(VOVworld) – The far-right Front National (FN) topped the EU Parliamentary elections with 25 per cent of the votes, followed by the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) with 20.3 per cent.

Front National’s President Marine Le Pen (Photo: AP)

The Socialist Party (PS) won less than 15 per cent. Nearly 46 million French cast ballots to elect 74 of the European Parliament’s 751 seats. 58 per cent of the electorate did not vote. With this triumph, Front National’s President Marine Le Pen now can fix the date for the 2017 French presidential elections. She intends to ally with other European parties – Austrian Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Belgian Flemish Interest Party (Vlaams Belang), and Dutch Party Geert Wilders. In March’s local elections, the Front National Party took a big step forward by gaining control of another 10 cities thanks to the waning prestige of the Socialist Party and internal rifts in the Union for a Popular Movement party.