Results of the European Parliament elections are unlikely to heave the wheel of the SS Europe sharply left or right, but will bring a course change with long-term implications.
While polls ahead of the elections generally indicated voter apathy, there were some indications that this would not be the case universally across the 27 EU member states that were being called to voting booths.

Notably, just two days before the UK went to elect its MEPs on June 4, a YouGov survey said that voter turnout could be as high as 50 per cent, about 12 per cent higher than in the previous UK European Parliament election. Ahead of voting, most commentators said that turnout would be a measure of public response to the expenses scandal.
Tory leader David Cameron clearly was staking that votes rooted in protest and disillusionment would not be repeated in a national election, as he called for a general election, saying that the local and European elections should be "firing the starting gun" for one.

"I want us to have a fresh start in this country," Cameron told the BBC.

But while Labour seemed set for a pummeling at the polls, it was unclear to what extent Cameron would make gains at their expense, especially given media reports implicating Cameron in the expenses scandal, as well as some negative reaction to his initiative to set up a new conservative group in the European Parliament.

The formation of the new group could have domestic implications for Cameron and continent-wide implications for the workings of the EP.

For those outside the new conservative group, the first concern was that the new group would split centre-right forces, to the advantage of the European socialists. German chancellor Angela Merkel, whose CDU/CSU coalition was expected to return most of Germany’s share of MEPs to the European Parliament and its European People’s Party-European Democrats centre-right coalition, was among those who issued veiled but recognisable criticism of the Cameron move.

On June 2, business groups criticised Cameron for forming the group, with the EEF manufacturers’ body saying that the decision to form a new non-federalist group in the European Parliament instead could leave Britain "on the fringes of the debate", Reuters reported.

EEF told the Financial Times: "The Conservatives taking a decision that is bound to reduce our influence in Europe is not helpful to business."

It was not just the principle of forming the group but also the partners that caused controversy. Media reports highlighted the participation of identical twins Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party, a Polish political group alleged to be, among other things, homophobic and eccentric by anyone’s standards.

However, like a number of other participating parties – including Bulgaria’s Order Law and Justice Party – opinion polls ahead of the European Parliament elections did not foresee it emerging as a political force of major significance. It was questionable whether some of the parties in Cameron’s group, which also include Latvian and Belgian parties, would get anything more than a handful of seats, if any seats at all.

In an interview with Euractiv.com, Geoffrey van Orden, who was a key fixer in putting Cameron’s planned coalition together, rejected the notion that the new group would mean an advantage for the European socialist parliamentary group.

"On the contrary, and that’s why they are speaking so much against it. Because they realise there will be a further centre-right voice in the European Parliament, but this time the voice will be in opposition to the federalist ambition of the European Union," Van Orden said.

"And in any case, we will work very closely with the EPP on those issues where we are in agreement," he said.

However much media attention has been given to various far-right, fringe and single-issue parties – from downright anti-Semites to anti-Islamists and even Sweden’s Pirate Party – the overall trend would appear to be a majority for the centre-right to right-wing, whatever final forms of coalitions there will be through the life of the new European Parliament.
Convincingly or not, conservative or at least centre-right forces were said to be set to win the largest shares of votes in each of the countries at the top of the list of the largest shares of seats in the European Parliament – Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Poland, although in the latter case the most recent polls indicated a victory for the governing liberal Civic Platform, projected to get 39 per cent, ahead of Cameron’s allies Law and Justice, predicted to get 16 per cent.