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2024 European Parliament election in Germany

The 2024 European Parliament election in Germany was held on 9 June 2024. It was the tenth parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979, and the first European Parliament election after Brexit. The election saw the CDU/CSU slightly increase its vote share, while all three parties comprising the government — the SPD, the Greens and the FDP — earned fewer votes than five years ago, with the Greens in particular suffering especially high losses. Conversely, the far-right AfD surged in both votes and seats, finishing second. There was a stark regional disparity: The AfD won at least a plurality in all but six districts in former East Germany: (Potsdam and Potsdam-Mittelmark in Brandenburg, the cities of Erfurt, Jena and Weimar as well as traditionally Catholic Eichsfeld in Thuringia). The newly formed left-populist party Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht also attracted a significant number of voters, with its support also being highest in the former East German states.

Background

The 2024 European Parliament election was the first national election to be held in Germany since the 2021 federal election, in which former Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats CDU-CSU lost to the Social Democratic Party (SPD) led by Olaf Scholz who formed a "traffic light coalition" with the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Alliance 90/The Greens.

Electoral threshold

Since the 2014 European Parliament election, Germany does not have an overriding threshold of the vote share required in order for a party to win an EP seat — unlike the 5% threshold in national elections. This has allowed a number of smaller parties to gain representation, since they only have to reach about 0.5% of the vote share needed to get their first seat under the Webster/Sainte-Laguë method.

Germany is entitled to elect 96 Members of the European Parliament.

Although the European Council had recommended that countries with more than 35 MEPs should introduce a threshold between 2% and 5%, the German government abandoned its plans for a 2% threshold in November 2018. In 2022, the government decided to introduce a 2% threshold, but this will not yet apply in the 2024 election. In 2019, the de facto threshold for a seat was around 0.7% of the vote.

Outgoing delegation

The table shows the detailed composition of the German seats at the European Parliament as of 12 March 2024.

Parties campaigning for election

Political parties and other political associations may submit lists for the European elections. The lists must be submitted by the 83rd day before the election. Nationwide lists must be signed by 4,000 eligible voters, state lists by 1 per thousand, but not more than 2,000 eligible voters of the respective state (section 9 (5) EuWG). Parties that have been represented in the Bundestag, a regional parliament or the European Parliament with at least five members since its last election are exempt from the obligation to submit supporting signatures. These are (sorted by election results 2019):

The following other parties are currently represented in the European Parliament with one MEP each:

The federal lists of the following other parties and political associations were accepted:

Controversies

Attacks on election campaigners

In the last week of April 2024, campaign workers from the Greens, Volt and Left Party were attacked and in some cases injured while putting up posters.

On 3 May 2024, Matthias Ecke (SPD) was attacked while putting up posters for the 2024 European elections in Dresden. He suffered a fracture to his eye socket and had to undergo surgery. State security took over the investigation, as it was assumed that the attack was politically motivated. Shortly before this, a campaign worker for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen had already been attacked at the same location while putting up posters. On 5 May, a 17-year-old turned himself in and admitted to the attack on Ecke. The three other suspects were then also identified. After the incident in Dresden, the alliances "Zusammen gegen Rechts" and "Wir sind die Brandmauer Dresden" called for demonstrations in Dresden and Berlin on 5 May 2024. In Dresden, 3,000 participants gathered to show solidarity after the attack; the demonstration was held under the slogan "Violence has no place in our democracy".

On 4 May 2024, Holger Kühnlenz, an AfD member of the Lower Saxony state parliament, was pelted with eggs in Nordhorn and slightly injured by a punch to the face. In addition, an AfD election campaign stand in Dresden was damaged.

On 5 June 2024, Heinrich Koch, an AfD local council candidate was injured with a knife in Mannheim when "confronting poster vandals." Another knife-related attack took place in Mannheim a few days earlier.

SS AfD Comments

In a May 2024 interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica AfD Maximilian Krah argued that not all members of the Waffen-SS should be judged as criminals, citing the example of Günter Grass, a former Nobel Prize winner for literature and member of the Waffen-SS, and added “I would never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal. Among the 900,000 SS, there were also many peasants: there was certainly a high percentage of criminals, but not only that”. The interview was said to have caused a further decline in already strained relations between the AfD and the French National Rally who both sit within the Identity and Democracy group. In response to Krah's statements and allegations of Chinese influence on the AfD, members of the National Rally followed by Italy's Lega and the Danish People's Party announced they would part ways with the AfD and cease formal collaboration with the party after the 2024 European Parliament election.

Opinion polling

Federal level

Regional polls

Bavaria

East Germany

West Germany

Results

The larger map denotes the results by districts and cities, while the smaller shows results in 16 states, including three city-states.

Results by state

The AfD and the BSW overperformed drastically in the former East Germany, except for Berlin, where the Greens secured the first place, albeit with 8.2% less than in 2019. Overall, the AfD got the highest vote totals in all five former East German states, while the Union secured pluralities in all eight non-city-states to the west of the former border. In addition to Berlin, the Greens also maintained a plurality in the port city-state of Hamburg, though at a 9.9 percentage points lower level than in 2019, while the SPD came first in Bremen, though with 3% less of the vote than in 2019.

Results for each party by state.

Notes

References

Text submitted to CC-BY-SA license. Source: 2024 European Parliament election in Germany by Wikipedia (Historical)

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