Ruling centre-right parties in France, Germany, Italy and Poland on Sunday night rode to a decisive victory in European parliament elections, but a clutch of other governments including Labour in the UK suffered a mauling at the hands of recession-hit voters.
Germany’s Christian Democrats and France’s UMP party were the chief winners as official predictions showed that Europe’s centre-right parties would remain the legislature’s largest group, taking 263 to 273 seats in the 736-seat assembly.
Socialist parties were projected to win 155 to 165 seats, centrist liberals 78 to 84 seats, and Greens 52 to 56 seats.
“It is bitterly disappointing. We had hoped for a better result. In most countries it went pretty badly for us,” said Martin Schulz, head of the European socialist group.
Governments in Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Slovenia and Spain either crashed to defeat or lost much ground to their rivals.
Turnout across Europe averaged 43 per cent, the lowest since direct elections to the parliament started in 1979. It was something of an embarrassment for the European Union, which has steadily transferred powers to the legislature without generating more public interest in its work.
Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, had cause for celebration as her CDU-CSU alliance took 38 per cent of the vote, far above 20.8 per cent for the Social Democrats, her coalition partners, according to partial returns.
The liberal Free Democrats – Ms Merkel’s preferred government partners – took 10.9 per cent, high enough to boost the chances of a CDU-FDP coalition after next September’s German federal election.
The UMP party of Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, was on course to win 28 per cent, against 16.8 per cent for the opposition socialists.
In what was the largest multi-national ballot in history, voters in the EU’s 27 countries took part in a four-day election to choose a parliament which enjoys equal influence with national governments in setting 75 per cent of EU legislation.
Far right, nationalist and anti-EU parties looked set to win up to 50 seats. But the election’s basic message was that voters in the EU’s biggest countries preferred the centre-right to the centre-left at a time of severe recession.
Almost everywhere national economic issues rather than pan-European themes were uppermost on voters’ minds, notably unemployment, which has jumped to 9.2 per cent in the 16-nation eurozone.
The Labour government in the UK, where Gordon Brown, prime minister, is struggling for his political life, anticipated a crushing defeat. Pollsters predicted gains for the eurosceptic Conservative opposition and for the anti-EU UK Independence party.
Elsewhere in Europe, ruling parties of both right and left were dealt blows. Greece’s opposition socialists defeated the conservative New Democracy government, but in neighbouring Bulgaria the ruling socialists trailed the centre-right opposition, exit polls indicated.
Hungary’s socialist government suffered a crushing defeat, voters deserted Ireland’s ruling Fianna Fáil party in droves, and an opposition party representing Russian-speakers made strong gains in Latvia.
In Austria, a group that campaigns against corruption in the European parliament was set to take 18 per cent of the vote. Sweden’s Pirate party, which opposes legal clampdowns on computer file-sharing by ordinary internet users, appeared likely to win a seat.
Geert Wilders’ populist, anti-Islamic Party for Freedom finished second in the Netherlands and seized four of the 25 Dutch seats in the parliament.
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