Europeans rebuke ruling parties in EU vote upset

Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) candidate Josep Borrell (C), Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (R) and Socialist Party speaker Jose Blanco (L) pose at PSOE headquarters after his victory in the European elections in Madrid Sunday. PHOTO: AFP

From Prague to London, eurosceptic parties opposed to the entire European project made considerable gains in the first EU-wide polls since the bloc's historic eastwards expansion barely a month ago.

Voters punished governments who supported the US-led war on Iraq and painful economic reforms and in the former communist eastern Europe they showed no sympathy for leaders who had guided them into the EU on May 1.

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Turnout was estimated to have slumped to less than 45 percent of the 350 million voters in the bloc's 25 member states -- the lowest since the first elections to the assembly in 1979.

In a bitter disappointment for the EU's executive arm, projections showed barely one-in-four voters in the 10 new states cast their ballots, a worrying sign that the idealism of the historic enlargement is fast evaporating.

European Parliament head Pat Cox said the eurosceptic surge was a wake up call for pro-EU political leaders across Europe.

"This is especially important as a wake up call for those leaders in those states who propose to hold referendum on the constitutional treaty," he said, referring to a historic blueprint for governing the 25-member bloc which EU leaders want to agree this week.

The world's only pan-national polls climaxed on the fourth and final day Sunday with voting in 19 states after elections over the three previous days in other EU nations.

In Britain, the anti-EU UK Independence Party made a dramatic breakthrough by taking 12 seats, according to partial results, marking its arrival as a serious political force and a new headache for beleaguered Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Combined with the 25 seats won by the opposition Conservatives, Britain is likely to send to Strasbourg a delegation dominated by eurosceptics.

German voters handed Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats its worst-ever defeat in nationwide polls since its creation after World War II, in a stinging rebuke for his painful reform agenda that the party's own chairman admitted was a "bitter result".

In France, the opposition Socialist party emerged as clear winners over centre-right supporters of President Jacques Chirac, while Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party suffered one of its worst-ever performances with less than 21 percent of the vote.

"It is clear that the European elections are used as a balance-sheet election," said Martin Schulz, head of the German Social Democrats' list competing for his country's 99 seats, the biggest chunk in the parliament.

Spain's new Socialist government was one of the few ruling parties to outscore its rivals, along with Greece's conservatives who repeated their recent general election success over the Socialists.