GREEN parties scored big in this European election, potentially winning 20 or more additional seats in the next European Parliament, according to provisional results yesterday.

This comes on the back of massive climate change protests in recent weeks and months that continued even as voters headed to the polls this weekend.

With almost all votes counted in all 28 member states – mail ballots still needed to be tallied in some places – the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance (EFA) looked set to have 69 seats in the new parliament, 19 more than before, according to official data.

Election forecaster Europe Elects predicted it could even win as many as 25 seats.

Wins in Germany and Finland, but also in more unlikely places like France, helped the Greens to their best showing ever.

In Germany, election results for Die Gruenen went literally off the charts – ARD television, clearly caught off guard, had a graphic showing the party’s results disappearing off the grid, sparking amused reactions on social media.

With 21 percent of votes, Germany’s Greens finished second behind Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU, and ahead of the Social Democrats and far-right Alternative for Germany.

In Finland, Ireland, Austria and Luxembourg, Green parties garnered between 14 and 19 percent of votes. In Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and the U.K., they also made gains compared to 2014, although the result in the U.K. was in part linked to the pro-Remain campaign.

The Green parties’ wins contrasted with massive setbacks for the two biggest blocs in the European parliament – the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) and the Social Democrats – who will no longer have a majority in the 751-seat assembly.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

— In the U.K., the Brexit Party, led by arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage, took home 31.71 percent of the vote. This is almost equivalent to the vote share of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats combined and reflects growing dissatisfaction with traditional U.K. parties. It’s worth noting that the Brexit Party took most of its seats from the U.K. Independence Party, Farage’s previous political vehicle.

— Spain’s Socialist party recorded another strong performance following a general election win in late April, winning 32.84 percent of the vote. Center-right parties, the People’s Party (20.1 percent) and Ciudadanos (12.2 percent), came second and third as Spain bucked the general European trend towards political extremes. Far-right party Vox won just 6.2 percent of the vote.

— Results in France provided further evidence that a predicted surge in support for far-right populist parties did not materialize. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally won with 23.31 percent of the votes, according to the French Ministry of Interior, beating French President Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche alliance on 22.41 percent. However Le Pen’s vote share was a slight decrease compared to 2014, when her Front National party gained 24.86 percent of the vote.

— In Italy, the right-wing Lega Party, led by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, took victory with 33.64 percent of the vote. Euroskeptic Salvini said that he will try to form an anti-EU bloc with Marine Le Pen and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. It’s unclear if that will materialize.

(SD-Agencies)