- Exit polls, reactions and results follow further below.
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Voting in France in the one-round European elections began at 8 a.m. (CET) and ended, in large towns and cities, at 8 p.m. France was one of 21 European Union (EU) member states to hold elections on Sunday, the remaining seven, including Britain and the Netherlands, having already held their own polls which began last Thursday.
France’s 46 million registered voters are among some 400 million others across Europe to decide the make-up for the next five years of the 751-seat European Parliament. This, the eighth European poll since the first was held in 1979, has heightened importance because of the European parliament’s increasing powers in EU decision-making: for the first time, the next European Commission president, to be appointed later this year, will be a candidate from whichever political grouping has a majority in parliament. .
France is allocated 74 representatives in the European Parliament, who are elected from a total of eight regional constituencies, seven of which are in mainland France (the reamining one representing overseas French territories). The number of representatives from each EU member state is calculated against the size of its population, making France one of the major European participants.
The main parties who fielded candidates in France – the socialists, conservatives, Greens, centrists, radical-left and far-right – are all members of Europe-wide groupings of the same political persuasion. Continent-wide opinion surveys suggested that 70% of the European Parliament’s seats would be made up of the separate groupings of the mainstream Left and Right, centrist liberals and the Greens, while the surveys also predict that about a quarter will be won by far-right and anti-EU parties.
In France, the far-right Front National (FN) party hoped to claim significant gains, with opinion surveys suggesting it might win as many as 20 seats. It appeared late Sunday to have taken 25 seats. It was under pressure to confirm its previous electoral surge in nationwide local elections held in March, when it shook-up the previously all-dominant position of the mainstream Left and Right parties, albeit a relative success for what was a marginal party.
The conservative opposition UMP party, reeling from internal divisions and a series of recent scandals, faced a stern test to withstand the inroads the FN has made in the vote for the Right, and to mobilize its supporters, a challenge it failed. Meanwhile, the socialists were hoping at best to avoid an even more severe debacle than that they suffered in the local elections in March, another challenge that was also lost.
Key to all parties – but notably those of the political mainstream - was the abstention rate, predicted by opinion surveys to be high, and possibly as much as 60%. In the last European elections, held in 2009, turnout was just under 41% in France, although this time it finally proved slightly higher.
Following here: exit polls, reactions and results in France as they came in. All times that indicated here are Central European Time (CET). Latest news sits at the top (please regularly refresh this page for latest news and scroll down for earlier reports).
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02.20: Mediapart's live English-language coverage of the French voting in the European elections now comes to an end, with analysis to follow in the days ahead. The exit polls, in large part confirmed by official results available at this hour, clearly announce a resounding victory for the French far-right Front National party, and a battering for both the conservative opposition UMP party and - above all - for the ruling Socialist Party which has been relegated in all constituencies to a very poor third place. The continent-wide poll has given the conservative parties of all EU member states the majority in the new European Parliament, which will in all likliehood see their European People's Party political group's candidate for the post of European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, elected to the post this autumn (see more here). Europe has never appeared quite so divided in its national voting trends, with the radical-left winning in Greece, the far-right in France, the anti-EU party UKIP tipped to win in Britain, and the conservatives victorious in Germany. But in a national context, the French political establishment witnessed what Prime Minister Valls tonight described as "a seismic shock" that is certain to shake up national debate. While previous upsets of the sort, notably in 1994, suggest that the voting - marred by a turnout estimated at just less than 40% - may not in time prove to be an outright game changer, no one doubts that President François Hollande, who has called an emergency meeting of government on Monday morning, will have anything less than a severe test of nerve in the months ahead.
02.15: Conservative UMP party heavyweight Alain Juppé, a former prime minister and now mayor of Bordeaux, tipped by some observers as a key figure in the party’s predicted imminent future shake-up to appoint a new leader, said on Sunday that the results were “a severe defeat for the [mainstream] Right”. He said “the first consequence to draw is to reunite ourselves”. He said the combined scores of the UMP and the centre-right UDI and Modem parties came to 30% of votes cast, “and if we are capable of recreating conditions for a unity between our political movements, the leading party in France is no longer the Front National.”
01.55: The final, official results of the European Parliament elections in France will be known on Monday. But none of the parties taking part– and even less-so French president François Hollande - contest the indications of the exit polls, confirmed by initial official results announced by the French interior ministry. These show a startling success for the far-right Front National party, a once-marginal movement which has now hammered the mainstream Right into second place – and the ruling Left into a marginal third place.
Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Sunday described the initial indications of the results as “a shock, a seismic shock” which represents “a very grave moment for France and for Europe”.
“This evening, with abstention, still massive, with the surge of the far-right, placed quite clearly at the forefront, with the mediocre score of parties of government, and especially the [parliamentary] majority of the Left, you have expressed a profound skepticism,” Valls said in an evening address to the nation.
“You have repeated your [expression of] disarray, you have said that the problems were still present and that they are too weighty. Problems for finding employment, to make ends meet at the end of the month, problems for our young people, your children, your grandchildren, to get on in life.”
01.28: A French-language website dedicated to reporting European affairs offers a person-by-person profile of France's (probable) elected Members of the European Parliament here.
01.20: Europe-wide, the estimations are that the grouping of the conservative mainstream Right ((European People's Party), has won the European Parliament majority with 211 of the total 751 seats, followed by the grouping representing the continent’s socialist alliance (Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats) with 193. The centrists and liberals (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) are expected to have won 74 seats, the Greens (Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance) 58, and the radical-left (Party of the European Left) 47.
01.15: Claude Bartolone, from the ruling Socialist Party and president (or Speaker) of France’s lower house, the National Assembly, tells TV channel LCP/public Sénat that “Voters wanted to finish with a Europe of deception and austerity”. He said that following the “unhappiness” illustrated during the March local elections, when the socialists were by far the major losers in a debacle for the mainstream parties, French president François Hollande had “answered” the message of the electorate by appointing “a new prime minister and a new government”, and that any future change of government after Sunday’s results “would be a mistake”.
01.00 (Monday): A French interior ministry prediction, after 80% of votes counted by 11.45 p.m., showed the following results (and which largely confirm exit poll predictions) of the share of votes cast:
Front National: 26% (which can give them between 23 and 25 seats in the European parliament)
UMP: 20.6% (between 18 and 21 seats).
Socialist Party and its allies: 13.8% (13 seats).
Centre-right (UDI and Modem parties): 9.7% (between 6 and 8 seats).
Greens (the EELV alliance): 8.7% (6 seats).
Radical-left (Front de Gauche): 6.2% (between 3 to 5 seats).
22.52: Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the defeated UMP candidate for the post of mayor of Paris in local elections in March, also a former minister and spokeswoman for Nicolas Sarkozy during the 2012 presidential election campaign, said ‘the Right must reform itself” calling for a rapprochement with the centrists. “It is together that we would be able to constitute an alternative to a Left that the French despair about, and a far-right that prospers from this despair,” she said.
22.45: President François Hollande declared that “lessons must be learnt” from the election results which he described as a “major event”. The socialists are predicted to have reached their lowest score in European elections since 1994.
22.35: The exit polls showed the Front National in the lead in five out of the the seven regional constituencies on mainland France. It came second in the Greater Paris region and West France, in both cases just behind the conservative UMP candidates.
In each of the seven constituencies, the seats parties obtain in the European parliament are apportioned according to the percentage of scores of their lists of candidates.
In North-West France, the list of FN candidates led by its president Marine Le Pen is credited by exit polls to have garnered 32.6% of votes cast, followed by 17% for the conservative UMP party and just 12.1% for the third-placed Socialist Party and its allies.
In the South-West, where there was a comparatively high turnout, the FN is forecast to lead with 24%, the UMP is given in second place with 18.2% and the socialists third place with 17.1%.
In the West France constituency, the UMP is credited with 19.3%, followed by the FN at 18.7%, the socialists at 15.8%, the centre-right at 13.1% and the Greens at 10.3%
In East France, the FN is credited with 29%, followed by the UMP with 22.9% and the socialists with 13.6%.
Exit polls indicated that in South-East France the list led by Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the FN, garnered 28.8% of the vote, followed by the UMP at 21.7% and the socialists at 12.1% (as in the north west constituency).
The UMP is credited with first place in the Greater Paris region (Ile-de-France) , with 21.3%, followed by the FN at 17.9%, the socialists at 14.2%, the centre-right at 11.8%, and the Greens at 9.3%.
In the central constituency of the Massif Central, the FN is predicted to lead with 24.2%, followed by the UMP with 20.8% and the socialists with 16.2%.
22.15: The Front National score estimated in exit polls carried out by IPSOS-STERIA, at 25.1%, is by far the highest it has ever reached in previous European elections. In 1984 it managed 10.95%, in 1989: 11.73%, in 1994: 10.52%, in 1999: 5.69%, in 2004: 9.81%, and in 2009: 6.34%.
Jean-Marie Le Pen , the party’s founder and father of its current president, Marine le Pen, said on Sunday evening that the FN’s showing was a political “earthquake”, and called for French parliament to be dissolved and proportional representation to be introduced in legislative elections.
22.10: Interior ministry figures estimate turnout at 43% (an abstention rate of 57%), which is slightly lower than opinion poll forecasts (which predicted an average 60% abstention rate).
22.00: Exit polls by IPSOS indicate a greater than expected surge for the far-right Front National party, and a battering for the ruling Socialist Party, while the conservative opposition UMP party has also lost significant ground.
The IPSOS exit polls predict:
Front National: 25.1% share of the vote, which would give them between 23 and 25 seats in the European parliament.
UMP: 20.2% share of the vote, which would give thembetween 18 and 21 seats.
The Socialist Party and its centre-left allies: 14.3% share of the vote, which would give them 13 seats.
Centre-right parties UDI and Modem: 10% share of the vote, which would give them between 6 and 8 seats.
Green EELV alliance: 9% of the vote, which would give them 6 seats.
Radical-left Front de Gauche alliance: 6.4% of the vote, which would give them between 3 and 5 seats.