Low turnout, EPP leads

Early results in the voting for seats in the reduced 736-member European Parlia­ment showed that apathy was the real winner, as voters stayed away from the polls in droves, even with hot-button issues like the recession that has put millions of workers on the streets a litmus test for lawmakers. The first turnouts were as low as 10 percent in the Czech Republic, and wavering at less than 25 percent in Ireland, where voters last year rejected the EU’s constitution, the so-called Lisbon Treaty. In the Netherlands, the Dutch Freedom Party, led by a right-wing nationalist whose anti-Muslim documentary was banned in the parliament, won four seats and became the second-strongest in the country, setting up an uncomfortable confrontation in Brussels and in Strasbourg, France, the two seats of the parliament. Early indications and polls were that the ruling European People’s Party and its centre-right ideology would continue to prevail and keep it as the dominant force in the parliament, where it holds the presidency and the most sway, and was set to continue asserting its power. It didn’t help that EU officials barely campaigned for voter turnout, beyond advertisements, and that the EU’s presidency was held during the elections by the Eurosceptic Czech Republic, whose president is fond of bashing the bloc. There’ll be new faces in the parliament for sure, but not enough to daunt the EPP’s leadership.