Across the EUThe British and Dutch kicked off the biggest cross-border ballot in history yesterday when the electorate in both countries cast their votes in the European elections.
Over four days until Sunday, almost 350 million Europeans in the newly enlarged EU are eligible to vote for the 732-member European Parliament.
In Britain and the Netherlands, the only nations to vote yesterday, voters showed little passion for European affairs as they cast ballots in a trickle from early morning.
By lunchtime in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam, just 9.5 per cent of eligible voters had cast ballots, a city official said. Early turnout in other areas of the Netherlands was similar, the national news agency ANP reported.
Britain's poll includes elections for local councils and for a London mayor, and was shaping into a protest vote against Prime Minister Tony Blair for his support of the US-led war in Iraq.
The centre-right Dutch coalition of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende was in a close battle with the opposition Labour Party dominated by the domestic economy, jobs and spending cuts.
The Netherlands was to release provisional results late last night - the first country to do so - despite a row with the European Commission which has threatened legal action over their release before the rest of the bloc has finished voting.
An unpublished last-minute opinion poll by EOS Gallup Europe, made available to the European Parliament, suggested the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) of conservatives and Christian Democrats would remain the largest group in the new Parliament but would fall short of its ambitions of dominance. The study suggested the EPP would have about 265 seats, the Socialists 206, liberals 73, Greens 49, communists and leftists 32, with about 83 seats going to assorted nationalists, far-rightists and Eurosceptics, and 23 to independents.
Though counting in Britain's local election began immediately after polls closed at 9 p.m. yesterday, results for the European parliament will not be disclosed until late on Sunday, simultaneous with other EU member-states, except Poland which will hold its count on Monday.
Like Mr Blair, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was expected to pay for his support of the war in Iraq. Only Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was likely to win support from voters delighted by his decision to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq.
Latest polls conducted suggest turnout across the bloc will exceed the record low of 49.8 per cent in 1999.
In Britain, the hopes of the opposition Conservatives have been spiked by the rise of the fringe anti-EU UK Independence Party, which the poll said would win up to 12 of 78 British seat.