European elections, Labour-Greens in the Netherlands ahead of Wilders

BRUSSELS - The first numbers of the European elections 2024 come from the Netherlands, the first country to call citizens physically to the polls yesterday. They are exit polls - those circulated by Ipsos for the broadcaster NOS, since no result, not even a preliminary one, can be made known before Sunday evening; but they deny an overwhelming advance of the right, which here has the face of Geert Wilders, the anti-Islam leader of the PvP, already winner of the last general election.

According to exit polls, therefore, the PvP would gain MEPs compared to 2019 (it would elect seven as opposed to only one then, an unprecedented result), but it would be beaten by the Labourite-Greens ticket led by former EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans, which would get eight MEPs (one less than in 2019). In the parliamentary elections in November, however, the PVP had won by a wide margin. The other parties are much more distant: four seats to the liberal-conservatives of the VVD (outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte's party), three to the Christian Democrats and progressive liberals of the D66. Two seats to the Farmers' Movement and one each to Pieter Omtzigt's centrists, Wilders' government allies, and to the Forum for Democracy led by populist leader Thierry Baudet (he had four in the previous legislature).

"We big winners," says Wilders, who was fiercely anti-European in the past, to the point of including 'Nexit', the Dutch exit from the EU, in his programme. Wilders has in recent times corrected his stance, aiming rather at a strengthening of his presence in Brussels to fight the EU from within, at least those aspects that in his view take too much away from national sovereignty. A position, the latter, common to other parties in his group at the Europarliament, Identity and Democracy, to which the League and the French Rassemblement National belong. This was confirmed by his statements yesterday: 'We must have a strong presence in the European Parliament,' he said, 'and make sure that, if necessary, we are able to change the European guidelines to be responsible for our immigration and asylum policy.

The turnout, estimated at 44% (the figure is not final) is slightly up from 41 five years ago.

The Dutch vote, the first test for the 370 million voters called to the polls across Europe between now and Sunday, also had to deal with a cross-EU threat: that of hackers. The pro-Russian hacker collective assembled under the name NoName057 had announced actions against the Internet infrastructure in Europe to coincide with the start of voting, and several Dutch parties have in fact denounced distributed denial of service (Ddos) attacks, demonstration actions that paralyse Internet sites. Attacks on Dutch entities such as the Ministry of Justice and the Amsterdam public transport company Gvb have been claimed.