The 2019 European Parliament election in Germany was held on 26 May 2019, electing the 96 members of the national Germany constituency to the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

. Both the CDU/CSU and SPD suffered major losses, while the Greens became the second largest party in a national-level election for the first time in German history.

Background

The 2019 European Parliament election was first national election to be held in Germany since the 2017 federal election, in which Chancellor

Angela Merkel Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German retired politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She is the only woman to have held the office. She was Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and Leade ...

's ruling coalition between the Christian Democrats and

Social Democrats Social democracy is a social, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achieving social equality. In modern practice, s ...

suffered major losses, while the right-wing,

Eurosceptic Euroscepticism, also spelled as Euroskepticism or EU-scepticism, is a political position involving criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. It ranges from those who oppose some EU institutions and policies and seek refor ...

party

Alternative for Germany Alternative for Germany (, AfD, ) is a Far-right politics in Germany (1945–present), far-right,Far-right: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Right-wing populism, right-wing populist and National conservatism, national-conservative p ...

(AfD) entered parliament in third place. In 2018, the Greens and the AfD made large gains in state elections in

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

and

Hesse Hesse or Hessen ( ), officially the State of Hesse (), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt, which is also the country's principal financial centre. Two other major hist ...

, with the Greens moving into second place in each, whilst the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats each suffered 10+ point swings. Federal polling saw the Greens take a consistent lead over the SPD since October.

Electoral threshold

Since the

2014 European Parliament election The 2014 European Parliament election was held in the European Union (EU) between 22 and 25 May 2014. It was the 8th parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979, and the first in which the European political parties field ...

, Germany does not have a formal threshold of the vote share required in order for a party to win an EP seat. 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 with the Webster/Sainte-Laguë method. Although the European Council had recommended that countries with greater than 35 MEPs should introduce a threshold between 2–5%, the German government abandoned its plans for a 2% threshold in November 2018.

Opinion polls

Graphical summary

Federal level

By state

Baden-Württemberg

Bavaria

Berlin

Hesse

Rhineland-Palatinate

Saarland

Results

Results by state

Results for each party by state.

Maps

File:Europawahl 2019 in Deutschland – Vorläufiges Ergebnis der CDU,CSU (%).svg, CDU/CSU vote File:Europawahl 2019 in Deutschland – Vorläufiges Ergebnis der GRÜNEN (%).svg, Green vote File:Europawahl 2019 in Deutschland – Vorläufiges Ergebnis der SPD (%).svg, SPD vote File:Europawahl 2019 in Deutschland – Vorläufiges Ergebnis der AfD (%).svg, AfD vote File:Europawahl 2019 in Deutschland – Vorläufiges Ergebnis der DIE LINKE (%).svg, Linke vote File:Europawahl 2019 in Deutschland – Vorläufiges Ergebnis der FDP (%).svg, FDP vote File:Europawahl 2019 in Deutschland – Vorläufiges Ergebnis der PARTEI (%).svg, PARTEI vote File:Europawahl 2019 in Deutschland – Vorläufiges Ergebnis der FREIEN WÄHLER (%).svg, FW vote

Post-poll alliance

Elected MEPs

Notes

References

{{German elections

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

European Parliament elections in Germany 2019 elections in Germany