Voorlopige indeling EU parlement. EU voters shift to the right

Voorlopige indeling Europees parlement

Dominantie Christendemocraten, EVP wint.

EU Voters Shift to the Right
Conservative and Far-Right Parties Notch Up Wins; Socialists Lose Seats

(Source Wall Street Journal)
Europeans punished their governments and boosted conservative and far-right parties, as voters spooked by the economic downturn registered their unhappiness in European parliamentary and local elections across the Continent.

Elections to the 736-seat body were a mishmash of local political needs and lofty debates over the future and purpose of the European Union. But one thread was clear. It was a "very sad evening for socialists in Europe," said Martin Schulz, a German who is president of the Socialist group in the European Parliament. "In most countries we did very badly."
Voters voiced their unease by sending record numbers of far-right candidates to Brussels -- or by staying home. Turnout fell for the seventh straight time, to a record low of 43.4%, according to preliminary estimates.

When the EU's founders set up the first elections to the parliament in 1979, they hoped the institution would become a guarantor of popular support for the union. Instead, national governments have handcuffed the chamber, so that it can hold up and occasionally tweak EU legislation, but can't propose laws of its own. Elections to the parliament "have always been an opportunity for Europeans to register a protest vote," says Julia De Clerck-Sachsse, an analyst with the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels-based think tank.

In the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown's Labour Party was emblematic of the whiplash -- pre-election polls projected it would finish third, and early results confirmed that grim diagnosis.

News was grim for Socialists in recession-ravaged Hungary, where they lost ground to the right-leaning Fidesz party; in Spain, where the center-right People's Party pulled ahead of the ruling Socialists; and in the Netherlands, where socialist support fell from 24% in the last go-round in 2004 to just 12%. Read on...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124440214685092083.html

Fringe Gains Four EU Seats In Dutch Vote

Fringe Gains Four EU Seats In Dutch Vote

(Source Wall Street Journal) Dutch voters gave a populist, anti-immigrant party its first four seats ever in the European Parliament, sending a warning to incumbent European governments, according to exit polls.

The triumph for the Party for Freedom and its leader Geert Wilders kicked off four days of European Union-wide elections involving more than 12,000 candidates competing for more than 730 seats.
Mr. Wilders's party was expected to win four of the 25 seats allocated to the Netherlands, according to exit polls by Dutch news agency ANP.
EU leaders fear nationalist parties are gaining ground by exploiting anxieties over job losses brought on by the financial crisis. Nationalist fringe parties are expected to pick up seats in the U.K., France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Austria and Belgium. Other groups fear they could form a disruptive alliance. Still, such parties are unlikely to tip the balance of power in Brussels.

U.K. voters also went to the polls Thursday to elect European and local representatives, but full results weren't immediately available. The Czech Republic and Ireland vote Friday, and the rest of the 27-nation bloc goes to the polls this weekend.

The European Parliament has little power, and turnout is expected to be low. But mainstream politicians and analysts have cast these elections -- the first since the onset of the recession -- as a political bellwether.
No politician exemplifies establishment fears more than Mr. Wilders, a charismatic orator whose platinum-blond hair has been compared to Mozart's wig. He is a polarizing figure in European politics who has been banned from entering the U.K. under hate-speech laws. He travels with bodyguards and keeps where he sleeps a secret.
Mr. Wilders, 45 years old, has sat in the Dutch Parliament since 1998. In 2004, he left the conservative People's Party over a dispute about whether Turkey should be allowed to join the EU. (It isn't a member but has applied to join.) He founded the Party for Freedom and discovered a knack for tapping into Dutch xenophobia.

The Netherlands has 800,000 Muslims, mostly Turks and Moroccans, in a population of 17 million. Mr. Wilders has progressively ramped up his anti-Islamic rhetoric, calling the Koran a "fascist book" and making a movie depicting Islam as inherently violent. The British government cited the movie, "Fitna," as grounds to ban Mr. Wilders from visiting the U.K. earlier this year. Read Article...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124415574886086871.html