The international press is concentrating its coverage of the Dutch EU elections on the loss sustained by Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam PVV, the FD reports.

The British Daily Telegraph sees the defeat of the PVV as a surprising turn of events after earlier polls, and points out that the party lost out to pro-European parties.

Reuters headlines its article: Far right suffers Dutch surprise. It calls the loss of seats (down from five to three) ‘an unexpected defeat’ for Wilders ‘who was leading in the polls for months’.

The French newspaper Le Monde calls the result ‘a bad score for the Dutch extreme right’. The paper thinks Wilders’ chant of ‘do you want more or fewer Moroccans’ is a possible reason.

Future

The Irish Times looks into the future and forecasts problems in forming an anti-Europe faction in the European parliament, something Wilders has been working towards with other far right parties such as the French Front National and the Austrian FPÖ.

The Washington Post quotes news agency AP which writes of a ‘shock loss for the Dutch Euro-sceptics’. It also takes a wider view of the results, writing that ‘the unexpected loss for Wilders’ PVV runs against the trend that anti-Europe parties are gaining power on the continent’.