While no fewer than thirteen political parties ran in last weekend’s European elections, only five managed to secure a seat in the EU Parliament. Where did it go wrong for Luxembourg’s smaller movements and how do their results compare to previous elections?
With 1.6%, Fokus scored the best result out of all the smaller parties. 22,222 votes were cast in favour of the party lead by former CSV president Frank Engel and former DP MEP Monica Semedo. It was the first attempt of Fokus, as the party did not exist back in 2019 when Europeans last took to the polls.
Nevertheless, compared to last year’s Chamber elections, Fokus clearly failed to improve on their result of 2.49%. Looking at personal votes, Engel did however increase his tally from 7,134 in October to 8,562 on Sunday. Semedo, on the other hand, lost substantially, falling from 50,890 votes in the 2019 European elections to only 4,856 in 2024.
Pan-European party Volt also managed to get over 1% with 14,348 votes in their favour. However, this is somewhat of a blow considering that it is almost less than half the amount of votes that they received in 2019. Daniel Silva was the only candidate running both in 2019 and 2024 and improved from fourth to second place on the list, though he fell from 4,040 to 2,490 votes.
Volt did, however, improve when comparing results to last year’s Chamber elections, where they received only 7,0001 votes, or 0.19%, in the southern and eastern districts.
The Communist Party of Luxembourg received 0.97%, or 13,368 votes, down from 1.14% in 2019. This represents the worst election result for the party, formed in 1921, in a European election. Lead candidate Ali Ruckert received 3,847 votes, down from 4,850 in 2019.
Out of all the smaller parties, the KPL is the only one to hold a position on the local level, with Edmond Peiffer sitting on the Rumelange municipal council.
‘We the People’ received 11,838 votes, or 0.85%, placing them just behind the KPL. So far, the party had only participated with a complete list in the 2023 municipal elections in the capital where they received 0.97%.
In the recent European elections, Jean-Marie Jacoby came out on top with 2,808 votes. A former KPL member, Jacoby received 940 votes in the 2018 Chamber elections and eventually launched ‘We the People’ together with Peter Freitag during the Covid-19 pandemic as a means of protesting sanitary measures and restrictions. Freitag received 1,914 votes, placing him third on the list.
The Conservatives finished in second-to-last place. The self-labelled freedom party received 8,044 votes, or 0.58%. This represents a small improvement from 2019 when the party recorded 0.53%.
Party founder and lead candidate Joe Thein was once again on top of the list, but received fewer votes than five years ago: 1,899 compared to 1,957. Thein, a member of the Alternative Democratic Reform Party (ADR) from 2008 to 2017 and president of the ADR youth faction ‘ADRenalin’ from 2015 to 2017, sat on the Pétange municipal council between 2011 and 2017. He was excluded from the ADR in 2017 as a reaction to a Facebook post he made about then-Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn.
‘Together – the Bridge’ came in last place. The party is the result of an amalgamation of the movements ‘Together’ and ‘The Bridge’, which both highlight diversity. They received 6,172 votes, or 0.45%, in Sunday’s elections, the party’s first attempt.
Lead candidate and party president David Foka, a former member of the Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party (LSAP) and former member of The Greens, received the most votes (1,990). Alexandre Chateau-Ducos was the candidate with the fewest votes in the country with 707 ballots in his favour.
A 14th party had initially intended to run in the European elections, but with 174 out of 250 required signatures, the satirical movement ‘The Party’ failed to cross the threshold of eligibility.
