Three Slovenian women cast their votes for the European Parliament

BRUSSELS, June 14 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The first elections for the newly-enlarged European Parliament have left the ruling parties reeling as voters dealt them a string of stunning defeats and stayed away from the polls in record numbers.

Voters punished governments who supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and for painful economic reforms, while the electorate in former communist eastern Europe showed no sympathy for leaders who guided them into the European Union (E.U.) just over a month ago, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP) Monday, June 14.

Provisional figures showed the center-right bloc in the parliament - the European People's Party (EPP) - retaining its place as the largest group with 269 seats and the European Socialists came second with 199.

Eurosceptic parties opposed to the entire European project were making considerable gains in the polls, which climaxed on the fourth and final day Sunday, June 13, with simultaneous voting in 19 E.U. states.

In Britain, the anti-E.U. UK Independence Party (UKIP) made a dramatic breakthrough by taking 12 seats, marking its arrival as a serious political force and a new headache for beleaguered Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Combined with the 25 seats won by the opposition Conservatives, Britain is likely to send to Strasbourg a delegation dominated by Eurosceptics.

Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, has won its first-ever seat in the parliament with the election of Mary Lou MacDonald in Ireland.

German voters handed Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats its worst-ever defeat in nationwide polls since its creation after World War II, in a stinging rebuke for his painful reform agenda that the party's own chairman admitted was a "bitter result".

Even France

In France, the opposition Socialist party emerged as clear winners over center-right supporters of President Jacques Chirac.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party was heading for its worst-ever performance with around 20 percent of the vote counted.

In Sweden, a new Eurosceptic party - The June List - made a surprisingly strong showing while the ruling Social Democrats fell well below expectations.

In the E.U.'s largest new member, the Polish opposition Civic Platform crushed the ruling Democratic Alliance (SLD), and anti-E.U. parties appeared to have captured a quarter of the vote.

A similar pattern emerged in the Czech Republic, where the Eurosceptic opposition routed the ruling Social Democrats.

Lowest Turnout

Turnout may have slumped to less than 45 percent of the 350 million eligible voters - the lowest since the first elections to the assembly in 1979 - in the landmark E.U.-wide polls, the first since the bloc expanded from 15 to 25 countries on May 1.

According to a projection by the Gallup polling institute, only 44.6 percent of voters bothered to cast their ballots.

In a bitter disappointment for the E.U.'s executive arm, projections showed barely one-in-four voters in the 10 new states cast their ballots, a worrying sign that the idealism of the historic enlargement is fast evaporating.

In other words, an average of only 28.7 percent of the voters of the newcomers cast their votes, Gallup said.

Turnout was expected to be lowest in Slovakia, where just 16.6 percent of voters cast ballots, according to partial results.

In Poland, where turnout was estimated initially at little more than 20 percent, President Aleksander Kwasniewski went as far as to call the low participation a "disease".

The first direct elections to the European Parliament were held in June 1979. The Members of Parliament are elected every five years.

The parliament has acquired greater influence and power through a series of treaties, chiefly the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty.

These treaties have transformed the parliament from a purely consultative assembly into a legislative parliament, which now passes the majority of European laws.

"The world's largest transnational elections showed a snapshot of a continent whose voters are deeply disgruntled, with many turning to maverick candidates to show their discontent," Britain’s daily the Independent commented Monday.

"Iraq was a factor in yesterday's elections but general dissatisfaction with sitting governments was a greater one," it added.

A case in point, the daily said, is Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose Socialist party performed well following the return of Spanish troops from Iraq.