(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 19 - In a remarkable year for elections, nearly half of the world's population has been called to the polls, including in eight out of the ten most populous countries. In Europe, the elections for the European Parliament took place in June and a number of national elections have been held across the continent.
    Punishment vote.
    2024 has been an electoral year of global dimensions, with presidential and legislative elections in 74 countries and results favouring a range of political preferences.
    However, some common denominators could be identified, such as an average rise in participation and a general predominance of the "punishment vote", a tendency to penalise the parties in government at the polls.
    Results marked a case of firsts for some countries: Mexico and North Macedonia, for example, saw their first ever female presidents take office this year. Romania saw its presidential election annulled after the first round, also a historic first.
    European Elections - a tilt to the right.
    The European elections in June, one of the major global elections of 2024, drew a new European Parliament more tilted to the right, reflecting a more conservative tendency in many countries of the European Union. It also gave rise to a European Commission more dominated by the centre-right conservative European People's Party (EPP) than ever before.
    The European Centre for Populism Studies indicates in a recent report that no fewer than 60 populist parties from 26 EU member states obtained representation in the European Parliament in the June elections, while in 2019 the numbers stood at 40 in 22 countries.
    The consolidation of the populist right was confirmed in the European elections and in national elections in 2024 in Europe, where more and more far-right parties are part of coalitions, as in the Netherlands, or constitute an important weight in the balance of power.
    According to the report, the populist right has established itself in practically all member states and has performed particularly well in countries such as France, Germany, Austria, Romania and the Netherlands.
    An annulment, a petition for one, snap elections and political turmoil.
    In a historic first, Romania's election has been annulled amid reports of Russian interference in the election process in early December. In Bulgaria, citizens were asked to vote for the seventh time in just four years and the two largest EU economies - Germany and France - have also seen their share of political turmoil.
    Romanians recently went to the polls to vote in the first round of presidential elections which pro-Russian Calin Georgescu won against all odds. Following the outcome, the entire electoral process was - controversially - annulled by the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) on December 6, two days before the second round of voting. Voting abroad had already started.
    Intelligence services reported that Romania was "a target for aggressive Russian hybrid actions" and the court argued that the entire election process had been flawed. Voters were said to be misinformed in an electoral campaign before the election, according to the CCR. One candidate benefitted from aggressive promotion which circumvented election rules as well as through abusive exploitation of social media platform algorithms.
    Bulgarians saw their country's sixth and seventh parliamentary elections within four years in 2024. Government-forming negotiations are ongoing. While pro-European coalitions GERB-UDF and CC-DB remain the two largest political forces, far-right party Vazrazhdane came third standing at over 13 percent and less than one percent short of CC-DB. The party also made its debut in the European Parliament after the June elections with three MEPs joining the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations group.
    In early November, Bulgaria's Constitutional Court opened a case contesting the legality of the election of MPs in more than 50 voting sections in the October elections. The petition, brought by members of the former National Assembly, highlighted alleged violations that took place during the voting process, including vote buying, rigged vote counts, transfer of votes from one party to another, and lack of the mandatory video surveillance of the vote count.
    In France, political instability in the EU's second-largest economy followed early parliamentary elections called by French President Emmanuel Macron in June. This came after the far-right scored high in the European elections. While the far-right National Rally (RN) won the first round in the parliamentary elections, it suffered a defeat in the second round, hobbled by electoral pacts between the left and Macron's centrists. On December 13, Macron named centrist François Bayrou as prime minister, handing him the daunting task of hauling France out of months of political crisis.
    He was appointed shortly after parliament ousted former prime minister Michel Barnier's government in a historic no-confidence vote following a standoff over an austerity budget. Bayrou is the sixth prime minister of Macron's mandate and France's fourth prime minister of 2024.
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    (The content is based on news by agencies participating in the enr, in this case AFP, Agerpres, BTA, dpa, EFE, HINA, MIA).
    (ANSA).