After four days of voting all across the European Union, the elections for a new EU parliament are over and the results are finally in. Centrist and leftist parties that believe in the future of the European Union managed to accumulate over two-thirds of the votes, pushing the far-right and eurosceptics to the margins. This has helped reassure investors that at least for now there will be some stability in the European Union, as previously there had been fears that a rise in populist, far-right organizations will be reflected in the elections and prove very damaging to the EU as a whole. Now investors are optimistic that they would see an EU that moves in a similar direction as the past few years, without any major political shocks.
It remains alarming that in the United Kingdom, where it was not clear whether the UK will even participate in the vote until the last minute, the Brexit Party scored the most votes, putting it first in terms of numbers of seats in the EU parliament with 29, same as Angela Merkel’s CDU. Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party is anti-EU. Moreover, in Sweden a nationalist party also won the election.
The new European parliament will be responsible for voting on a new European Council, an European Commission, and new leadership for the European Central Bank.
