The treaty of Amsterdam, however, has now significantly extended the parliament's duties. Unfortunately it came into force only in May, while all mass-media attention was focussed on the Kosovo conflict, and therefore this important reform remained almost unnoticed.
As a consequence voters showed clearly that they did not yet consider this election from a European point of view. Just like in former editions, they used it mainly to punish the governing parties in their countries. Since most European countries are now governed by a left or center-left coalition, the major losers of this competition were the governing Socialists and Social Democrats. While this was somehow expected, the real surprise was the extent of the lessons prepared by the voters, especially in Germany and England. The only consolation for the losers is therefore the high abstention that leaves at least some hopes to regain strength at the next national elections.
Change of majority
The winner of these elections was the Christian Democratic and Conservative right. For the first time in twenty years the European People's Party (EPP), which unites most parties of this area, is now with 224 seats (201 before) the biggest block in parliament, with a 44-seat-lead over the Party of European Socialists (PES) with 180 (214).
Generally well, except for Germany, did the Liberal Parties with 43 seats (42) and especially the Greens and Ecologists with 38 seats (27). The Greens' success is not so surprising after a huge scandal in Belgium over food poisoned with Dioxin that alarmed consumers all over Europe.
Alarm bells should be ringing instead in the central committees of Europe's Communist parties. Almost everywhere the Communist MEPs are now outnumbered by other forces of the independent left, especially by the Greens. The disappointing results of Communists from Finland to Portugal could be a telltale light for the definite decline of this ideology ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Empire.
Schröder and Blair punished
The most spectacular cases of countries that switched right after a recent electoral success of the left are Germany and the United Kingdom. Maybe it is not a case that the governing leaders of the left in both countries, Gerhard Schröder (SPD) and Tony Blair (New Labour), were among the absolute protagonists of the Kosovo conflict. Probably their former voters had not expected these "flower-power-kids" of the anti-Vietnam generation to wage war in the name of NATO and most evidently they showed now that they didn't like the idea.
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