Word: parliament
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...Rome 'Spicy' Affair Stays Hot Allegations by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's wife in early May that he had an improper relationship with an underage model have embroiled the popular leader in scandal on the eve of elections for the European Parliament. Berlusconi has vigorously denied any "spicy" activities with Noemi Letizia, now 18. Meanwhile, authorities have banned publication of photos allegedly showing seminaked women cavorting at his Sardinian villa...
...there are signs that a populist, anti-copyright movement may be gaining strength. Earlier this month, Sweden voted a member of the Pirate Party, which campaigned on an anti-copyright platform, to the European Parliament. The party, which won 7.13% of the vote, is named after Swedish file sharing website Pirate Bay. Earlier this year, a Swedish court sentenced four of the Bay founders to a year in prison each and a fine of approximately $3.6 million for "assisting in making copyright content available." There is no formal connection between Bay and the Pirate Party but there is little hiding...
...Austria, two far-right parties earned 18%, while Finland's anti-immigrant True Finns won 10% of the vote. And Britain's UKIP, who won 13 of the 72 British seats despite having no members in the 646-member House of Commons, will be joined by two European Parliament newcomers: the far-right British National Party and Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru. (Read a TIME piece on the gains made...
...even with the growing support for the fringe, the Parliament has a distinctly conservative hue. With votes in several countries still being counted, the Parliament's loose family of center-right parties, the European People's Party, can provisionally claim 267 MEPs out of the 736-seat assembly. It is followed by the center-left group, the Party of European Socialists with 159 and the centrist Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe with...
...will this change anything? Veteran Brussels consultant and lobbyist Paul Adamson says that classic political divisions matter less in the European Parliament. "It is not so much about left or right, but about more or less Europe," he says. "Once the elections are out of the way, the main political groups work out their differences through consensus and compromise. And the three main ones are still all pro-European." With the rightwards lurch and the move to the fringe, it remains to be seen whether being pro-European means the same tomorrow as it did yesterday...