Low turnout "wins" European elections in France

What to make of how the French voted in the European parliamentary elections?

Well at face value the centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP), and Europe Ecologie (Greens) were the big "winners" here while the Socialist party and the centre party, Mouvement démocrate (MoDem) were the "losers".

But the most telling factor of Sunday's vote perhaps was the high abstention rate, with 51 per cent of France's eligible 44 million voters not bothering to go to the polls.

Of course it's not a trend isolated to this country, but France was one of the founder-members, is a major EU player and only last December was coming to the end of its spell as the EU "big cheese" as it handed over the six-month rotating presidency to the Czech Republic.

The overall results of the European parliamentary elections appear to reflect a general shift to the centre-right throughout the 27-nation bloc, and France would seem at first sight to have been no exception.

Indeed the results here are widely billed internationally as the governing UMP having "thrashed" the Socialist party.

And it's certainly true that the UMP of the French president Nicolas Sarkozy did well with almost 28 per cent of the votes and 29 seats while the Socialist party put in a poor performance to win just 14 seats and garner a little over 16 per cent of the popular vote.

But there were a number of factors at play and of course the interpretation put on what happened also depends to a great extent on political spin.

First up before looking at the results here and what they might or might not mean, it's important once again to look at the voter turnout.

As predicted and feared by many political pundits and politicians, it was abysmal. Just 41 per cent nationally - the lowest ever for a European parliamentary election in France.

So in a real sense none of the parties managed to convince the electorate that the issues at stake were worth voting for.

A shame really as the new parliament will have an even bigger role in shaping legislation that will have an enormous impact on the everyday lives of all EU citizens.

Still that's a message that parties in France (as elsewhere) failed to get across and indeed in the last weeks of what was, by any assessment, a lacklustre campaign, the focus was either on domestic issues such as security, or personal attacks on other members of political parties.

Simply put though the results from Sunday's vote suggest there were two big winners in France; the centre-right UMP and Europe Ecologie (Greens).

And there were of course two big losers, the Socialist party and the centre MoDem.

There's no doubt the UMP did better than many had expected, but there still has to be a doubt as to whether the result can really be said to have been a vote of confidence in the government and its policies.

Even if Sarkozy tries to use the results as a ringing endorsement of the government's policies and a springboard for more legislative reform, they're surely far from being that.

Few "European" issues were addressed during the campaign no matter how much "spin" is put on the results, and Sarkozy's domestic popularity remains low.

The other big winner was undoubtedly Europe Écologie (Greens) which garnered more than 16 per cent of the vote to finish in third spot just behind the Socialist party although the two will return exactly the same number of MEPs - 14.

The reasons for its success are probably three-fold.

Firstly, the undoubted failure of the Socialist party to overcome its internal differences and present a united front to the electorate.

Secondly the charismatic leadership of Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the inclusion of both Eva Joly and José Bové on the party's list.

In the end though it may well have been the leader of MoDem, François Bayrou, trading insults with Cohn-Bendit last Thursday that helped the Europe Ecologie do well and simultaneously damage MoDem's chances, and thus making it one of the "losers".

Before the two sparred off against each other, MoDem had been ahead in the polls and had been predicted to gain anything between 11 and 14 per cent going into the election.

Instead it has ended up with 8.45 per cent of the vote and just six MEPs.

That's being largely seen as a backlash and a reaction to the criticism there was the day after Bayrou accused Cohn-Bendit of "defending paedophilia" and being a personal friend of Sarkozy.

And Cohn-Bendit's barb that Bayrou was only interested in being president in 2012, which "you'll never be because you're pathetic," might well have had the ring of truth about it for many a voter.

Along with MoDem, the other big "loser" was of course the Socialist party.

But perhaps that's no real surprise, even to its most ardent supporters.

The party has been in turmoil for several years now and of course the infighting reached its pinnacle at the end of last year when Martine Aubry and Ségolène Royal fought a bitter battle for the leadership.

Aubry "won" but Royal never really accepted "defeat" and even though the two women publicly buried the hatchet in the run up to Sunday's election, it was widely seen as a rather poorly stage-managed and unbelievable peace pact.

In addition the Socialist party has also been criticised for failing to put across any specifically European political programme during campaigning (admittedly it was not alone in that).

Before the election Aubry had set the target of 20 per cent as a result to aim for.

The party won just a little over 16 per cent, which might not be as bad as its worst ever performance back in 1994 (14.49 per cent) but must still be sending alarm bells ringing over its prospects in the 2012 French presidential elections.

Alongside the four main political parties, there'll also be representatives from both the far-left and the far-right from the French political spectrum in the new European parliament with four seats for the former and three for the latter (including Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine).

And along with the one member from Libertas France (a combination of Mouvement pour la France, and Chasse, Pêche, Nature et Traditions, CPNT) a total of 72 French MEPs will take up their seats when the next session gets underway.