By Claudia Ciobanu
BUCHAREST, Nov 29 2007 (IPS)

Half a year after Bulgaria elected its representatives to the European Parliament (EP), Romania has voted in its first European elections. The vote in Romania marked a defeat of populist forces and coincided with the collapse of the far- right block in the EP.

Romanians elected their 35 representatives to the EP Sunday, after postponing the vote by six months because of internal political disputes.

Bulgaria’s 18 Members of European Parliament (MEPs) were elected on May 20. The EP currently has 732 seats.

The two Eastern European countries are the newest European Union (EU) members, having joined the block on Jan. 1, 2007.

“Elections in Bulgaria followed the ‘new Europe model’ in that there was basically no discussion of EU themes in the campaign,” said Analyst Ivan Krastev, from the Sofia think-tank Center for Liberal Strategies.

While participation patterns were similar in the two neighbouring countries, the outcomes differed in several ways, most significantly because populist forces were defeated in Romania and victorious in Bulgaria.

In Romania, not even the linking of this vote with a referendum on moving away from closed-list voting could increase participation.

Commentators in both Romania and Bulgaria argued that citizens were expressing their disappointment with national politics by not taking part in the elections.

Electoral campaigns in both countries did little to increase interest.

“Parties showed limited willingness to invest significant energies in this electoral campaign, both in terms of money and the importance of the candidates they placed on their European lists,” argues sociologist Mircea Kivu, former director of IMAS, the Romanian Institute for Marketing and Opinion Polls.

Kivu adds that electoral debates in Romania were framed in terms of domestic politics – making little reference to European issues.

Similar factors affected voter turnout in Bulgaria.

In Bulgaria, Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), a party populist Sofia mayor Boyko Borissov had founded right before the European elections, achieved the best performance. GERB got five seats in the EP – the same as the Socialists, the senior partner in the governing coalition.

The other two parties in the government, the Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms and the Simeon II National Movement, won four and one seat, respectively. Ultra-nationalists from Attaka got three seats.

In Romania, on the other hand, none of two major populist parties – ultra- nationalist Greater Romania and the New Generation Party, founded by Steaua football club manager Gigi Becali – made it to the EP.

“Beyond a hard core of activists, parties such as Greater Romania and New Generation have uncommitted supporters, who were not persuaded to get out to vote in the absence of strong campaigning,” Todor Arpad, analyst with Pro Democratia Association, one of the organisations monitoring EP elections in Romania, told IPS.

The competition between the various populist forces in the country led to the fragmentation of that segment of the electorate responsive to such a message, explained Arpad.

In Romania, the Democratic Party – to which President Traian Basescu belongs – will have the largest number of MEPs, 18.

The Liberal Party of Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu will have seven. The main opposition force, the Socialists, will have nine MEPs. Newly formed Liberal Democrat Party and the Hungarian Union each won two seats. The country will also have an independent MEP, Lazslo Tokes.

Although new MEPs from Romania were expected to strengthen the far-right block in the EP, the Romanian electorate did not support the ultra- nationalists. In fact, the far-right block collapsed less than two weeks before the Romanian elections – due in part to actions of Romanian delegates.

In the second week of November, the five representatives of Greater Romania allied to the extremist EP grouping Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty (ITS) withdrew from this coalition, in protest of “anti-Romanian” remarks made by Italian ITS colleague Alessandra Mussolini, grand-daughter of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Reacting to the Oct. 30 murder of Italian Giovanna Reggiani by Romanian Roma Nicolae Mailat, Mussolini declared in an interview that, “breaking the law has become a way of life for Romanians”.

As a result of the withdrawal of the Romanians, ITS dissolved. Left with members from only five EU countries, the group no longer met the criteria necessary for recognition and financing.

ITS was “a casualty of its own xenophobic philosophy,” commented Graham Watson, leader of the European Liberals.

The three Bulgarians from Attaka who had been members of ITS became independent MEPs.

Romanian and Bulgarian observers – appointed by the national parliaments – – have been attending EP sessions since September 2005. After Jan. 1, these observers functioned as proper MEPs, to be replaced by elected representatives as soon as the countries could organize ballots.

With Romania and Bulgaria having sent their elected representatives to the EP, debates are emerging in the two countries over what their impact will be.

“The two biggest initiatives of the Bulgarian MEPs as a group concerned the activities around the campaign for the release of Bulgarian nurses from Libya and the correct spelling of euro in Bulgarian in all official texts of the EU,” Martina Iovcheva from the Bulgarian office at the European Parliament told IPS.

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