The European election result was bad for all of Germany"s government coalition parties and they cannot go back to business as usual to win voters back, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said.

"No-one is well advised to simply go back to business as usual. The gains far-right parties made are worrying and should not become normalised. We have to worry about that. You can never get used to it, and it always has to be the task to push them back again”, - said Scholz.

All three parties in Germany’s ruling coalition suffered losses in EU parliamentary elections on Sunday while the far-right Alternative for Germany made solid gains, according to provisional results. Among the coalition partners, the Greens slumped the most, falling to 11.9% from 20.5% in 2019, dealing them a blow ahead of national elections next year. Scholz’s Social Democrats fell to 13.9% from 15.8%, the pro-business Free Democrats dropped to 5.2% from 5.4%.

The conservatives came in first place, as expected, on 30% compared to 28.9% in 2019, while the AfD took second place on 15.9%, up from 11%.

Scholz said he was in favour of making a decision on the EU’s leadership quickly, adding that the European Commission president must rely on a democratic majority of traditional democratic parties in the European Parliament: “There is no reason to take too long with this”.