Dutch jump the gun with results, and the Far-Right wins

In a move that irritated European Union officials who said it violated the bloc’s rules on releasing results of the elections for the European Parliament, the Netherlands said the far-right Dutch Freedom Party PVV, which participated for the first time, emerged as the first winner in the EU-wide parliamentary elections.
The party, which came out of obscurity with a hard-line policy toward immigrants and is headed by an anti-Muslim preacher, will get four seats in the European Parliament, becoming the second-strongest Dutch faction after the Christian Democrats, who fell from seven to five seats, setting up an uncomfortable confrontation. Labour managed to hold on to only three of its previously seven seats. The Liberal VVD and the left Liberal D66 each received three seats, the former dropping while the latter rose from one seat previously.
The leftist Socialist Party, the Greens, and a combined list of two religious Christian parties each remained stable with two seats. Dutch officials said 36.5 percent of the electorate voted for the European Parliament, less than the 40.1 percent in 2004 but still more than 1999’s all-time low of 30 percent. The European Commission says the release of the provisional results before the EU-wide polling stopped on June 7 was a violation of EU rules.
The European Commission requested the Dutch to explain why it opened the ballot boxes, despite the EC’s letter from May 29 urging them not to do so before the deadline when voting would be completed across the EU. In the aftermath, there were mixed reactions to the outcome.
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, whose Christian Democratic party lost two seats but still remained the largest Dutch party with five seats in Brussels, quickly told reporters that the “European elections cannot be translated into the national arena.” But Wouter Bos, finance minister and leader of Labour, the second largest party in the national government coalition, took a different attitude. He admitted that losses of Labour, which dropped most dramatically in the vote, “at least partially” reflected popular discontent about “difficult decisions” the national government recently made due to the economic crisis. The Dutch daily newspaper Volkskrant said in its commentary the low turnout of 36.5 percent pointed to “Dutch indifference about Europe.” This also helped the outspoken pro-European and Euro-sceptic parties gain seats at the expense of the established parties that carried a more diversified message about Europe, the newspaper wrote.