It Was formally one election to a single body, the European Parliament. Yet in truth what took place between June 4th and June 7th were 27 separate polls, as both campaigners and voters focused mainly on national issues, not European ones. The dream of a European demos nourishing a pan-European democracy based on Europe-wide parties is more distant than ever. Even so, voters from Nuorgam in northern Finland to Tarifa in southern Spain seemed to share some ideas-and they are not reassuring for the European Union.

The first was indifference. The average EU-wide turnout was 43 per cent, the lowest since the first direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979. The pattern is not universal: turnout actually rose in seven countries, and it was lower in eastern than in western Europe. But almost everywhere turnout was far below levels in national elections. Thirty years on, that should worry not only new MEPs in Strasbourg, but also the leaders in Brussels and national capitals who steer the EU.

A second common element was a harsh judgment on the mainstream left. Most governments of the left suffered heavy defeats (as in Britain, Hungary, Portugal and Spain). But the left did badly even where it is in opposition (France and Italy) or in coalition with the mainstream right (Germany, the Netherlands and Austria). The umbrella Socialist group in the European Parliament lost as many as a quarter of its seats, leaving the mainstream centre-right group, the European People's Party, more dominant than before, despite the imminent departure of British Conservatives who plan to form a new anti-federalist centre-right group.

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