The European Parliament elections have officially begun. From Thursday, June 6th, to Sunday, June 9th, voters from the 27 member countries of the European Union will head to the polls to elect 720 Members of the European Parliament. A total of 373 million Europeans are eligible to vote, a number that far surpasses the 233.5 million voters in the United States in 2022. Following the elections will be the competition for the top positions in the European Commission.
With Dutch voters casting their ballots, the election activities have been set in motion. The results of the exit polls in the Netherlands will be announced around 9 p.m. on Thursday, revealing the political atmosphere on the European continent for the first time. Historically, voter turnout in the European elections in the Netherlands has been low, with only 42% of eligible voters casting their ballots in the 2019 elections.
With the rise of far-right forces, it is believed that this week’s European Parliament elections will reshape the political landscape of the continent, ushering in a “Donald Trump moment” for Europe.
The number of far-right MEPs in the European Parliament may surpass the number of Members from the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) to which the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, belongs. Speculations are abound about potential alliances post-June 9th.
According to forecasts from Politico Europe, unless there is a last-minute turn of events, it is highly likely that the far-right French National Rally leader Jordan Bardella will secure a seat in the parliament, while the Green Party’s leading figures – Bas Eickhout from the Netherlands and Terry Reintke from Germany – are also set to return to the parliament.
Maximilian Krah, a radical member of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, suspended his campaign and resigned from party leadership following comments about the SS. However, due to timing constraints, he could not be removed from the ballot, thus remaining a major candidate for the far-right party.
Following the European elections, a new round of competition will ensue for the top positions within the European Commission.
Which country will obtain the influential trade commissioner position responsible for overseeing the impending trade war with China (CCP)? Will Poland secure the newly established Minister of Defense position to counter their top rival, the Russians? Who will become the next Competition Commissioner for Europe, tasked with regulating American tech giants such as Apple and Google? Let us wait and see.
The European elections in the Netherlands are already past the halfway mark, and multiple parties have reported being targeted in cyberattacks, with a Russian-language group later claiming responsibility.
An organization calling itself HackNet, claiming to be from Russia, posted in Russian on Telegram, stating, “The Netherlands is the first new country to hold European Parliament elections. Therefore, they will be the first country to suffer from Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks.”
The Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), the Party for Freedom (PVV), and the Forum for Democracy (FvD) in the Netherlands all reported being victims of hacking incidents. The CDA issued a statement on the social media platform X, announcing that their website had malfunctioned this morning due to a DDoS cyberattack.
The statement reads, “We believe that such events on election day are an attack on freedom and democratic elections.” They further mentioned that they have reported the incident to Dutch authorities, and their website is now back to normal operation.