The EP election was held in France on Sunday.

The turnout was 39.8%, a new low. The results from the EP were as follows (2004 in brackets)

Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) – 28%, 30 seats (16.6%, 17)
Socialist party (PS) – 16.8%, 14 seats (28.9%, 31)
Europe Ecology – 16.2%, 14 seats (7.4%, 6)
MoDem (centrist) – 8.5%, 6 seats (12%, 11)
National Front (FN) – 6.5%, 3 seats (9.8%, 7)
Left Front (communists and others) – 6.3%, 4 seats (5.9%, 3)
New Anticapitalist Party (NPA, extreme-left) – 4.8%, 0 seats (2.6% with LO, 0)
Libertas – 4.8%, 1 seat (6.8% as MPF and 2.5% as CPNT, 3)
Workers’ Struggle (LO, extreme-left) – 1.2%, 0 seats (2.6% with former NPA, 0)

The incumbent administration is a single-party UMP majority government with Nicolas Sarkozy from the UMP as president. Immediately following the 2007 presidential election, the legislative elections returned the UMP with a first-round vote of 39.5%. So, there has been a considerable slippage in support for the UMP in the context of France’s economic problems. However, the Socialists continue their decline. Indeed, the fragmentation of the left-wing vote is somewhat reminiscent of the first round of the 2002 presidential election. EP elections in France have often thrown up strange results. So, there is nothing particularly exceptional about these results in one sense. However, they are likely to lead to some sort of soul searching on the left and it can only increase the crisis in the Socialists. Interestingly, MoDem did not do as well as they might have hoped. Their leader, François Bayrou, is hoping that disarray on the left will allow him to slip through to the second ballot of the 2012 presidential election where he might pick up enough anti-Sarkozy votes to be elected president. However, this result does not bode well for such a strategy.

An article on the 2004 EP election in France can be found here.