

10Drawing from the classic “second-order” election model (Reif and Schmitt, 1980), Filip Kostelka and André Blais examine how political and institutional factors may differently affect voter turnout in national and EP elections. They show that political and institutional factors such as low election frequency, proportional electoral system, simultaneous national election, and compulsory voting, influence voting rates in a similar way across both election types. But the magnitude of such effects varies considerably, with factors decreasing participation weighing more in European elections and factors increasing it in national ones.

11Turning to vote choice, using electoral survey data from France and other European countries, the following articles pay attention to variables—such as gender, age, and socioeconomic precarity—which international research has consistently identified as influential factors in shaping electoral behavior.

12Age figures prominently across three of the articles. Recent literature has emphasized the role of generational differences in political behavior and attitudes (Van der Brug and Kritzinger, 2025). Damien Bol, Pierre-Henri Bono, and Can Zengin explore voting regret during the 2024 EP in France, Germany, and Italy, focusing on differences across age groups. They find that abstainers are more likely to regret their decision than voters, and that younger individuals experience more voting regret than those in the older cohorts. Their results highlight a democratic vulnerability, suggesting that electoral outcomes may not fully capture stable political preferences, especially among young people.

13Anne Muxel and Kevin Arceneaux examine how age shapes European identity in France, Germany, and Italy, tapping into its relational, symbolic, cognitive, and mobility components. While younger voters tend to show higher levels of EU identity than older ones, the differences appear relatively small. The study essentially confirms that the link to Europe is built primarily through symbolic and cognitive factors, far more than through the materialist benefits (relations, travels) citizens can draw from the EU.

14Using a generational lens, Vincent Tiberj tackles an apparent paradox, i.e. that the younger cohorts are at the same time more tolerant than the older ones and increasingly prone to vote for an intolerant party like the RN. The analysis follows the progression of this trend cohort after cohort since the 2012 French presidential election, identifying a critical shift towards the far-right among boomers in the 2024 EP elections. The paper more generally reflects on the growing weight of cultural values in shaping electoral choice, particularly authoritarian and xenophobic positions—surpassing socio­economic values—, and on the growing politicization of these issues by the far-right and other actors in French politics.

15Age interacts with other social characteristics in structuring electoral preferences (Schäfer and Steiner, 2025) and particularly with gender, another crucial issue that is given attention in this volume.

16Anja Durovic, Nonna Mayer, and Noémie Piolat point to a significant reconfiguration of gendered voting behavior in France in 2024. In sharp contrast to the radical right gender gap persisting in many European countries, and the emergence of a modern gender-youth gap, French women were more likely than men to vote for the RN, and young women not more likely to vote for parties of the left. Additionally, the authors find that antifeminism or “modern” sexism was a strong predictor of support for radical right parties in those elections, while conversely making such voters turn away from support for left parties in general.

17Tristan Haute, Emma Nemesien, Yann Le Lann, and Hugo Touzet investigate the link between voting and working conditions, measured by fine-grained indicators, in Germany, France, and Spain. Their study shows that poor working and employment conditions in the three countries reduce electoral participation in the EP elections as well as support for center and right-wing mainstream parties. But in contrast to what is observed in many European countries, such conditions increase the probability to support the far-right, however only in Germany, and the far-left, but only in France.

18Beyond key socio-demographics, the contributions to this thematic section explore the interaction between national and European-level issues in structuring electoral choices—including the economy, the environment, immigration, and the war in Ukraine, while considering the role of the 2024 EP elections within national political cycles and the relevance of protest or sanction voting across different actors and contexts.

19Gilles Ivaldi looks at the effect of individual voter support for the EU’s military assistance to Ukraine on populist voting in the 2024 EP elections. The paper finds that voter support for Ukraine is systematically associated with a lower likelihood of voting for populist parties across Europe, however with significant regional variations, and in relation to party-level positions regarding the economic costs of EU sanctions on Russia. These findings invite further research into the impact of foreign policy attitudes on populist politics.

20Looking more specifically at Italy, Carmelo Lombardo and Francesco Giovanni Truglia highlight patterns of change and continuity in the geography of political conflicts across EP elections since the early 2000s. Their analysis documents significant changes that have happened in Italian electoral politics in recent years, both within and across political blocs, and how such changes were reflected in the 2024 EP elections that saw the rise of Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia. Their paper suggests a shift from bipolarism to tripolarism with abstention as an increasingly politically connoted actor reshaping representation and participation.

21The two last papers reflect on the consequences of the new political balance within the Parliament elected in June 2024, and the realignments underway, particularly within the constellation of Eurosceptic and far-right parties. Notably, two new groups emerged from the former Identity and Democracy group: Patriots for Europe, built around France’s Rassemblement National (RN) and Hungary’s Fidesz, and Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), centered on Germany’s AfD and Poland’s Confederation.

22Estelle Delaine looks at such reconfiguration of far-right parties in the EP. Her long-term ethnographic approach sheds light on the continuous gain in expertise, legitimacy and influence by far-right parties in the EP over the last decade. Departing from traditional analyses of the far-right in EU institutions, her paper looks at the accumulation of rewards and competences, and it offers a new perspective on the diversity of assets and resources that such parties may use to become genuine “insiders” within European institutions.

23Finally, Olivier Costa asks whether the 2024 EP elections have marked a new advancement in the parliamentary dynamics of the EU. His analysis shows how parliamentarization operates alongside other trajectories of intergovernmentalism and autonomy and leadership by the Commission within the EU. Most importantly, the paper underlines the crucial significance of such increasing parliamentarization as a foundational issue for the EU’s democratic legitimacy and future trajectory.

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Bibliographie

BEAUDONNET L., BELOT C., LE GALL C., VAN INGELGOM V., 2025, “The Second-Order Model Revisited: Lessons from the 2024 European Elections in the 27 Member States”, Politique européenne, forthcoming.

GENSCHEL P., 2025, “Conclusion – external threat and internal divisions: How the war in Ukraine shapes mass politics in the EU”; European Union Politics [online]: <https://doi.org/10.1177/14651165251318963>.

HIX S. and CUNNINGHAM K., 2025, “Still second-order national elections? Evaluating the classic model after the 2024 European elections”, West European Politics, 1-22 [online]: <https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2025.2499992>.

IVALDI G. and ZANKINA E. (eds), 2024, 2024 EP Elections under the Shadow of Rising Populism, European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS).

KRASTEV I. and LEONARD M., 2024, “A crisis of one’s own: The politics of trauma in Europe’s election year”, European Council on Foreign Relations, 521 [online]: <https://ecfr.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/A-crisis-of-ones-own_The-politics-of-trauma-in-Europes-election-year-v2.pdf>.

MOISE A.D. and WANG C., 2025, “Appeasement or solidarity? Uncovering the drivers of European public opinion on the war in Ukraine”, European Union Politics, 26-2, p.344-368.

MUDDE C., 2024, “The 2024 EU Elections: The Far Right at the Polls”, Journal of Democracy, 35-4, p.121-134.

NICOLI F. and ZEITLIN J., 2024, “Introduction: escaping the politics trap? EU integration pathways beyond the polycrisis”, Journal of European Public Policy, 31-10, p.3011-3035.

REIF K. and SCHMITT H., 1980, “Nine second-order national elections: A conceptual framework for the analysis of European election results”, European Journal of Political Research, 8-1, p.3-44.

SCHÄFER A. and STEINER N. D., 2025, How education, generation and gender jointly structure green and radical right voting. West European Politics, 1-28 [online]: <https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2025.2466122>.

VAN DER BRUG W. and KRITZINGER S., 2025, “Generations and political change”, West European Politics, 48-4, p.846-856.

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Annexe

Official results: <https://results.elections.europa.eu/​en>

MEPs by Member State and political group: <https://www.europarl.europa.eu/​meps/​en/​search/​table>.

Seats in the European Council

European People’s Party (EPP)

11

Party of European Socialists (S&D/PES)

4

Renew Europe / ALDE

4

European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR)

2 (CZ and IT)

Patriots for Europe (PfE)

1 (HU)

Independent / Non-affiliated

5

Political Groups in the European Parliament 2019, 2024

Group

2019*

2024**

European People’s Party (EPP)

179

188

Party of European Socialists (S&D/PES)

138

136

Patriots for Europe (PfE)

––

84

European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR)

69

78

Renew Europe / ALDE

98

77

Greens / European Free Alliance (EFA)

70

53

The Left (GUE/NGL)

37

46

Identity and Democracy (ID)

49

––

Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN)

––

25

Non-inscrits

63

33

*Outgoing members as of June 2024; **Constitutive session as of July 2024 (N=719 MEPs)

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Notes

1 On European voters’ motivations see the post electoral Eurobarometer (<https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3292>. And on the French voters motivations Ipsos’s detailed post electoral survey (<https://www.ipsos.com/fr-fr/europeennes-2024/comprendre-le-vote-des-francais-2024>).

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Référence papier

Nonna Mayer et Gilles Ivaldi, « Introduction »Revue européenne des sciences sociales, 63-2 | 2025, 17-24.

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Nonna Mayer et Gilles Ivaldi, « Introduction »Revue européenne des sciences sociales [En ligne], 63-2 | 2025, mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2025, consulté le 14 décembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ress/12099 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/1596e

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Auteurs

Nonna Mayer

Sciences Po Paris, Centre d’études européennes et de politique comparée
nonna.mayer"at"sciencespo.fr

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Gilles Ivaldi

Sciences Po Paris, CEVIPOF – CNRS
gilles.ivaldi"atsciencespo.fr

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