Turnout in Hungary has been very high. By 1pm today, 33.14% of eligible voters had cast their ballots, according to the national election office.

In 2019, 24.01% had voted by that time.

The election has pitted Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, against newcomer Tisza, led by former government insider Péter Magyar. Many see the elections as a de facto referendum on both Orbán and the opposition parties that have struggled to challenge him over the past years.

Orbán, who is the EU’s most Kremlin-friendly leader, has focused his election campaign on what he has described as a “peace” platform.

Ahead of the elections, his ruling Fidesz party has run an intense disinformation campaign claiming – without providing proof – that there is a global conspiracy to force Hungary into a direct war with Russia and that Hungary’s opposition is being directed by the west to undermine the national interest.

Lisa O’Carroll

As 21 countries are called to the polls today, experts remain on high alert for a tsunami of disinformation.

In its daily alert, the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) highlighted a hoax circulating in Germany that claims the EU will impose an €80 per month “Ukrainian solidarity tax” on earners starting in August.

It is “an attempt to undermine support for Ukraine and at the same time push negative sentiment toward EU institutions, portraying it as imposing unfair measures on EU citizens,” said the EDMO.

Both the European Commission and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance confirmed there were no such plans.

Migration continues to be another target for disinformation with false claims in Spain that the Socialist party in Brussels, where elections are being held today, only represents Muslim communities.

On Sunday EFE Verifica, reported that about 20% of false claims about migrants in the EU “aimed to criminalise them”, depicting them as violent or perpetrators of crimes.

They used Election24 Check, the first database of fact-checked information for European countries, to analyse 106 false claims in recent weeks.

• In the first European election since Britain left the EU, voters are being asked to elect 720 lawmakers to the world’s only directly elected transnational parliament.

• This year’s ballot is being closely watched as opinion polls forecast significant gains for far-right and anti-establishment parties, which would have far-reaching consequences for the EU’s policy agenda.

• Today will see 21 countries in Europe go to the polls, including Italy which runs its ballot over two days. Among the countries voting today are the EU’s other big three economies: Spain, Germany and France.

• Results of the European parliamentary elections won’t start to pour in until after 11pm CET when the last polls close in Italy. The big reveal will be between 11:15pm and 11:30pm, when we will get provisional results for 24 countries – all but Poland, Italy and Belgium.

• But exit polls for Germany will be published at around 6:15pm CET, giving Europe the first indication of whether the expected surge for the far right materialises.

• Turnout in Hungary was 22.89% at 11am, according to the national election office. That’s up more than 5 points from turnout at the same time in 2019, which stood at 17.16%.

• In the southwest German city of Karlsruhe, two members of the far-right AfD party were reportedly attacked on Saturday by a masked gang with baseball bats. Three people suffered “light injuries” according to authorities, who said five people had been arrested. The attack is the latest in a string of incidents involving violence against German politicians in the lead up to the European elections.

Turnout in Italy was at 25% by around midday and at a booth in Rome, there was a steady flow of people determined to cast their ballots.

Tiziana Capone recalled that just over 78 years had passed since Italian women won the right to vote,

“It’s a duty to use that right,” she said. “We have to vote, because it’s important for us all that Europe is united and I hope it becomes more united and stronger,” she added. Capone, who describes herself as a “non-ideological” centrist voter, said she believes the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, whose party has neofascist roots, is “doing her best. And at least she can speak English …none of the others can.”

Alberta, 40, disagrees. She said she comes from a family of fascists, and recalls her grandfather speaking with admiration about dictator Benito Mussolini. “I think this government is showing similar risks…people are duped into believing they are doing good things, but I have no faith in it or Meloni whatsoever. This is why it’s important to vote today, we have to try to stop this rise.”

Gianni, 55, said: “We’re facing very complicated challenges around the world – the war in Ukraine, in Gaza and then climate change … and I fear it will get worse if the far-right parties get too strong. We have to try to prevent this.”

Angelique Chrisafis

Emmanuel Macron was expected to vote in the northern seaside resort of Le Touquet on Sunday, before returning to Paris for the results.

In Paris, officials at several voting centres reported higher than usual turnout on Sunday morning. By midday, the turnout in the French capital was 16%, according to local authorities, compared to 11.35% for the same period in 2019. Nationwide, the turn-out by midday was slightly higher than for the same period in 2019.

A key question in France will be how Macron’s centrists react if they lag far behind Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally.

Polls in recent weeks estimated the far-right’s Jordan Bardella at around 33%, double the predicted score of Macron’s lead candidate, Valérie Hayer, at around 16%. Le Pen’s far-right has topped the vote twice before in the last two European elections, in 2014 and 2019, but with a much smaller margin. This time, analysts will be assessing the size of the gap between the two parties.

Some centrists in Macron’s camp have stressed that it is very rare in France for the party of a serving president to come first in the European elections – one exception in recent decades was Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-wing UMP party coming top in 2009.

Analysts are also watching scores on the left – the MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, standing for Place Publique and the Socialist party, had slowly risen in polls to potentially rival Hayer’s position. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise party, with a list headed by the MEP Manon Aubry, had been polling at 8%, but said they expected a last-minute boost to a higher score. The Green list, led by the MEP, Marie Toussaint, was polling at around 5%, far lower than in 2019.

When will we start to get results?

Lisa O’Carroll

Results of the European parliamentary elections won’t start to pour in until after 11pm CET when the last polls close in Italy.

The big reveal will be between 11:15pm and 11:30pm, when we will get provisional results for 24 countries – all but Poland, Italy and Belgium.

But exit polls for Germany will be published at around 6:15pm CET, giving Europe the first indication of whether the expected surge for the far right materialises.

Five other countries are in the first wave of exit polls: Austria, Cyprus, Greece, Malta and the Netherlands. An hour later we will get results from Bulgaria and Croatia.

Exit polls or other national estimates for France, where a big win is expected for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, will come in between 8:15pm and 8:45pm CET, when the same will be available for Denmark and Spain.

Poland, Romania and Sweden follow after 9:15pm CET.

Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has cast his vote and called for a huge turnout.

“Let’s all decide between us what kind of future we want for Europe,” he told reporters on Sunday morning.

“It’s worth remembering that the response to the [2008] financial crisis, the social response to the pandemic, the responses to the different economic crises triggered by the war in Ukraine and the war in the Middle East all came from the same capital – which is Brussels.”

He continued: “And that’s why our votes will decide whether the kind of future we have in Europe and in Spain is a future that advances or a future that goes backwards. Do we want a Europe that continues to come together in solidarity to face the challenges ahead, or do we choose a reactionary Europe of cuts and of regression and reaction?”

Sánchez’s opponents, however, have sought to make the vote a referendum on the prime minister’s administration and his style of government. They accuse him of cynicism, hypocrisy and of weakness for offering Catalan separatists a deeply divisive amnesty law in return for helping him back to power after last year’s inconclusive general election.

In recent weeks, the conservative People’s party (PP) and the far-right Vox party have also seized on the fact that Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, is being investigated by a judge over allegations of influence-peddling and corruption to suggest that he is unfit for office.

On Wednesday Sánchez again accused his political opponents of trying to undermine his government and influence the outcome of these elections after a judge investigating the corruption allegations against his wife summoned her to testify five days before polls opened.

The complaint against Gómez was filed by the pressure group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), a self-styled trade union with far-right links that has a long history of using the courts to pursue political targets.

Although prosecutors in Madrid have asked the court to throw out the case for lack of evidence – and a report by the Guardia Civil police force found no indication of criminal activity by Gómez – the investigation is proceeding.

“There is nothing behind this accusation, just an ugly fit-up driven by the far-right groups behind the complaint,” the prime minister said on Wednesday.

Sánchez, who has always maintained his wife’s innocence, added that his political opponents were “trying to use illegitimate methods to achieve what they didn’t manage to do at the polls”.

Speaking after he voted at 11am, the PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, also urged “massive participation” in the elections.

“I urge all Spaniards to go to the ballot boxes optimistically, ambitiously and responsibly to respond to the situation in our country and to [decide] what they want Europe and this great country to be … We’ll keep on working to defend democracy in our country. Today … each of us has the chance to respond to the political situation that Spain’s experiencing, and to [decide] what we want the future of Europe to be.”

Vox’s candidate, Jorge Buxadé, joined other politicians in urging people to get out and vote. He also accused Sánchez of attempting to incite “political violence against what he calls the far right”.

“Spain needs a change of direction and Europe needs a change of direction,” he said. “In short, those who think things in Europe are going perfectly should carry on voting for the parties they always have. Those who think Europe needs a change of direction and that there’s a different way of doing much better in Brussels have only one option – which is Vox.”

Turnout in Hungary was 22.89% at 11am, according to the national election office. That’s up more than 5 points from turnout at the same time in 2019, which stood at 17.16%.

The bump in turnout comes as Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, faces off against newcomer Tisza, a new party led by former government insider Péter Magyar.

Magyar has positioned himself as a centrist and is aiming to challenge the ruling Fidesz party’s dominant position in Hungarian politics. “We are building a country where there is no right, no left – only Hungarian,” he declared at a rally in the capital yesterday.

Fidesz enjoys the support of 50% of decided voters, according to a study published Friday by pollster Medián. Magyar’s Tisza party, meanwhile, stood at 27%.

Angelique Chrisafis

In France, voter turnout at midday was 19.81%, according to the country’s interior ministry.

It’s a slight increase for the same period at the last European election in 2019, when it was 19.26%.

Today sees voters in most EU member states, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland, called to the polls.

It’s the final day of a four-day election cycle that began in the Netherlands on Thursday, offering voters the chance to elect more than 700 members of the European parliament, the world’s only directly elected transnational assembly.

The Guardian’s Jon Henley has this guide to the elections:

Kate Connolly

Tens of thousands of people took to several German cities on Saturday to protest against rightwing extremism.

‘Herz statt Hetze’ (which loosely translates as ‘love instead of rabble-rousing’), ‘Vielfalt ohne Alternative’ (‘Diversity without the Alternatives (AfD)‘), and ‘Menschen Rechte statt Rechte Menschen’ (Human rights, rather than right-wing humans’) were among the banners spotted among participants.

The gatherings were called by the umbrella organisation which brought together a wide-range of civil society groups, under the motto: ‘Stop right-wing extremism’, in Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Leipzig, Chemnitz and other locations.

An estimated 30,000 people took part in a separate demonstration in Hamburg on Saturday evening.

In Leipzig, home of the German Oscar-nominated actress Sandra Hüller, she addressed the crowds, urging them to vote.

“I usually try to remain a bit invisible when I’m not working,” she said. “But today is different. Today there are no excuses anymore…. I am a European.”

She appealed to people “not to let yourselves be contaminated by the raw tone of the right, by the imprecision and the violence in their language, which has just one goal: to destabilise and divide”. She said despite the far-right’s claim to the contrary, “there are no simple solutions”.

“Democracy, co-determination, and co-decision-making, this is strenuous. Thinking is strenuous,” she added, urging people to take their friends and family with them to the polling stations.