European elections culminated on “Super Sunday” yesterday when Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Poland went to the polls, with the vote expected to confirm the dominance of pro-EU centrists despite a rise in support for the far-right and left.

The five EU member states represent the bulk of the 388 million Europeans eligible to cast ballots and elect the 751 deputies to sit in the European Parliament from 2014-2019.

Many Europeans have come to question the wisdom of ever-closer EU integration

After years of economic crisis, rising unemployment and poor growth, many Europeans have come to question the wisdom of ever-closer EU integration and are expected to vote for Eurosceptic parties on the right or left that promise radical change.

Opinion polls suggest at least a quarter of seats in the Parliament will go to anti-EU or protest groups, but at least 70 per cent will remain with the four mainstream, pro-EU blocs: the centre-left, centre-right, liberals and Greens.

Some of the earliest polls opened in Greece, where voting is compulsory. The last ballots were cast in Italy, where polls remained open until 9pm yesterday.

Turnout – the most basic measure of citizens’ engagement with Europe – was expected to fall again, dropping to just over 40 per cent, marginally down from 43 per cent in 2009.

Dimitris Papadimoulis, a senior lawmaker of the Greek radical leftist Syriza party and a candidate in the election, said the vote would send a strong message to Europe against austerity.

While expectations ahead of the vote were that far-right groups would record historic victories in countries such as France, the Netherlands and Britain, exit polls from the Netherlands, which voted on Thursday, were a surprise.

Geert Wilders’ anti-EU and anti-Islam Freedom Party came fourth, according to exit polls from Ipsos, with the majority voting for pro-EU parties. That has left centrists hopeful. Meanwhile Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPO) advanced to a fifth of the vote in a European Union election yesterday that the centre-right People’s Party was again set to win, initial projections by ORF television showed.

The People’s Party, which won the 2009 election in Austria for the European Parliament with 30 per cent of the vote, fell to 27.1 per cent this time. The centre-left Social Democrats were steady at nearly 24 per cent, while the Eurosceptic FPO reached 20.1 per cent from nearly 13 per cent. The FPO had campaigned largely on a message urging disgruntled voters to slap down the pro-Europe coalition of the two mainstream parties. Its anti-immigrant campaign stressed Austria’s neutrality and independence, called for halving Vienna’s EU contributions.

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