EU Parliament voting under way

BRUSSELS: From Portugal to Finland, voters of 21 nations on Sunday were deciding the makeup of the next European Parliament, a sprawling exercise in democracy that will help determine the European Union’s future leaders and course.
Opinion polls were predicting that candidates who want to slash the EU’s powers or even abolish it could scoop up as many as a third of the seats — which would be the strongest showing ever of disillusionment with the bloc. When official returns are announced Sunday night, they could herald changes in EU policy in areas ranging from border control and immigration to a new trade and investment agreement being negotiated with the US.
Europeans in seven other nations have already voted. Unofficial exit polls reported a surge in support for Britain’s anti-EU UKIP party. In the Netherlands, however, the right-wing Euroskeptic Party for Freedom dropped from second to fourth place, the pollsters reported.
The 751-seat Parliament is the only popularly elected body in the 28-nation European Union. Never before have so many candidates been bent on radically curtailing the EU’s powers, ending their country’s membership or shutting down the union entirely.