The first major exit polls coming out of the European Union parliamentary elections suggest that the hard right will rise in the legislature despite a series of scandals in Germany, the bloc’s biggest nation.

The exit poll in Germany indicated that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) rose to 16.5%, while the governing coalition led by Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost, falling to 14%.

The combined result for the three parties in the German governing coalition barely topped 30%, with the Greens taking heavy losses.

It comes on the heels of major gains for the far right in the Netherlands, where the party of Geert Wilders is in a neck-and-neck race with a Socialist-Green alliance.

Even though polling will continue in Italy until late in the evening and many of the 27 member states have not yet released any projections, the indications confirmed what earlier surveys and analysis had predicted: the EU’s massive exercise in democracy is expected to shift the bloc to the right and redirect its future.

The war in Ukraine, migration, and the impact of climate policy on farmers are some of the issues weighing on voters’ minds as they cast ballots to elect 720 members of the European Parliament.

Surveys suggest that mainstream and pro-European parties will retain their majority in parliament, but they will lose seats to hard right parties such as those led by Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Marine Le Pen in France.

That would make it harder for Europe to pass legislation and could at times paralyse decision-making in the world’s biggest trading bloc.

“I do hope that we will manage to avoid a shift to the right and that Europe will somehow remain united,” voter Laura Simon said in Berlin.

EU legislators have a say in issues from financial rules to climate and agriculture policy.

They approve the EU budget, which bankrolls priorities including infrastructure projects, farm subsidies and aid delivered to Ukraine.

And they hold a veto over appointments to the powerful EU commission.

These elections come at a testing time for voter confidence in a bloc of some 450 million people.

Over the last five years, the EU has been shaken by the coronavirus pandemic, an economic slump and an energy crisis fuelled by the biggest land conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

But political campaigning often focuses on issues of concern in individual countries rather than on broader European interests.

Sunday’s voting marathon winds up a four-day election cycle that began in the Netherlands on Thursday.

An unofficial exit poll there suggested that Mr Wilders’ anti-migrant hard right party would make important gains in the Netherlands, even though a coalition of pro-European parties has probably pushed it into second place.

Casting his vote in the Flanders region, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency until the end of the month, warned that Europe is “at a crossroads” and “more under pressure than ever”.

Since the last EU election in 2019, populist or far-right parties now lead governments in three nations – Hungary, Slovakia and Italy – and are part of ruling coalitions in others including Sweden, Finland and, soon, the Netherlands.

Polls give the populists an advantage in France, Belgium, Austria and Italy.

The first official results will be published after the last polling stations in the 27 EU nations close in Italy at 11pm (2100 GMT), but a clear picture of what the new assembly might look like will only emerge on Monday.