Low turnout favours extremists - 07/06/2009

Far right set to make gains

Polls are closing on Super Sunday as million of Europeans cast their ballots for members of the European Parliament.

Constituents in 19 of the European Union's 27 member nations cast their ballots on the fourth and last day of voting, including those in France, Germany, Spain and Italy.   

But Europe's governments have had a tough time igniting voter interest during a financial crisis that has focused attention on national economic issues and bred a corresponding indifference to EU matters. As the polls closed, participation was roughly on a par with the record low levels seen in 2004.

Governments across the continent now fear that pressing financial concerns, coupled with low voter turnout, will mean gains for the far right and left in the EU's 736-member assembly. Nationalist parties, capitalising on anti-immigration platforms amid rising unemployment, could be poised to benefit from the electoral discontent. Already Geert Wilders' Dutch Freedom Party, which campaigned on an Islamophobic, anti-immigrant platform, finished in second place, taking 17 per cent of the vote, and Heinz-Christian Strache's far-right Austrian Freedom Party (pictured) is also set to make large gains.

Turnout has fallen steadily each year since the first EU election was held in 1979. France initially bucked the trend this year, with turnout estimates up one percentage point at 14.81 percent by midday, but voter numbers have since dipped below 2004 levels.

Turnout in Germany was at 20.2 percent at 2pm local time -- and with four hours until polls close -- slightly lower than at the same stage in the EU's last elections, when participation eventually hit a record low of 40.3 percent. Italy's numbers are also currently down slightly from 2004, at 30.7 percent compared to 34 percent at midday.

Spanish turnout was holding steady in the afternoon at 24.26 percent, comparable to rates for the last EU vote.

Even in Brussels, the seat of the European Union, pre-election polls indicated that less than half the electorate planned on voting. Only in Ireland, which rejected the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum last year, was turnout up, with up to seven out of ten voters making it to polling booths in some places.

"National governments have set the perception that Europe is pretty useless by not being able to deliver a sufficiently strong and compelling and united message in the midst of the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s," Thomas Klau, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Reuters.

And this feeling looks likely to be reflected at the EU ballot box. "It doesn't look like the elections are going to be a triumph or a grand moment for European democracy," he says.

EU Commission Chief Jose Manuel Barosso has urged Europeans to exercise their right to vote, reminding them that, two decades ago, many of the EU member states "could not vote freely".

Those heading to the polls on Sunday include voters in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

Parliament will begin releasing results at 10pm Paris time (GMT+2) when all polls across the continent have closed.

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