Centre-left parties across Europe were bereft and bewildered today after voters deserted them for extremists and fringe groups or stayed at home in the lowest-ever turnout for elections to the European Parliament.

The biggest faction in the parliament will be the Centre Right after strong performances from Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP, Angela Merkel's CDU and Donald Tusk's Civic Democrats in Poland.

Left-of-centre governments and oppositions were not judged to be offering answers to the economic downturn and suffered badly not only in Britain but in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Netherlands, Hungary, Bulgaria and Portugal.

Analysts said that the successful centre-right parties picked up on nationalist sentiment by hardening their rhetoric on immigants — exemplified by President Sarkozy's rejection of Turkish membership of the EU — as well as adopting traditional left-wing attitudes to job protection.

Silvio Berlusconi's Party of Freedom (PdL) blamed bad publicity surrounding the nature of its leader's relationship with an 18-year-old model for not doing as well as hoped, but it nevertheless comfortably beat the opposition in Italy.

Anti-immigrant parties gained MEPs in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and the UK. Extremist right-wing parties lost ground in Belgium, Bulgaria and France but still won seats.

The Greens improved their numbers, rising from 43 to 53 MEPs despite the overall reduction in MEPs from 785 to 736, thanks to strong showings in France and Germany.

The turnout of 43 per cent, compared with the low of 45.47 per cent in 2004, meant that 213 million voters abstained from the poll despite voting being mandatory in several countries.

In Germany, Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democratic Union lost a handful of seats but maintained its strong lead over the left-of-centre SPD, its coalition partner, pointing to victory for the German Chancellor in the autumn general election.

The CDU and its Bavarian sister party the CSU won 37.9 per cent of the vote, while the Social Democrats plunged to a record low of 20.8 per cent.

It set a trend across Europe, with disappointing results for centre-left parties in government and in opposition alike. Only in Greece and Malta could socialist oppositions claim success.

“This is disappointing,” Franz Müntefering, the head of the SPD, said. “The result for us is significantly worse than we expected.”

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