Superwahljahr 2024: Analyzing the Results of the EU’s Parliamentary Elections

Last week, hundreds of millions of voters took to the polls across Europe to vote in the European Union‘s parliamentary elections. This is the second-largest democratic election after India‘s election, which recently took place.  Voters in the EU’s 27 member states cast their ballots for 720 members of the European Parliament. On the agenda were issues such as the state of the economy, migration, environmental priorities, and defense spending in light of the war in Ukraine. The make up of the parliament will be important in setting the political tone for the EU for the next five years.

Dozens of national and European parties are represented in the Parliament, but most belong to one of seven political groups. Exit polls indicate that the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) came out ahead while other centrist and center-left parties lost ground to parties on the far left and far right. In Germany, initial reporting gave the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) 30 percent of the vote, with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in second place with 16 percent of the vote. The governing coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and Free Democrats barely broke 30 percent altogether.

Join the American Council on Germany for a discussion about the EU election as part of our virtual series Superwahljahr 2024. We’ll be joined by political scientist Dr. Nicolai von Ondarza, who serves as the Head of the EU/Europe Research Division, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security Affairs, SWP).

Dr. Nicolai von Ondarza is a political scientist and serves as the Head of the Research Unit EU/Europe at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP). His focus is on EU institutions and political system, European political parties and democratic legitimation of the EU, as well as post-Brexit relations between the EU and the United Kingdom. Since 2013, he has organized the British-German Outlook Group, a yearly exchange between the SWP, Chatham House, the German Federal Foreign Office, and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office. Before joining SWP, Dr. von Ondarza worked at the Bundeswehr Institute for Social Sciences and the European University Viadrina of Frankfurt Oder. He is also a lecturer in a postgraduate European Studies program which is jointly organized by the three Berlin Universities.