With official projections and early results from the European parliamentary elections coming out... it seems European politics is about to become even more fragmented.
Hong Yoo reports.
The projected results for the new European Parliament show significant losses for the two centrist groups: the European People's Party and the Progressive Alliance of Socialist and Democrats. These two groups had previously dominated European politics, but lost out to smaller parties and only picked up a total of 329 seats.
With these two parties losing their joint majority for the first time, the influence of nationalists and populist forces was expected to increase, but instead their surge stalled and rather millions of voters backed pro-EU green and liberal parties.
The greens are predicted to have picked up 20 seats and the liberals 40, while the right-wing nationalists are predicted to have picked up 58 seats and the populists 8 seats.
Once the 9th European Parliament is formed, the 28 leaders of the EU member states will start their discussions on who will be the next president of the European Commission, the bloc's executive arm.
So there will be lots of horse-trading in the next weeks about who gets which top job, and all of the various commissioners need the approval of the European Parliament.
While historically turnout has been relatively low, this year the European Parliament says voters were much more engaged, with polls showing the turnout rate at 50-point-5 percent according to preliminary results.
Over 350 million people across the 28 countries of the European Union were eligible to vote.
Hong Yoo, Arirang News.