IDU congratulates all of its member parties who took part in the European Elections

The IDU congratulates all of its member parties who took part in the European Elections over the past four days. As the world’s second largest election, over 400 million people were eligible to cast their vote for new members of the European parliament.

A number of IDU member parties from our regional organisations, the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Alliance of the Conservatives and Reformists (ACRE), had outstanding results. Austria’s ÖVP gained 7,5% and increased their parliamentary seats to 7. In Hungary, IDU member party Fidesz won over 52% of votes and now has 13 seats in parliament. Greece’s Nea Demokratia will control 9 seats in the new European Parliament, a result that saw the leftist government in Greece calling for snap elections. Strong results were also seen in Slovenia from SDS, in Bulgaria from GERB, in Finland from Kokoomus, and in the CSU stronghold of Bavaria, where the party maintained its majority.

Of the IDU’s two European regional organisations, the EPP remains the strongest political group in parliament, with 180 seats at the time of writing. We can expect that the EPP’s Spitzenkandidat Manfred Weber will now start the next chapter of the process to become the Commission’s President, with strong party backing. The IDU’s other regional affiliate group in the parliament, the ECR group, also retained a strong cohort of MEPs, with ACRE President Jan Zahradil’s Czech party ODS seeing excellent results at home.

On the whole, voter turnout across the Continent exceeded 50 percent for the first time in a quarter centrury and results for the centre right were strong.  The IDU congratulates all member parties on their efforts in this election and we look forward to centre-right MEPs continuing to put forth strong policies to advance European prosperity and support freedom and democracy around the world.