EU leaders face election embarrassment

You mean you are actually saying there is something that can embarrass a politician?

European governments braced themselves for electoral embarrassment on Sunday as recession-hit voters turned to protest parties or failed to cast ballots at all in elections to the European parliament.

In what was the largest multi-national ballot in history, voters in 19 EU countries went to the polls on the fourth and final day of an election in which the bloc’s eight other states had voted between Thursday and Saturday.

Governments in many countries, especially the UK, where Gordon Brown, prime minister, is struggling for his political life, were expected to be punished by voters angry and frightened at Europe’s worst recession since the 1930s.

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