The results are in and the big winners in the recent E.U. parliamentary elections, besides Sweden’s Pirate Party of course, is the right, as we learn from Der Spiegel.


Thank you very much! The Hague 2005. © Damaso Reyes


“Geert Wilders and his populist Party for Freedom (PVV) appeared to be the big winners of Thursday's elections for European Parliament in the Netherlands. Exit polls released soon after the Dutch voting stations closed at 9 p.m. on Thursday evening predicted he would get four of the 25 Dutch seats in the European Parliament, making the PVV the second largest of all Dutch parties in Brussels.

“Wilders, who has become popular in the Netherlands running on an anti-Islam and anti-political establishment platform, promised voters he would be tough on immigration and criticized Turkey's bid to join the EU. "Should Turkey as an Islamic country be able to join the European Union? We are the only party in Holland that says, it is an Islamic country, so no, not in 10 years, not in a million years," Wilders said.”

Once again the right, and the Euroskeptics, have done a great job of organizing and getting their message out. The left, with a few notable exceptions like the Greens, are largely seeded the argument about what they like a united Europe should look like. Given the state of the economy there is no good reason the right should be winning elections but Europe likes to do things differently. Of course at the same time participation for this election was just 45%, showing that Europeans as a whole don’t really care either. The European Union really must work much harder to make itself feel relevant to the people it is supposed to be representing and serving…

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