Eurosceptics Gain Ground in European Parliament

Unlike Bulgaria, where the nationalist parties suffered a crushing defeat in the European elections, throughout the rest of the EU they are gaining ground. 

The French National Front and UK Independence Party both performed strongly, while the three big centrist blocs in parliament all lost seats.

This prompted French Prime Minister Manuel Valls to call the results “political earthquake”. 

The provisional results, based on exit polls show that Marine Le Pen's party, the National Front, wins the elections with 25% of the votes and will send 25 MPs to the European Parliament, which is a dramatic increase from the three seats they won in 2009. 

"The people have spoken loud and clear," Marine Le Pen told cheering supporters at the party headquarters in Paris, quoted by BBC. "They no longer want to be led by those outside our borders, by EU commissioners and technocrats who are unelected. They want to be protected from globalisation and take back the reins of their destiny."

In the UK, quite expectedly, the victory went to the eurosceptic anti-immigrant party UKIP, with 27.5% of the votes. “The inevitability of European integration ends tonight,” UKIP leader Nigel Farage said. He called the UKIP victory “an earthquake because never before in the history of British politics has a party seen to be an insurgent party ever topped the polls in a national election.” 

In Denmark The far-right Danish People's party (DPP) triumphed in the European elections, winning Denmark's biggest share of the vote. The DPP, which had campaigned to reclaim border controls and curb benefits to other EU citizens living in Denmark, won nearly 27% of the vote and doubled its number of MEPs from two to four.

In Germany...