BRUSSELS -- France's pro-European Union president and the leader of Italy's euroskeptic, far-right movement jockeyed for the role of chief power broker on the continent Monday after elections to the European Parliament.
The loss of moderate seats in the EU legislative body and gains by both far-right and Green parties portended difficult discussions on key issues to come, including immigration, a major trade agreement with the United States, global warming, regulation of the tech industry and Britain's departure from the EU.
The outcome of the elections is already setting off a power struggle.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron's party narrowly lost to the French far-right, led by Marine Le Pen. Macron, whose party is poised to secure 21 seats while Le Pen's National Rally will hold 22, spent Monday amassing allies ahead of a summit today in Brussels, working to build a durable pro-EU coalition.
In Italy, Matteo Salvini's right-wing League party won a third of the country's vote and is poised to become one of the biggest single parties in the European Parliament, with 28 seats in the 751-seat legislature. But his ambitions reached higher.
By midday, he had already spoken with Le Pen; Hungary's anti-immigration prime minister, Viktor Orban; and Nigel Farage, leader of the U.K.'s Brexit Party. Salvini was promising to draw together a contradiction in terms -- an international group of nationalists.
"We want to be a group that has at least 100 members and has the ambition to be at least 150, if everyone can overcome jealousies, sympathies, antipathies. To create an alternative, you play. You don't do it by turning up your nose," he said.
The center-right European People's Party and the center-left Socialists and Democrats have dominated the legislative body with a combined majority since direct elections were first held in 1979. With results still rolling in, the European People's Party was on track to secure 180 seats, down from 217 five years ago. The Socialists were expected to win 145, down from 187.
Riding what they called Europe's "green wave," environmentalist parties seeking action on climate change made strong gains, notably in Germany. Another mainstream formation of two political parties, the free-market ALDE group backed by Macron, saw its stake in the Parliament rise to 109 seats, from 68 in 2014.
For the legislative body to choose a European Commission president and ultimately pass legislation, new and uncomfortable alliances must be forged, and nearly all will require some combination of ALDE and the Greens.
Meanwhile, Macron held a flurry of meetings ahead of the dinner summit today where the EU countries' presidents and prime ministers will take stock of the election results.
He started with Spain and was to hold talks with the leaders of Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
"The future majority of the European Parliament goes through us, without question. There isn't one without us," Pascal Canfin, one of the leading candidates from Macron's party, told France Inter radio.
In Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right movement also lost ground, leaders of the country's governing parties met to weigh the fallout from their worst post-World War II showing in a nationwide election.
"We are facing a shrinking center," European People's Party candidate Manfred Weber said. "From now on, those who want to have a strong European Union have to join forces."
Senior figures from the party hold the top posts in the EU's three main institutions: European Parliament president; head of the EU's powerful executive commission; and European Council president, who chairs summits of European presidents and prime ministers.
Just over 50% of the EU's more than 400 million voters cast ballots.
While real power in Europe remains in the hands of the 28 member states, the European Parliament's influence has grown. It has helped improve air flight safety in Europe, cut down on plastics use, end mobile telephone roaming charges inside the bloc, boost data privacy, and cut carbon dioxide emissions from cars.
Steve Bannon, who helped propel Donald Trump's populist campaign to the White House, was in Paris on Monday to celebrate the victories of like-minded parties in Europe and to gird for the battle ahead.
"You see the trend, and it's definitely nationalist versus globalist," he said. He predicted the far-right will prevail by grinding the European Parliament to a halt. "Every day will be like Stalingrad," he said.
BREXITEERS EMBOLDENED
In Britain, the anti-EU Brexit Party was triumphant, prompting Farage to say the result should push the U.K. to leave the EU without a divorce deal.
Results announced Monday showed the Brexit Party had won 29 of Britain's 73 EU seats that were up for grabs, receiving almost a third of the votes. On the pro-EU side, the Liberal Democrats took 20% of the vote and 16 seats -- a significant increase from the single seat it won in the previous EU elections in 2014.
The Labor Party came in third with 14.1%, followed by the pro-European environmentalist Greens, who captured nearly 12.1%. Britain's governing Conservative Party, which was unable to deliver an EU departure in March as was planned, finished in fifth, with under 10% of the vote.
"The Conservative Party are bitterly divided, and I consider it to be extremely unlikely that they will pick a leader who is able to take us out on the 31st October," Farage said, referring to the new Brexit deadline.
In the race to replace Theresa May, who on Friday announced that she would step down as British prime minister, the issue of whether to back a "no-deal" Brexit -- like Farage does -- is now dominant. At least eight Conservative members of Parliament have publicly declared they will compete for the top job.
Boris Johnson, a Conservative Party lawmaker and a top candidate to become the next prime minister, called the European elections a "crushing rebuke." Writing in his weekly column in the Daily Telegraph, he said: "The message from these results is clear. If we go on like this, we will be fired: dismissed from the job of running the country."
May tweeted that the "very disappointing" results showed the "importance of finding a Brexit deal, and I sincerely hope these results focus minds in Parliament."
Information for this article was contributed by Lori Hinnant, Lorne Cook, Mike Corder, Colleen Barry, Sylvie Corbet, Jill Lawless, Geir Moulson and Gregory Katz of The Associated Press; and by Karla Adam of The Washington Post.
A Section on 05/28/2019