World
Far-right surges in EU vote, topping polls in Germany, France, Austria
Far-right parties have made major gains in the European Union parliamentary elections, delivering humiliating defeats to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer.
In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) took second place in Sunday’s EU election, underscoring the party’s resilience ahead of next year’s federal election.
The Eurosceptic party secured more than 16 percent of the vote, its best-ever showing and a higher share of the ballot than all three parties in Scholz’s coalition.
The conservatives, who are in opposition at the federal level, have been forecast to come first, rising slightly to 29.5 percent.
Germany’s Greens were the biggest losers on Sunday, falling by 8.5 percentage points to 12 percent, punished by voters for the cost of policies to reduce CO2 emissions – in line with expectations for environmental parties across Europe.
Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the third coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), also fared poorly, expected to win 14 percent and 5 percent of the vote respectively, down from 15.8 percent and 5.4 percent in the previous election.
The results are in line with an expected broader shift rightwards for the European Parliament across the bloc of 450 million citizens.
The strong showing comes as Germany’s party landscape undergoes its biggest upheaval in decades, with new populist parties vying to take space vacated by the shrinking mainstream parties that have dominated since reunification in 1990.
This looks set to make it much harder for established parties to form workable coalitions, and is coarsening the political climate, say analysts. The campaign was overshadowed by a surge in violence against politicians and activists.
The AfD was plagued by scandals in recent months, with its lead candidate having to step back from campaigning in May after declaring that the SS, the Nazis’ main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals”.
“We’ve done well because people have become more anti-European,” the AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel said on Sunday.
“People are annoyed by so much bureaucracy from Brussels,” she added, giving a plan ultimately to ban CO2-emitting cars as an example.
In France, the National Rally party of Marine Le Pen dominated the polls to such an extent that Macron immediately dissolved the national parliament and called for new elections, a huge political risk since his party could suffer more losses, hobbling the rest of his presidential term which ends in 2027.
Projected results from France put Le Pen’s far-right National Rally at about 33 percent, with 31 seats in the incoming European Parliament – more than double the score of Macron’s liberals, at 15 percent.
Macron acknowledged the scale of the defeat.
“I’ve heard your message, your concerns, and I won’t leave them unanswered,” he said, adding that calling a snap election only underscored his democratic credentials.
Austria’s far-right Freedom Party gained nearly 26 percent of the vote, topping a nationwide ballot for the first time.
The governing conservative People’s Party (OeVP) picked up 24.7 percent, followed by the Social Democrats with 23.2 percent and the Greens at 10.7 percent.
Chancellor Nehammer pledged to address voters’ concerns ahead of national elections due to be held in Autumn, including cracking down on illegal immigration.
Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni saw her position bolstered after her right-wing populist Brothers of Italy won the most votes, exit polls showed.
Left-wing and green parties had a better showing in the Scandinavian countries, with far-right and populist parties in Sweden, Denmark and Finland seeing their vote shares decline.
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s nationalist Fidesz won the most votes but lost significant ground compared with the 2019 elections.
Fidesz had 44 percent of the vote with nearly 90 percent of votes counted, down from 52 percent.
Still, Orbán claimed victory in a speech to supporters at a party event on Sunday night.
“Today, we defeated the old opposition, the new opposition, and no matter what the opposition will be called the next time, we will defeat them again and again,” he said.
Orbán’s main challenger, Peter Magyar’s Tisza party, picked up about 30 percent of the vote.
Overall across the EU, two mainstream and pro-European groups, the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, remained the dominant forces. The gains of the far right came at the expense of the Greens, who were expected to lose about 20 seats and fall back to sixth position in the legislature.
Reporting from Berlin, Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen said that the Eurosceptic parties appeared set to form a large bloc in the next European Parliament.
“With this very large bloc of far-right parties, there can be an influence on climate policies, for example … Also, [the EU’s] agriculture policies… and migration policies, which is a very important issue here in Germany and in the Netherlands,” she said.
However, Vaessen noted that the far-right parties are not united.
“They have a lot of divisions among themselves and they have been trying to reach out to each other. We’ve seen [France’s] Marine Le Pen, for example, reaching out to [Prime Minister] Giorgia Meloni in Italy,” she said.
“But after tonight, we will have to see how these groups will be formed and what kind of influence they will have.”
Published on •Updated
At Frankfurt am Main’s central station, Deutsche Bahn also warns passengers on board the trains about pickpockets. Travellers leaving the station are confronted with the misery of drug addicts who congregate in Kaiserstrasse and the surrounding streets, whether they like it or not. Police are usually on the scene, but from the outside little seems to have changed in recent years.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
And the figures on violence at Germany’s railway stations are causing headaches for many officials. Since this weekend the federal police have stepped up their presence at stations in ten major German cities. Yet when it comes to crime at stations, Frankfurt does not sit at the top of the list.
The stations particularly affected by crime in 2025 were the central station in Leipzig, with 859 violent offences, the central station in Dortmund with 735 and the central station in Berlin with 654.
Most recently, the fatal attack on a conductor on a regional train in Rhineland-Palatinate last February caused widespread shock. It was followed by a debate about the scale of attacks on Deutsche Bahn staff.
Expert: “No railway station in Germany is a no-go area”
In total, according to police statistics, 27,800 violent offences were committed at railway stations last year. These included 980 recorded knife attacks and more than 2,200 registered sexual offences. Some 5,660 acts of violence were directed against federal police officers. According to the police, the suspected perpetrators were significantly more often non-Germans than Germans.
Criminologist Dirk Baier does describe stations as “hotspots of crime”. But in an interview with WELT the expert also explains that violence at stations is particularly visible precisely because the police presence there is higher and because it is reported on more frequently. “From my point of view there is no major station in Germany that is a no-go area.”
Indeed, directly opposite Frankfurt’s central station many people – including families and women – have no difficulty doing their shopping in the chemists and the supermarket.
Police officers at stations instead of at border controls
The deputy leader of the CDU group in the Bundestag, Günter Krings, wants to improve public safety at stations through technical measures such as more cameras, while at the same time relieving pressure on police officers. Discussions on this are currently taking place within the coalition parties.
The AfD describes Germany’s railway stations as “spaces of fear” and is calling for tougher sentences, more consistent deportations and an increased police presence.
However, the Greens’ domestic policy spokesman, Marcel Emmerich, believes that while video surveillance can be useful, it cannot replace officers on the ground. The government, he says, is deploying thousands of federal police officers for “expensive, pointless and unlawful border controls” instead of strengthening their presence at stations.
Weapons and alcohol bans at stations
As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, weapons bans now apply from Friday to Sunday at Munich’s central station and the Ostbahnhof in the Bavarian capital, as well as at the main stations in Nuremberg, Regensburg and Rosenheim. This means that knives and dangerous tools may not be carried there at weekends. According to SZ, officers can stop, question and search people even without a specific reason.
An alcohol ban has been in force at Cologne’s central station (Hbf) since April; it now also applies to the stations in Bonn, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund and Münster.
Deutsche Bahn has domiciliary rights at its stations and can therefore enforce its own rules there, such as an alcohol ban.
Violence at railway stations is by no means solely a German phenomenon, as the recent knife attack in Winterthur in Switzerland shows.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
English police are facing mounting scrutiny after officers handcuffed an 18-year-old university student as he bled to death following a fatal stabbing, allegedly after believing the attacker’s false claim that he had been the victim of a racist assault.
The case has sparked outrage across Britain, fueled political debate over policing and prompted calls for the release of body-worn camera footage from the responding officers.
Alan Mendoza, executive director and co-founder of the London-based Henry Jackson Society think tank, told Fox News Digital that the case reflected broader failures in British policing culture. “The killing of Henry Nowak shows how far the rot of political correctness has set into the British policing mentality,” Mendoza said.
“The reflex attitude today appears to be to believe any and every claim that mentions racism,” he added. “It clearly trumped actual murder in this case as a dying Mr. Nowak was arrested on the say-so of his Sikh assailant without any facts being established by the officers attending.”
BRITISH POLICE RELEASE DETAILS ON SUSPECTS AFTER ‘SHOCKING’ TRAIN ATTACK, UPDATE ON VICTIMS
Freshman student Henry Nowak was stabbed many times by Vikram Digwa who used an eight inch ceremonial knife in December 2025. Digwa was found guilty of murder last week. (Hampshire police handout.)
Vickrum Digwa, 23, was convicted Thursday at Southampton Crown Court of murdering Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old finance student at the University of Southampton, during a confrontation on Dec. 3, 2025.
Officers arriving at the chaotic scene initially treated Nowak as the suspect after Digwa allegedly claimed he had been racially abused and attacked. Officers handcuffed Nowak before realizing the severity of his injuries. He later collapsed and died at the scene despite attempts to administer first aid, according to Sky News.
Following the verdict, Hampshire Constabulary publicly apologized and referred the case to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), England and Wales’ police watchdog, for investigation. “I’m sorry that he was handcuffed and arrested in the moments before he lost consciousness,” Temporary Deputy Chief Constable Robert France said in a statement reported by Sky News.
Prosecutors told jurors Digwa stabbed Nowak multiple times using a 21-centimeter blade described in court as a Sikh kirpan-style weapon. Digwa claimed he acted in self-defense after being racially abused, but jurors rejected that argument and found him guilty of murder.
The case has since ignited fierce public debate online and in British media over whether police prioritized allegations of racism over basic investigative and medical procedures.
TEXAS PRESS CONFERENCE IN AUSTIN METCALF KILLING DEVOLVES INTO CHAOS OVER TRACK MEET STABBING
Handout photo issued by Hampshire Police of Vickrum Digwa who has been found guilty at Southampton Crown Court of the murder of university student Henry Nowak, who he stabbed to death with a Sikh kirpan ceremonial knife. Digwa told police a “wicked lie” that he was the victim of a racist attack after he stabbed finance student Henry Nowak, from Chafford Hundred, Essex, five times in the incident in Belmont Road, Southampton, on Dec. 3 2025. Issue date: Thursday, May 28, 2026. (Press Association via AP Images)
Speaking on GB News on Friday, Reform UK Member of Parliament Robert Jenrick called for the release of body-worn camera footage if the Nowak family consents.
“The officers chose to prioritize the accusation of racial abuse over saving the life of this young man,” Jenrick said. “I think that was a terrible mistake.”
Jenrick also criticized what he described as a muted response from Britain’s political establishment compared to reactions following the 2020 death of George Floyd in the United States.
“The Prime Minister says absolutely nothing. The Home Secretary says absolutely nothing.”
The killing has also raised concerns about hostility toward Britain’s Sikh community, which Sikh organizations have sought to distance from the crime.
In a public statement issued following the verdict, Sikh community organizations condemned the killing and stressed that the case should not be viewed as representative of Sikhism.
2 JEWISH MEN STABBED IN LONDON ATTACK CLASSIFIED AS TERRORISM
File of a police car in Derbyshire, England. (Derbyshire Constabulary via Facebook)
“Henry’s life has tragically been cut short by a moment of madness by an individual for which there can be no excuses,” the statement said.
The organizations also acknowledged that “the actions of police officers who handcuffed the victim just before he died” had intensified criticism of police and “unnecessarily stirred up community hatred.”
The statement further emphasized that legal protections allowing Sikhs in Britain to carry ceremonial kirpans for religious purposes do not apply if the blade is used violently.
“We understand in this case the weapon that may have been used was not the normal Kirpan worn by fully practicing Sikhs,” the statement read.
Mendoza stressed that Britain’s Sikh community broadly condemned the murder and supported the investigation.
“It’s legal for Sikhs to carry ceremonial knives in the U.K. but they are almost always tiny ones that religious authorities have ordained are sufficient to fulfil the obligation,” Mendoza told Fox News Digital. “He had one of those, plus his [8 inch] blade.”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
A member of the London Met Police stands guard outside Westminster Abbey. (BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images)
He also described Digwa as “a weapons nut,” referencing evidence presented during the trial that prosecutors said showed the defendant had a fascination with knives and weapons.
The IOPC investigation into the officers’ actions remains ongoing. Fox News Digital reached out to Hampshire & Isle of Wight Constabulary for comment but did not receive a response before publication.
-
Health46 seconds agoQuitting smoking could offer a major benefit beyond heart and lung health, study finds
-
Sports4 minutes agoRoman Reigns domesticates Jacob Fatu to retain World Heavyweight Championship at WWE Clash in Italy
-
Technology9 minutes agoQR code email scam targets employee reviews
-
Business16 minutes agoMove over, Grogu. Internet culture soars as ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession’ top the box office
-
Entertainment19 minutes agoReality star Matt Brown of ‘Alaskan Bush People’ is found dead, family confirms
-
Politics34 minutes agoDespite Trump’s recent insistence, in-person voting does exist in Los Angeles
-
Sports46 minutes agoYoshinobu Yamamoto helps Dodgers deliver a birthday win for Dave Roberts
-
World54 minutes ago“Crime hotspots”: Why violence at German stations
