Netherlands kicks off 4 days of European Union elections across 27 nations

THE HAGUE —  Voters went to the polls in the Netherlands on Thursday to kick off European Union parliamentary elections that span four days across the 27 member states and are expected to deliver gains for the hard right.

Geert Wilders, of the far-right Party for Freedom, or PVV, was among the first senior politicians to cast his ballot.

Having sent shock waves around Europe six months ago by becoming the biggest party in the Dutch national parliament, he now wants to build on that popularity and set the tone for much of the bloc, with calls to claw powers back to national capitals and away from the EU so member states have more autonomy on issues such as migration.

Paradoxically, like many hard-right parties across the bloc, he wants to get more powers in the European Parliament, so he can weaken the EU institutions from within.

“You also need to have a strong presence in the European Parliament and make sure that, if necessary, we will be able to change the European guidelines in order to be in charge of our own immigration policy and asylum policy,” Wilders said after voting in The Hague.

That is why he was immediately calling for a broad alliance of hard-right parties to break up the traditional coalition of Christian Democrats, Socialists, pro-business Liberals and Greens.

“Making a larger group in the European Parliament,” Wilders said, ”that gives us power to change all those European regulations in order to be more in charge of it ourselves — here in the national parliaments.”

Wilders, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and French opposition leader Marine Le Pen stand in stark contrast to most of the left and many center parties, which call for a more united European approach on issues like climate change measures and defense, arguing that individual nations have only a weak voice on the global stage.

“It is important that the European Union is a good and strong partner,” said Gerard Kroon, a 66-year-old who works for The Hague municipality and voted for the pro-Europe party Volt. “We have to get things done all together. Not only in Europe but in the Netherlands too.”

Since the last EU election in 2019, populist, far-right and extremist parties now lead governments in three EU nations, are part of governing coalitions in several others, and appear to have surging public support across the continent.

The Dutch center-right Christian Democratic Appeal party reported that its website was “temporarily less accessible” because of a distributed denial of service attack Thursday.

“On election day, we consider this an attack on free, democratic elections,” the party posted on X.

National broadcaster NOS reported that the sites of Wilders’ party and of the far-right Forum for Democracy also were briefly down.

The EU elections are the world’s second-biggest exercise in democracy behind the election in India, and the stakes are high.

Almost 400 million voters will be electing 720 members of the European Parliament from beyond the Arctic Circle to the edges of Africa and Asia. The results will have an impact on a range of issues including global climate policies and defense, migration, and geopolitical relations with China and the United States.

There was some early voting in some countries, but the Netherlands was the first EU country to have its single-day vote on Thursday, followed by Ireland and the Czech Republic on Friday and the rest of the EU nations over the weekend. Europe-wide results will be announced Sunday night after all member states have completed voting.

Since the last European elections in 2019, war has broken out on the fringe of the bloc following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a country that desperately wants to join the EU.

A founding member, the Netherlands was long unwavering in its support of EU policies. Research from the Clingendael think tank, though, suggests dissatisfaction with the EU among Dutch people, and that while most believe that the Netherlands should remain in the bloc, many also believe it should be more self-sufficient.

While many voters are predicted to lurch to the right, the Christian Democrat-dominated European People’s Party, led by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, is currently the EU legislature’s biggest bloc and is bound to be the coalition kingmaker when the dust settles on the election results.

In the Netherlands, Wilders’ PVV could build on its domestic success and surge, possibly overtaking the combined Labor Party and Green Left. Labor topped the Dutch EU Parliament election in 2019 with 19% of the vote, winning six seats, while the Greens took 11% and three seats. Wilders’ party at the time only managed 3.5% and no seats.

Wilders and one of his likely coalition partners, the Farmer Citizen Movement, are popular among farmers in the Netherlands who have staged regular protests to call for an easing of EU legislation they say is crippling their livelihoods.

Wilders has in the past called for the Netherlands to leave the EU as Britain did, but his party’s manifesto for the election Thursday makes no mention of a so-called Nexit.

The number of members elected in each country, known as Members of the European Parliament, or MEPs, depends on the size of the population, ranging from six for Malta, Luxembourg and Cyprus to 96 for Germany. In 2019, Europeans elected 751 lawmakers. Following the United Kingdom’s departure from the EU in 2020, the number of MEPs fell to 705. Some of the 73 seats previously held by British MEPs were redistributed to other member states.

The lawmakers can vote on a wide range of legislation covering banking rules, climate, agriculture, fisheries, security and justice. They also vote on the EU budget, which is crucial to the implementation of European policies, including, for instance, the aid delivered to Ukraine.

After the election, MEPs will elect their president at the first plenary session, from July 16 to 19. Then, most likely in September following a proposal made by the member states, they will nominate the president of the European Commission. In 2019, von der Leyen narrowly won a vote to become the first woman to head the institution. She is seeking a second term.

Corder writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Raf Casert in Brussels contributed to this report.