Left wing parties stunned as extremists benefit from low turnout

Silvio Berlusconi’s Party of Freedom (PdL) blamed bad publicity surrounding the nature of its leader’s relationship with an 18-year-old model for not doing as well as hoped, but it nevertheless comfortably beat the opposition in Italy.

Anti-immigrant parties gained MEPs in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and the UK. Extremist right-wing parties lost ground in Belgium, Bulgaria and France but still won seats.

The Greens improved their numbers, rising from 43 to 53 MEPs despite the overall reduction in MEPs from 785 to 736, thanks to strong showings in France and Germany.

The turnout of 43 per cent, compared with the low of 45.47 per cent in 2004, meant that 213 million voters abstained from the poll despite voting being mandatory in several countries.

In Germany, Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democratic Union lost a handful of seats but maintained its strong lead over the left-of-centre SPD, its coalition partner, pointing to victory for the German Chancellor in the autumn general election.

The CDU and its Bavarian sister party the CSU won 37.9 per cent of the vote, while the Social Democrats plunged to a record low of 20.8 per cent.

It set a trend across Europe, with disappointing results for centre-left parties in government and in opposition alike. Only in Greece and Malta could socialist oppositions claim success.

“This is disappointing,” Franz M?ntefering, the head of the SPD, said. “The result for us is significantly worse than we expected.”

The Socialists were soundly defeated in France, with just 16.48 per cent compared with President Sarkozy’s UMP on 27.87 per cent.

“We will continue to modernise France,” said François Fillon, the Prime Minister, attributing his party’s success to the Government’s handling of its stint as rotating president of the European Union last year.

Mr Sarkozy has marginalised the Socialists by inviting senior centre-left politicians into his Government and pushing state intervention and protection for vulnerable French industries during the economic crisis, normally the preserve of the Left.

The new leader of the Socialists, Martine Aubry, has been dragged down by disputes with the party’s former presidential candidate, S?golène Royal. She said that she took full responsibility for the defeat and understood that it meant that profound reform was needed.

In Italy, the PdL was on course for 35.2 per cent of the vote, up from its last European total of 32.4 per cent in 2004.

The big loser was the main opposition Democratic Party, which took 31.1 per cent in 2004 but only 26.1 per cent this time. The party has been struggling to find a strong leader since the former mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, quit after losing to Mr Berlusconi in last year’s general election.

Mr Berlusconi had claimed during the campaign that the party would get as much as 45 per cent of the vote and would certainly get 40 per cent. His aides sought to downplay the missed target.

“There is no doubt, the drop in turnout penalised the Freedom People Party, which garnered a result below our expectations,” said Daniele Capezzone, a party spokesman.

In Spain the conservative Popular Party won 23 seats, with 42 per cent of the vote, two more than the ruling Socialists. “This result demands a change in the Government’s economic policy,” Mariano Rajoy, the PP leader, said.

Martin Schulz, the leader of the Socialist group of MEPs in the European Parliament, said that domestic reasons were to blame for the failure of the Centre Left. “We have seen in various European countries that domestic issues have been the most important determinant,” he said. “In each member state, it was little to do with our work in the Parliament.”

Margot Wallstr?m, vice-president of the European Commission in charge of communications, warned that the low turnout would affect the legitimacy of the EU.

Countries that have borne the brunt of the recession experienced the biggest shake-ups, with Hungary’s ruling Socialists winning just 17 per cent against the centre-right opposition Fidesz on 56 per cent, and three seats for the far-right Jobbik.

Despite Mirek Toplolanek being revealed as the naked guest at one of Mr Berlusconi’s villa parties, his Civic Democrats held up as the biggest party in the Czech Republic.

In Finland there was a big rise for the nationalist True Finns, which won 10 per cent of the vote with their anti-immigration message. The far-right Danish People’s Party gained up a second MEP, while in Austria the big winner was the Freedom Party, which more than doubled its strength to 13.1 per cent of the vote. It campaigned on anti-Islamic themes.

The far Right received a setback in Belgium where the antiimmigrant Flemish Interest party suffered its worst results for a quarter of a century in regional and European elections, giving ground to two new more moderate populist parties in Flanders, the northern Dutch-speaking half of the country. “We have been beaten up, but we are not knocked out,” said the party leader Filip Dewinter. “There is a fragmentation on the Right.”

One of the new populist parties, the Lijst Dedecker, is expected to become an ally of David Cameron’s Conservatives when it forms a new grouping of non-federalist centre-right parties in the European Parliament together with Czech and Polish parties.

There were three arrests amid accusations of electoral fraud in Bulgaria, with the electoral committee in the southwestern city of Blagoevgrad saying that it was alerted to “massive vote-buying” in seven villages in the region. In the Roma neighbourhood of the central city of Plovdiv police were looking into complaints by people who claimed that they were offered 30 leva (£14) and a grilled chicken to vote for a certain party.