The results are flooding in now, and it looks pretty clear that centre-right parties have won the 2009 European Parliament elections. They seem to have done especially well in the European Union’s six biggest countries: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and (though official results aren’t out yet) the UK.
But spare a thought for some of the smallest and strangest parties that have also notched up a success or two. One is Sweden’s Pirate Party, which has shot to prominence because of its complaints about a crackdown on computer file-sharing among ordinary users of the internet. The Pirates have raided the Swedish political establishment and look set to carry off at least one seat in the EU parliament.
Coming from a completely different political direction is Hungary’s Jobbik party, a far-right outfit that looks likely to win three of the country’s 22 seats in the EU legislature. Jobbik stands for “The Movement for a Better Hungary”, but the national election commission felt compelled to declare the party’s slogan “Hungary belongs to Hungarians” unconstitutional on the eve of the European vote.
There were other far right and nationalist successes in Austria, the Netherlands and Slovakia.
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