Saifi has garnered 13.3 percent of the votes

By Hadi Yahmid, IOL Correspondent

PARIS, June 15 (IslamOnline.net) – Two French Muslims have been elected to the newly enlarged European Parliament, representing the governing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and the opposition Socialist Party (PS).

Algerian-born Tokia Saifi, the government’s notary, has garnered 13.3 percent of the votes, securing a foothold in the 732-seat legislature.

Kadir Arif, also of Algerian origin, led the French Socialists in the elections, getting 30.83 percent of the ballots.

The PS, the main opposition party which trounced the ruling party, has captured a record 31 seats of France’s 78 EU parliamentary quota.

President Jacques Chirac’s center-right UMP came second with 17 seats and Union for French Democracy (UDF) third with 11.

The Greens has won a meager six seats, losing three it had captured in the 1999 elections.

Outgoing European parliamentarian Alima Boumediene, who was co-leading the Greens’ 28-strong slate in the EU elections, failed to keep her seat.

Other Arab losers included the leader of the Union for National Cohesion (UFCN), Faouzia Zebdi Ghorab, whose self-styled movement featured 20 other candidates of Arab and Islamic origins.

Ghorab’s slate has won flimsy 995 votes in Paris and its suburbs, only 0.04 percent of the votes.

The performance of the Euro-Palestine slate, which included 10 Arabs and Muslims, also fell well below expectations, receiving 50,000 votes in Paris or 1.83 percent.

It performed well in Saint Denis, in northern Paris, with 3.77 of the votes.

A minimum of five percent of the polls is a must to make it to the pan-Europe parliament.

Triumphant Extremists

Arif led the French Socialists in the elections

The extremist right-wing National Front (FN), led by Jean Marie Le Pen, has made a strong comeback, securing seven seats.

Le Pen’s daughter, Marie, has won 12.18 percent of the votes in southeastern Paris.

The right-wing parties, in general, are still majority in the European Parliament.

President Chirac said on Monday, June 14, that the results of the European Parliament elections were "disappointing for us all and for Europe", but that he would not change the French government.

His party had  suffered last March a stunning defeat at the local polls, losing control of nearly all the country's regional assemblies to the PS.

The European parliament elections have left almost all the ruling parties reeling as voters dealt them 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 EU just over a month ago.

The first direct elections to the European Parliament were held in June 1979 and lawmakers 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.