Four days of voting for the EU Parliament started yesterday with the union’s leaders braced for high abstention rates and protest votes that could boost extremist parties.
Britain and the Netherlands started the 27-nation election in which 375 million people are eligible to take part. The turnout and the impact on national governments are the key stakes in the election.
Several extremist anti-EU right and left wing parties hope to pick up votes and even a few seats in the 736-member assembly.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is under increasing pressure amid a scandal over expenses by members of the country’s national parliament which has seen ministerial heads roll.
His ruling Labour Party looks likely to be beaten into third place, at best, in the European polls, opinion polls showed, with even the anti-EU UK Independence Party snapping at its heels.
A Sunday Telegraph/ICM poll this week suggested Labour would garner just 17 percent of the vote, behind David Cameron’s opposition Conservatives and the third party, the centrist Liberal Democrats.
This was the worst Brown’s party had done in an opinion poll since 1987 and surveys on the local elections also predicted a weak performance.
Brown’s position is also under threat after four ministers, including two members of his Cabinet, quit in the past two days, and reports suggesting backbench Labour members of parliament (MP) are trying to unseat him.
British Communities Secretary Hazel Blears, who faced criticism over her expenses, resigned on Wednesday, and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she would step down at the next Cabinet reshuffle, expected within days.
After two other junior ministers quit on Tuesday, Cameron said: “The government is collapsing before our eyes.”
An opinion poll in the Netherlands predicted the Christian Democratic party of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende would get 14 percent of the vote, and its governing partner, the labour PvdA party, 12 percent.
That leaves no comfort zone for the main parties as the Party for Freedom of controversial far-right MP Geert Wilders could also get 12 percent of the vote, the liberal VVD 11 percent, and the Socialist Party 10 percent.
The Dutch government will give preliminary results from the vote yesterday, but other countries will wait until Sunday — after the final 19 countries have voted to give the official results.
The European People’s Party (EPP) — an umbrella group for center-right parties from across the EU — is expected to remain the biggest political bloc in the parliament.
That is despite the fact that the British and Czech Conservatives have left the EPP, deeming it too europhile.
The European Socialists, currently the second-largest group in the European Parliament, are also preparing for mediocre results.
After the British and Dutch votes, attention shifts today to Ireland and the Czech Republic.
Cyprus, Latvia, Malta and Slovakia will go to the polls tomorrow before Europe’s Super Sunday, when the other 17 EU nations — including France, Germany, Italy and Spain — will round off the voting.
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