Victory of abstainers diminishes parliament

A snub to the EU, to the Parliament, to the individual governments of Europe, to the socialist project of the Third Way and die neue Mitte? You pays your money and takes your pick.

But there's no denying the basic fact - the abstainers won the day, a majority for the first time in a European election, and in the UK a staggering 73 per cent. Yet what does it all mean? Clearly the governments of Europe will have to do more to raise not just awareness of the European Parliament but, crucially, both an understanding of its importance and a sense among voters of their real ownership of the assembly.

Indeed many MEPs may rightly wonder if they themselves have contributed to this cynicism in their campaign to expose corruption in the Commission - sceptical voters appear to have said "a curse on all your houses", refusing to distinguish between accuser and accused, particularly when MEPs failed to clean up their own act on expenses.

And the consequence will be not just a shift to the right in the Parliament, with the European People's Party becoming the largest group, but a diminishing of the authority and legitimacy of the Parliament. It is difficult to imagine MEPs, at least until memories of this poor turnout grow dimmer, returning to Strasbourg as quite the vigorous demandeurs we saw in January. Both the gains of the EPP and the turnout will strengthen the hand of the incoming President of the Commission, Mr Romano Prodi, in preserving the delicate balance between the institutions, insisting on his right alone to sanction his commissioners, and playing the Parliament off against the member-states.

Indeed, as the President of the Parliament, Mr Jose-Maria GilRobles, suggested on Sunday night, the Parliament may relish the role of conservative counterweight to the Socialist-run member-states.

That the public takes it out electorally on incumbent governments in European and local elections is a law of politics, and the fact that 13 EU governments include socialists meant that they would inevitably lose out. But the low poll makes it very difficult to extrapolate either the implications for general elections or the political message. Does this really mean a hammer blow to the Third Way, as some have suggested? Or can Mr Blair, for example, take comfort in the refusal of his supporters to come out and vote Tory, their bloated vote reflecting more the highly motivated nature of their Euro-sceptical support base than any ground shift away from New Labour.

On another level, can some of the results also be read as a comment on the conduct of the Kosovo war? The German Social Democrats and Greens were certainly punished by their traditionally pacifist base for their willingness to see German troops involved. In protest many flocked to the former communists of the Party of Democratic Socialism.

Elsewhere too, governments appear to have paid the price for supporting NATO action. The Greeks penalised their Socialist leaders, and throughout the EU the Greens and parties of the hard left which have opposed the war saw small but significant gains.

Local factors may certainly play a part in Belgium, but in Holland and Sweden Green and Socialist gains were significant. In France the Greens made progress too, as did the Trotskyist Left, set to be represented for the first time.

And the neutral Austrian Social Democrats notched up a gain against the trend against their Conservative partners. Such movements, if they do exist, do not reflect a generalised mood against the war but the erosion of specific parts of ruling Socialists' constituencies.

And while it would be wrong to rely too much on this form of entrail-gazing it is worth noting that only two weeks ago an EU-wide poll found that up to 40 per cent of voters believed their vote would be influenced by the war.

Despite the setbacks suffered by the left, the outcome is not expected to significantly alter the way business is done in Strasbourg. Neither the Socialists nor the EPP have ever been in a position to carry votes on their own, forcing them to seek cross-floor compromises on key issues and although the enlarged Liberal group under Mr Pat Cox - for how much longer? - is likely to see more opportunities to steer the Parliament's agenda in its direction, the reality is still that a Socialist-EPP majority exists and is likely to hold sway.