Centrist politician Ewa Kopacz, who was prime minister from 2014 to 2015, was supported by 187,866 voters on Sunday.
Ewa Kopacz. Photo: PAP/Wojciech Olkuśnik
Meanwhile, conservative Beata Szydło, who served as head of government from 2015 to 2017, won 285,336 votes, the third-highest number nationwide.
In the previous EU elections in 2018, Szydło garnered an unprecedented 524,951 votes, the most anyone in Poland has ever won in elections to the European Parliament.
Beata Szydło. Photo: Piotr Podlewski/Polskie Radio
Two other former Polish prime ministers, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz and Marek Belka, failed to retain their seats in the European Parliament.
Cimoszewicz, who headed a leftist-led government from 1996 to 1997, won 52,828 votes on Sunday, down from 217,063 in 2018, while Belka, who was Poland's prime minister from 2004 to 2005, claimed 56,410 votes, compared with 180,076 in 2018.
Jerzy Buzek, a former Polish prime minister who served as president of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2012, decided against seeking re-election as a European lawmaker after serving 20 years in the EU legislature.
Jerzy Buzek. Photo: PAP/Paweł Supernak
Instead, several former Polish government ministers are set to switch Warsaw for Brussels after successfully running for the EU parliament.
These include Borys Budka, who until recently served as minister for state assets and who garnered a record 334,842 votes, more than any other Polish candidate in the European election.
Borys Budka won the most votes of all Polish candidates for the European Parliament in the June 9 ballot. Photo: Polish Radio/PR1
Poles chose a total of 53 Eurodeputies from among more than 1,000 candidates when they went to the ballot box on June 9.
Image: Polish Press Agency (PAP)
Thirty-two of the Polish MEPs are new to the European Parliament, while 21 have already served as Euro-MPs, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
One of the first-time MEPs, Grzegorz Braun, is a controversial politician representing Poland's far-right Confederation party. In April, Polish prosecutors charged him with "insulting a group of people on religious grounds."
The charges were brought after Braun disrupted a Jewish event in the Polish parliament in December last year, putting out Hanukkah candles with a fire extinguisher.
Justice Minister Adam Bodnar told the media at the time that prosecutors would ask the lower chamber of the Polish legislature to lift Braun's parliamentary immunity.
In Sunday's ballot, Braun received 113,746 votes, the most among the candidates fielded by his anti-European party, private broadcaster TVN24 reported.
Sunday's vote, which ended in a win for Poland's governing centrist-liberal Civic Coalition (KO), was a key test for the country’s political parties ahead of presidential elections next year.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk's pro-European Civic Coalition won 37.06 percent of the vote and secured 21 seats in the new European Parliament, ending a decade of uninterrupted electoral victories for the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which governed Poland from 2015 to 2023.
The PiS party garnered 36.16 percent of the vote and secured 20 European Parliament seats, the National Electoral Commission said.
An exit poll had pointed to a wider gap between the Civic Coalition and its arch-rival.
The anti-European Confederation party finished third in Sunday’s elections with 12.08 percent and six seats, according to official results.
The centre-right Third Way group, a junior government partner, came in fourth, with 6.91 percent and three seats, followed by the Left party, another member of the ruling coalition, with 6.3 percent support and three seats.
No other grouping crossed the 5-percent voter support threshold needed to get into the European Parliament under Polish election rules.
Turnout was 40.65 percent, compared with a record 45.68 percent in 2018.
Political parties across the spectrum had urged Poles to vote in the ballot, seen as one of the most important in Europe in decades.
A total of 146 Polish MPs and eight senators ran in the European elections, state news agency PAP reported.
Twenty-five Polish lower-house parliamentarians were elected Eurodeputies, according to TVN24.
Four lawmakers who were until recently ministers in Poland's pro-EU coalition government were elected as Euro-MPs, but voters also supported a host of Eurosceptic politicians who served as ministers and deputy ministers in Poland's previous conservative government.
Around the EU, voting to select a new batch of MEPs took place between June 6 and 9.
In Poland, the ballot was the third in an electoral marathon that began with national parliamentary elections last autumn, followed by local elections in April this year.
The European Parliament is the directly elected legislative body of the European Union, of which Poland has been part since 2004.
Poland became a member of the EU on May 1, 2004, a historic step that underlined the country’s realignment with the West after decades of communist rule.
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Source: IAR, PAP, TVN24, bankier.pl/bankier.pl