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Conservatives hand European centre-left painful vote defeat

Ruling parties punished in Britain, Spain and Portugal

AFP, Brussels
European conservatives decisively beat socialists and several far-right fringe parties made gains in EU elections marred by record low turnout, results showed Monday.
The polls marked a painful defeat for the socialists, who failed to capitalise on concerns about Europe's recessionhit economies, and some success for parties on the far-right and -left, as well as anti-immigrant and eurosceptic movements.
Governing centre-left parties in Britain, Spain and Portugal were punished by their electorates while their allies in opposition in Germany and France suffered brutal losses
The centre-right bloc in the EU parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP),
secured 263 seats confirming it again as the biggest group in the 736-member assembly, ahead of the socialists on 163 seats, down from 215 in 2004, official estimates said.
The win came despite the desertion of the British and Czech conservatives.
The Liberal Democrats came in third with 80 seats in the assembly, underlining the tendency to vote to the right.
The Greens performed well in fourth place, boosting their seats from 43 to 52 in the European Union's only directly elected institution.
It remains unclear how closely the EPP and the Party of European Socialists, which analysts said should have won ground given the effects of the economic crisis, will continue to work together.
Given their losses, the socialists might feel obliged to take a more leftist stance,
making it easier for the liberals to work with the conservatives, who nevertheless are mulling a grand alliance with both.
The traditional parties of the left should ask themselves why, in (hr midst of crisis, just when free market theories appear to be most challenged, people continue to prefer liberal recipes," Spain's El Mundo daily said.
Some 38B million people were eligible to vote over four days in the 27 EU nations to select a new European Parliament for five years.
Turnout slumped to 42.8 percent, down from 45.4 percent in 2004.
The extreme right-wing British National Party won its first two European Parliament seats, while Dutch anti-Islamic lawmaker Geert Wilders's Party for Freedom came second on Thursday with 17 percent.