Hard-right parties have made significant gains in the European Union parliamentary elections with blows for French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Exit polls are projecting that pro-European centre-right, centre-left and Green parties will retain a reduced majority of 460 seats.

The French president suffered a heavy defeat in the exit polls, with Le Pen's National Rally projected to win about 33 per cent of the vote and 31 seats in the incoming European Parliament which is more than double Macron's 15 per cent.

Macron acknowledged the scale of the defeat and announced a surprise snap election for the National Assembly.

In Germany, the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) took second place, making gains in particular among the young, while Chancellor Scholz's Social Democrats scored their worst result ever.

Meanwhile, in Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni saw her hard-right Brothers of Italy group win the most votes in the European parliamentary election.

In Austria, the count of votes cast in polling stations plus a projection for postal ballots has confirmed the Freedom Party gained nearly 26 per cent of the vote seeing them top a nationwide ballot for the first time.

The far-right also performed well in the Netherlands, with Geert Wilder's anti-immigration party winning six seats, just shy of the total eight seats picked up by the centre-left and green parties.

Mainstream and pro-European groups remain the dominant force by retaining a majority of 460 seats, but it is slimmed down compared to their 488 in the outgoing chamber of 705 deputies.

The European Green parties have also suffered heavy losses, subsiding to 53 deputies from 71 in the outgoing parliament.

With that in mind, do you think the surge of the right in EU elections is the beginning of the end for Brussels?