Word: european
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...country's smaller parties. The Green Party won 12% of the vote, and the Left Party, successor to East Germany's Communist Party, took 7.5% of the vote. But the real winner was the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), which won its best-ever result in a European election, with 11% of the vote. The FDP, under its outspoken leader Guido Westerwelle, is Merkel's preferred coalition partner. Their combined results leave Merkel's Conservatives and the FDP just short of the 50% they would need in September should the Chancellor decide to replace the current grand coalition...
...midst of a financial downturn, with big government back in fashion and capitalism badly bruised, the left should have swept the European Parliament elections that took place over four days last week. But instead, voters emphatically punished socialist and social-democrat parties - when they could be bothered to show up to the polls...
...appeared to be a ringing rejection of the centre-left. Across the E.U.'s 27 member states, the story was the same regardless of who the incumbent national government was: voters were shifting rightwards, leaving many social-democrat parties hurting from historic defeats. (Read TIME's roundup on the European election from the U.K., Italy, France and Germany...
...there was little comfort for the left elsewhere in Europe. Although President Nicolas Sarkozy is deeply unpopular in France, his UMP party saw its vote rise to 27.7% from the 16.6% it garnered at the last European elections in 2004, while the Socialist Party slumped from 28.9% in 2004 to 16.5% this time. In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's center-right coalition surged 6.9% to secure 35% of the vote, ahead of the center-left opposition at 26%. Spain's governing Socialists slipped 4% to 38.5%, behind the opposition Popular Party at 42.2%, while Portugal's ruling Socialists suffered...
...European Commission Vice President Margot Wallström admits that the turnout reflects badly on the E.U.'s public image. "It doesn't help that European election campaigns are run on national agendas, and national governments use the E.U. as a scapegoat," she says. "If all the failures are the fault of Brussels and all the successes are because of national government, then it becomes very difficult to mobilize voters for these elections." (See pictures of polarizing politicians at LIFE.com...