Tehran- European parliamentary elections will be held shortly. This election has an important role in determining the future of the European Union and the Eurozone. The dissatisfaction of European citizens from the traditional parties is a matter of concern to European officials such as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French President Emanuel Macroen. Here are some news and polls about the European Parliamentary elections:

News worrying for the French president

As Reuters reported, The party of far-right leader Marine Le Pen will top the upcoming European Parliament elections with 22 percent of the vote, just ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s REM party, an Ipsos poll released on Sunday. It was the first time Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) - formerly the National Front - overtook Macron’s REM in an Ipsos survey ahead of the EU election this year, although other, daily polls have shown the RN in pole position before.EU elections will be held on May 26 in France.

The poll of 1,500 people was conducted on May 2-3, after Macron announced a series of proposals, including tax cuts worth 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion), in a bid to appease the “yellow vests” anti-government protest movement.

Macron’s REM party would obtain 21.5 percent of the vote, the Ipsos poll for France Television and Radio France showed. On April 18-22, 23 percent of the people polled said they would vote for REM, against 22 percent for RN.

Macron is facing the biggest challenge of his presidency yet in the “yellow vest” protests, which started nearly six months ago over the high cost of living but spread into a broader movement against the former investment banker’s pro-business reform drive. Dissatisfaction over slow economic growth, security threats posed by Islamist militants and a backlash against migration across open EU borders have boosted support for nationalists in many member states. The RN and other eurosceptic anti-immigration parties in other EU states are planning to join forces after the EU parliamentary election.

EPP still the biggest group after EU elections

The center-right is set to remain the biggest group in the EU legislature after elections in May that should also show a surge in seats for the far-right, a survey by the European Parliament showed on Monday (18 February).

The German Christian Democrat CDU/CSU alliance led by Chancellor Angela Merkel would remain the biggest single party with 29 seats, but only just ahead of Italy’s League, the far-right group now in government in Rome.

Its 27 seats are a mark of how the elections will reflect a strengthening of nationalist sentiment against established pro-EU movements across Europe.

While traditional parties are set to retain a dominance that would allow a continuation of the broad centrist majority coalition that has tended to support legislation from the EU executive, gains of about 40% for radicals on the right, to 14% of seats, may introduce more policy uncertainty.

The European People’s Party (EPP), to which Merkel belongs, would take 183 of the 705 seats, or 26%, in the new chamber. That is down from 29 percent at present, according to the compilation of national polling data from the 27 member states. It was published by the assembly’s staff on Monday.

That would outstrip the 135 seats for the center-left Socialists and Democrats, whose share would drop six points to 19%, partly due to the loss of British seats after Brexit as the parliament slims down from a total of 751 seats.

Britain’s ruling Conservative party does not sit with the EPP. Their departure would hit the European Conservatives and Reformists, dropping that group from third place to fifth — although parliamentary officials also expect the voting to usher in a major reshuffle of alliances on the floor, making it difficult to forecast group alignments in the new chamber.

The two far-right eurosceptic groups among the eight in the current parliament would see their share rise to 14% from 10%, despite the loss of Brexit campaigners the UK Independence Party. That reflects gains for Italy’s League, adding 21 seats, Germany’s AfD, gaining 11, and Marine Le Pen’s French National Rally, which would add six seats if polls hold.

However, realignments of existing groups are likely after voting ends on 26 May and before the new parliament sits on 2 July as national parties seek allies that fit their policies and can leverage their strength with funding and committee posts. Italy’s 5-Star movement, in government with the League, sits now with UKIP but has looked at joining groups further left in the chamber. The polls suggest it could gain eight seats to 22 in May, but those may not, in fact, bolster the far-right. There are also question marks over the alignment of some 24 seats for Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, often hostile to Brussels, as its ECR allies the British Conservatives depart.

also unclear are the 18 French seats which polls suggest President Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche movement may win. Adding them to the centrist ALDE, home to some Macron allies and which shares Macron’s strongly pro-EU line, would give ALDE 93 seats, making it easily the third biggest bloc. But Macron has been wary of confirming which alliances he will make as he looks to use the May elections to resist eurosceptic forces.

One consequence of uncertainty over the make-up of the new parliament — which might also be upset by a delay to Brexit — could be a delay in forming the new executive.

National leaders should nominate a successor to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in late June. Lawmakers should then confirm the nominee in July so that a new Commission of nominees from all 27 member states is in place on 1 November. Given the summer break, that is a fairly tight timetable. A demand by Parliament that leaders nominate a lead candidate from one of the winning parties could also cause more wrangling. Juncker and his team would stay on if there were such a delay.

Also, Reuters stated that  A new Danish far-right party that wants Islam banned and hundreds of thousands of Muslims deported could win seats in Denmark’s parliament in an upcoming election, an opinion poll showed on Monday. The party ‘Stram Kurs’, which means Hard Line, was founded in 2017 by lawyer Rasmus Paludan who first came to public attention by posting anti-Islam YouTube videos. His stunts have included publicly burning the Koran, sometimes wrapped in bacon, in what he calls a tribute to free speech.

A Voxmeter poll published on Monday showed that Hard Line would win 2.4 percent of the vote, thereby clearing the 2 percent barrier required to enter the Danish parliament. It gave its margin of error as a maximum of 2.7 percentage points.

Two other polls released over the past week have also shown the new party entering parliament, giving it between 2.7 percent and 3.9 percent of the vote. Such an outcome would be a blow to Denmark’s biggest populist party, the Danish People’s Party (DF), which has been part of the political establishment in Denmark for decades and used to be the toughest on immigration. Hard Line gathered the roughly 20,000 voter signatures needed to contest the parliamentary election, which must be held by June 17 at the latest.

In April Danish police arrested 23 people after unrest caused by a demonstration held by the Hard Line leader. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, leader of the center-right Liberal Party, condemned the far-right demonstration. It is unclear whether mainstream parties would cooperate with Hard Line if it does win parliamentary seats.

Earlier this year a court handed Paludan a 14-day conditional jail sentence for racism toward a spokeswoman for the Black Lives Matter movement. He has appealed the sentence and denies any wrongdoing.