BRUSSELS — The most prominent takeaways from the results of the elections for the European Parliament are fragmentation and polarization.

Fragmentation, because traditional mainstream parties of the center-right and center-left lost seats to smaller, more passionate parties like the Greens and a variety of populist groups.

And polarization, because populists and euroskeptic parties increased their share of seats to 25 percent, up from about 20 percent five years ago. The feared populist wave was more of a large ripple, but populists did very well in major countries where they are in power, like Italy, Hungary and Poland.

The Parliament is the only directly elected institution within the 28-nation European Union, so the vote was seen by many as a test of Europe’s growing populist movements and a referendum on the institution itself.