Right-wing extremists and other populists hope for further progress in the EU election in a week.
Here are the winners – but also the losers – in this year's election campaign.
Opinion polls suggest a clear upswing for a range of non-traditional parties in the EU, particularly within the far right. However, whether they will be as strong as some predicted before the election is still unclear.
Here is the situation for the larger populist parties ahead of the election.
In France, Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) has steadily moved forward in recent years, as it has sought to present itself as a more normal party that does not want to leave the EU or the eurozone, but rather to drive change.
The 28-year-old list leader and new party leader, Jordan Bardella, has also gained a star candidate who has melted the hearts of both Frenchmen and Frenchwomen – and may well make the party the largest in the entire EU parliament with around 30 seats.
In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AFD) was on the rise in the winter, but has since lost ground after a series of scandals surrounding Russian influence and Nazi utterances. List leaders Maximilian Krah and Petr Bystron have both had to pause their campaigns and are now fighting to become the second-largest party with around 15 seats.
New left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht is also hoping to attract voters to her side, but is likely to have to settle for a few single seats in the EU parliament.
In Italy, Matteo Salvini's League became one of the largest individual parties in the entire parliament with 34% in the 2019 EU election. Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FDI) was far behind with just 6%.
Now the roles are completely reversed between the two far-right parties, since Meloni as prime minister has led FDI to the top of the polls and the League has fallen to 7-8% in the polls ahead of the election.
The more difficult-to-classify populists in the Five Star Movement (M5S) are consistently around 15-16% in the polls. The question that sparks great curiosity is whether they will seek to join the Greens or a new left-wing group after the election.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders and his Islamophobic PVV had a disastrous election in 2019 and did not win a single seat. Now it is expected to be able to sail on the victory in the domestic parliamentary election in the fall and win up to 10 seats instead.
Other populists who are doing well in their home countries include, for example, the far-right parties FPÖ in Austria, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Chega in Portugal, and the left-wing republican Sinn Féin in Ireland.
Here are the individual parties that won the most seats in the 2019 EU election (with party group in parentheses):
29 seats: CDU/CSU, Germany (conservative EPP) and the Brexit Party, UK (non-grouped)
28: League, Italy (EU-skeptical conservative ID)
26: PIS/SP, Poland (EU-skeptical conservative ECR)
22: National Rally, France (ID)
21: LREM, France (liberal RE) and Alliance '90/The Greens, Germany (environmentalist Gr/EFA)
20: PSOE, Spain (social democratic S&D)
Footnote: The UK left the EU on January 31, 2020, resulting in the remaining countries having to share an additional 27 seats, including one each for Lega, PIS, National Rally, LREM, and PSOE.
Since the members of parliament are free to switch parties and party groups, the situation has changed since then. CDU/CSU has continued to have 29 seats, while, for example, Lega and National Rally have shrunk to 22 and 18 seats respectively.
