Europe Braces for Extremist Gains in Elections
ASSOCIATED PRESS: MANCHESTER, England — In some of Manchester's bleakest neighborhoods where unemployment is rife and anxiety about an immigration influx is palpable, one of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's worst fears is unfolding before Thursday's European Union elections.

The British National Party, which doesn't allow nonwhites as members and is against membership in the European Union, is gaining ground in former Labour Party strongholds that once threw their support behind Brown and his predecessor, Tony Blair.

Widespread voter discontent across Europe is expected to give extremist and fringe groups like the BNP gains in the European assembly elections, victories that could mire the EU in even more confusion.

"I think the BNP could do a lot better for the country," Chris Rowlinson, 38, said Tuesday. "It would be sort of like the positive things what Winston Churchill did for the British people."

The recession, corruption, a culture of excess — these issues and others have angered many of the 27-nation bloc's 375 million voters. Turnout is expected to be low for the European parliament election on Thursday through Saturday. If people vote at all, many will cast protest ballots against mainstream parties.

Britain has felt the biggest voter backlash after an expense scandal tarred all three main political parties. Data leaked to a newspaper showed that lawmakers submitted expense claims for everything from pornography to chandeliers and moats at country estates — all while people were losing jobs, homes or pensions.

In northern cities like Manchester, where gritty housing projects stand near abandoned textile warehouses and recycling plants, voters have turned against Brown over fears that jobs will be lost to foreign workers or immigrants. The Manchester area is also home to one of Britain's largest Muslim communities. >>> By Paisley Dodds | Tuesday, June 02, 2009

EU Vote Makes Officials Nervous
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: If Bulgarian Bilyana Raeva is re-elected to the European Parliament next weekend, she will get a more than eightfold raise. She could also find herself sitting beside a bumper crop of lawmakers from Europe's extreme right.

The European Union's Brussels-based legislature is little loved and less understood, but after polls on June 4-7, it is likely to look significantly different, with new members, new rules and potentially new powers.

The parliament is the Cinderella of EU institutions. With no right to initiate legislation, it is limited to negotiating amendments or blocking laws crafted by the more powerful EU council -- made up of the national governments -- and European Commission, the EU bureaucracy.

But the next legislature could get expanded powers -- and perhaps more public attention and gravitas -- if Ireland later this year ratifies an important treaty amending the way the EU works.

It could also get a laundered reputation. The parliament will have new rules governing legislators' salaries and expenses after an expense-abuse scandal that began three years ago, involving sums far greater than those in the current uproar over Britain's House of Commons.

But the coming election to the Brussels-based parliament is seizing attention in capitals across the 27-nation bloc for a different reason. In the midst of the worst recession since World War II, the vote could offer a guide to political fallout for national governments to come.

"People think that the local and European elections don't matter as much, so they can use those votes to punish politicians they are unhappy with," says Julia Clark, head of political research at pollster Ipsos MORI in the U.K. Germany holds national elections in the fall, while the U.K. must hold them by June 2010.

From a Romanian property tycoon on bail on kidnapping charges, to a Cambridge-educated ultranationalist in Britain, nationalist, anti-immigrant and xenophobic politicians are campaigning to tap into popular anger. Some are likely to make it to Brussels. >>> By Gaston Ceron in Brussels and Alistair MacDonald in London | Friday, May 29, 2009