‘Advancing EU sceptics’ affect us all, say papers

British UKIP leader Nigel Farage had plenty to laugh about Reuters

Newspapers in non-EU Switzerland have reacted with concern to Eurosceptic nationalists who scored stunning victories in European Parliament elections in France and Britain on Sunday.

Critics of the European Union more than doubled their seats in a continent-wide protest vote against austerity and unemployment.

“In a democracy, results at the ballot box should be taken very seriously for the bigger message they send. The fact is, the European Union still divides its citizens more than it unifies them and is not a convincing answer to people’s hopes,” said Le Temps in Geneva.

Anti-establishment parties of the far right and hard left, their scores amplified by low turnout, made gains in many countries, although in Germany, the EU’s biggest member state with the largest number of seats, and in Italy, the pro-European centre ground held firm.

“Is this an irrevocable failure of the European ideal?” Le Temps continued. “This serious verdict on Europe, delivered by a significant portion of voters, is reversible. Europe falls between two stools: it is a power halfway along a political road that merits being debated more intensively by its members.”

It said the evolution of European governance needed to speed up because history would not wait. “War on its borders, the urgency of strong responses to immigration, the challenges posed by the competiveness of large regional powers – all require greater strategic choices by the European Union. Europe is only at the beginning of its history. This concerns us all.”

First results

May 25 was the fourth and final day of voting in elections to the European Parliament, which is an equal co-legislator with member states on most EU laws.

First official results from around the 28-nation bloc showed the pro-European centre-left and centre-right parties will keep control of the 751-seat EU legislature, but the number of Eurosceptic members will more than double.

The centre-right European People’s Party, led by former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, was set to win 212 seats, preliminary results issued by the parliament showed.

The centre-left Socialists led by outgoing European Parliament President Martin Schulz of Germany were in second place with 186 seats followed by the centrist liberals on 70 and the Greens on 55. Eurosceptic groups were expected to win about 141 seats, according to a Reuters estimate, the far left 43 and conservatives 44.

Officials said final results and seat allotments would likely not be finalised until later on May 26.

‘Wrangling’

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which devoted more space to Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire chocolate manufacturer who claimed the Ukrainian presidency on Sunday, focused on the “earthquake” victory by Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration, anti-euro National Front in France, one of the EU’s founding nations.

In a vote that raised more doubts about Britain’s long-term future in the EU, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party, which advocates immediate withdrawal, comfortably led the opposition Labour party and Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives with almost half the results declared.

“Now the wrangling begins,” was the headline of the editorial in Zurich’s Tages-Anzeiger. “It’s the hour of spin doctors, campaign managers and party spokespeople,” it continued.

Their job – which started more or less as soon as the booths closed and the first results started trickling in – is to win the race for the interpretation of the votes and to dictate the headlines for the next few days.

“Europe’s transnational democracy experiment is still untested – there’s plenty of room for possible interpretation.”

Low turnout

Although 388 million Europeans were eligible to vote, fewer than half cast ballots. The turnout was officially 43.1%, barely higher than the 2009 nadir of 43%, despite efforts to personalise the election with the main political families putting forward a leading candidate or Spitzenkandidat.

The record low turnout was in Slovakia, with just 13%. The Tages-Anzeiger said this lack of interest shown by countries in Eastern Europe was “alarming”.

The highest turnout was 90% in Belgium, where voting is compulsory and there was a general election on the same day. Sweden appeared to have elected the only feminist party member of the EU assembly.