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E.U. vote outcome today

Paris: An estimated 375 million Europeans went to the polls on Sunday to elect 736 Euro MPs amid fears that a low turnout, resulting from voter disenchantment with the political process, would give a boost to extremist and racist parties. This is the world’s largest trans-national election.

Eight of the 27 E.U. nations have already held the vote and the remaining 19 states held the election on Sunday, on what has been called Super Sunday. Results will be available early Monday.

The European assembly is the only E.U. institution elected by universal suffrage, and the conservative European People’s Party, expected to be returned as the biggest bloc, has gradually gained power there over the years.

Opinion polls suggest poor turnout could favour extreme left- and right-wing formations, though probably not enough to upset the balance in the 736-seat Assembly, which is slowly gaining power in E.U. decision-making.

Unemployment, immigration, low wages and pensions and the recession have all weighed upon the campaign which has often been run on national rather than European issues.

Polling stations opened first in Bulgaria at the start of Europe’s Super Sunday which will see electors from heavyweights France, Germany, Italy and Spain cast their ballots, as governments in Britain and Ireland reel from local elections held at the same time as their E.U. polls.

At mid-day on Sunday, voter turnout in France was as low as 14 per cent. The 2004 E.U. parliamentary poll in France was marked by abstention as high as 57 per cent.

The Netherlands too experienced low turnout with 36.5 per cent of voters casting their ballot, down from 39.2 per cent in 2004.

Voter participation has fallen with each E.U. election since the first in 1979 — despite the growing role Parliament plays in adopting, amending or rejecting laws — and could beat the 45.6 per cent record from last time, polls suggest.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the only leader of a large E.U. nation heading an electoral list, shrugged off all concerns, showing no sign of pressure to explain his ties to an 18-year-old aspiring model.

“The electoral results will represent a terrible defeat for this left, which has substituted an electoral programme — which it doesn’t have — for calumny,” he said on Monday, complaining of a smear campaign against him.

In Britain, where voting, including for local elections, was held on Thursday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown battled for survival after several Ministers quit.

Poor results from the EU polls are liable to reignite backbench unrest.

With the recession hurting voters hard, exit polls in Ireland, which voted on Friday, suggested the government there had suffered a voter backlash in a triple ballot that included local polls.

And in the Baltic state of Latvia, left-wing parties rooted in the ethnic Russian minority were among the top performers, while a newborn government party also made major strides, exit polls indicated.

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