The British and Dutch kicked off the biggest cross-border ballot in history on Thursday with European Union elections that look certain to embarrass many governments across the 25-nation bloc.
Over four days until Sunday, almost 350 million Europeans in the newly enlarged EU are eligible to vote for the 732-member European Parliament.
Turned off by Brussels and focused on national issues, voters appear set to deliver protest votes to many leaders - if they can be bothered to turn out.
In Britain and the Netherlands, the only nations to vote on Thursday, electors showed little passion for European affairs as they cast ballots in a trickle from early morning.
"I was mostly thinking about my back yard today," said London cyclist Melanie Marwick, 27, for whom traffic is the big issue.
By lunchtime in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam, just 9.5 percent of eligible voters had cast ballots, a city official said. Early turnout in other areas of the Netherlands was similar, the national news agency ANP reported.
Amsterdam restaurant owner Fared Assarte - like many across Europe - was far more interested in the impending Euro 2004 soccer championship.
"I am going to vote, although for me...it is all like a fog from Brussels," he said.
Britain's "Super Thursday" poll, so-called because it includes elections for local councils and for a London mayor, was shaping into a protest vote against Prime Minister Tony Blair for his support of the US-led war in Iraq.
"I am sending a message to Tony Blair that we are not happy," consultant Edward Lord, 42, said on his way to vote.
Blair is universally predicted to fare badly on Thursday and that will inevitably fuel speculation about his leadership.
But most analysts still see him winning a third general election, expected in 2005, despite public disquiet over Iraq and his closeness to US President George W. Bush.
The centre-right Dutch coalition of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende was in a close battle with the opposition Labour Party dominated by the domestic economy, jobs and spending cuts.
The Netherlands was to release provisional results late on Thursday - the first country to do so - despite a row with the European Commission which has threatened legal action over their release before the rest of the bloc has finished voting.
An unpublished last-minute opinion poll by EOS Gallup Europe made available to the European Parliament suggested the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) of conservatives and Christian Democrats would remain the largest group in the new parliament but fall short of its ambitions of dominance.
The study suggested the EPP would have about 265 seats, the Socialists 206, liberals 73, Greens 49, communists and leftists 32, with about 83 seats going to assorted nationalists, far-rightists and Eurosceptics and 23 to independents.
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