Estonia elected a new national parliament on Sunday, making the liberal Reform Party of Prime Minister and European Council member Kaja Kallas the strongest force. Reform, which sits with the Renew Europe Group in the EU Parliament, won 31.2% (+2.3), the best result in the party’s history, and Kallas received the highest number of preference votes of any politician in a national parliamentary election.
The only other future parliamentary party that gained votes was Estonia 200, another liberal party that intends to join the Renew Europe Group in the EU Parliament when elected. The party rose from 4.4% to 13.3%, entering the national parliament for the first time.
The right-wing EKRE party, which sits with Matteo Salvini’s ID Group in the EU Parliament, advanced to the second position but declined from 17.8% in 2019 to only 16.1% of the votes. Party leader Martin Helme made unfounded claims of electoral fraud after the e-voting results came in, which made up 51% of all votes cast.
The Centre Party (also part of the Renew Europe Group in the EU Parliament) crashed from 23.1% in 2019 to only 15.3%. The Social Democrats almost repeated their 2019 result, winning 9.3% (-0.5). The centre-right Isamaa party (EPP Group in the EU Parliament) won 8.2%, slightly less than in 2019 (11.4%).
The Greens and the Left missed entering the national parliament. While the Greens won 1.0%, about half of what they got in 2019, the Left, which had cooperated with a right-wing, pro-Putin movement during the election campaign, won its best single-party list result so far – a meagre 2.4%.
The new centre-right Parempoolsed party won 2.3% and failed to win representation. All parties above 2% qualify for public party funding.
Elections also took place in the Austrian region of Carinthia, where the Social Democrats won most of the votes again and can continue its government coalition with the centre-right ÖVP (EPP); however, the party painfully lost about nine points. The first rounds of local elections happened in parallel in Liechtenstein and Lithuania.
(Tobias Gerhard Schminke | EuropeElects)
Source: euractiv.com
