Dans l'UE, la droite en tête, poussée des extrêmes

ALLEMAGNE. - Les conservateurs de la chancelière Angela Merkel sont crédités de 36% des voix. Ils compteraient près de 10 points d'avance sur les sociaux-démocrates qui enregistrent une progression historique à 27,5 %. Le nouveau parti anti-euro AFD, créé au printemps 2013, qui plaide pour une dissolution de la monnaie unique européenne devrait faire son entrée au Parlement européen. Il réalise un score de 6,5%. À noter, le parti d'extrême droite NPD était crédité de 1%, et obtiendrait tout juste un siège.

L'Allemagne, pays le plus peuplé de l'UE, envoie 96 députés au parlement européen sur 751.

AUTRICHE. -Le parti de centre-droit ÖVP arrive en tête des élections en Autriche. Ce scrutin est également marqué par une nette poussée de l'extrême droite, selon les sondages réalisés à la sortie des bureaux de vote. Le FPÖ obtiendrait ainsi la troisième place avec 19,9% des suffrages, contre 12,7% en 2009. Ce parti est à la pointe des tentatives pour composer une alliance des partis nationalistes et eurosceptiques dans le prochain Parlement européen. Il espère constituer un groupe commun avec notamment le Front national français de Marine Le Pen dans le prochain Parlement européen,

GRÈCE. - La gauche radicale, dirigée par Alexis Tsipras, termine légèrement en avance sur le parti du premier ministre Antonis Samaras, selon les premières estimations de sortie des bureaux de vote publiées en Grèce dimanche soir à la clôture du scrutin européen. Le parti néonazi, Aube dorée, arrive en troisième position avec un score compris entre 8% et 10%. Ce résultat pourrait lui donner au moins deux députés sur 21.

PORTUGAL. - Le scrutin a été marqué par un rejet de la politique d'austérité du gouvernement. La coalition de centre droit au pouvoir au Portugal était largement devancée dimanche par l'opposition socialiste aux élections européennes, selon les premières projections des télévisions. Ce résultat, s'il se confirme, constitue un sérieux revers pour le premier ministre portugais Pedro Passos Coelho, à un peu plus d'un an des élections législatives prévues pour l'automne 2015.

POLOGNE. - Le parti de centre droit au pouvoir, la Plateforme civique du premier ministre Donald Tusk, est arrivé en tête avec 32,8% et 19 députés, devant Droit et Justice de Jaroslaw Kaczynski qui a obtenu 31,8% des voix (19 députés), selon un sondage à la sortie des urnes réalisé par l'institut Ipsos. Un petit parti europhobe polonais, Congrès de la nouvelle droite, est sur le point d'entrer au Parlement européen avec quatre députés, en obtenant 7,2% des voix aux élections de dimanche. La Pologne envoie 51 élus au Parlement européen.

ROUMANIE. - La Roumanie fait figure d'exception. L'alliance de centre gauche dirigée par les sociaux-démocrates au pouvoir en Roumanie sort très largement victorieuse des élections européennes avec environ 41% des voix, selon deux sondages sortie des urnes. Les libéraux arrivent en deuxième position, avec environ 14% des voix, selon ces sondages réalisés par les instituts CURS et IRES. La Roumanie, pays où l'Union européenne jouit d'un fort taux de confiance, envoie 32 élus au Parlement européen.

ANGLETERRE. - L'Ukip europhobe britannique semblait également en passe de réaliser un score historique, d'après ses résultats aux élections locales qui se déroulaient jeudi en même temps que le scrutin européen. Le scrutin ne concernait pas le Pays de Galles ni l'Ecosse et ne visait qu'à renouveler un tiers environ des conseillers municipaux. Mais il pourrait donner une indication sur le résultat des européennes, qui se sont tenues également jeudi mais dont on ne connaîtra le verdict que dimanche soir.

I'm glad I'm the age I am. This world is going backwards.

I'm glad I'm the age I am. This world is going backwards.
Doesn't it make you wonder why, in the year when we remember the start of the first world war, and 69 years after the end of the second, so many young and innocent lives had to be sacrificed at the altar of capitalism when we end up with a neo-Nazi party making fools of us all and of the venal politicians of other parties who allowed such apathy to develop among the electorate.

France suffered a political earthquake on Sunday as the far-right Front National topped the polls in European elections with an unprecedented 25% of the vote, with President François Hollande's Socialists in third place behind the centre-right UMP, exit polls indicated.

If the Front National score is confirmed, it will be the first time that the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party led by Marine Le Pen has won a national election and would give the party 23-25 of France's 74 seats in the European Parliament.

The UMP was projected to score around 21% while the ruling Socialists were seen as scoring 14%, down from the 16.5% won last time in 2009.

Le Pen immediately called for the dissolution of the French national assembly after the exit polls showed her anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic party winning . "What else can the president do after such a rejection?" Le Pen told reporters at Front National headquarters when asked if Hollande – whose ruling Socialists were well behind in third place – should dissolve the national parliament.

"It is unacceptable that the assembly should be so unrepresentative of the French people."

From the beginning of the European election campaign Le Pen was insistent that Sunday evening would finally see the Front National emerge as "France's No 1 party".

Election pundits scorned her pretentions; the opinion polls confirmed them.

As the first exit polls were announced at 8pm on Sunday, cheers and a rendition of La Marseillaise broke out among the party faithful gathered at the Front National headquarters in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, appeared to prove Le Pen right.

The first estimations suggested the far-right party had done even better than expected, polling an historic 25% of votes in the European elections and becoming France's No1 party on the European stage.

It was the second slap in the face for Hollande's administration in as many months after a disastrous showing in local elections in March.

Elsewhere in Europe the elections are also expected to deliver strong showings for anti-EU parties and extremist parties.

Exit polls suggested Greece's anti-austerity leftist party Syriza had come first, but the election also delivered a strong showing for neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn. With up to 10% of the vote Golden Dawn looks set to elect at least two out of Greece's 21 eurodeputies, despite an ongoing criminal investigation and the fact that several of its leading members are in pre-trial detention.

Syriza was ahead by about 3 percentage points over the leading government party, the conservative New Democracy, polls jointly carried out by six leading opinion companies showed.

Syriza's parliamentary spokesman Panagiotis Lafazanis said that if confirmed, the EU vote constituted a game-changer in Greece.

"The (EU vote) result alters Greece's political scene," Lafazanis told Mega television.

Victory for Syriza would appear to reflect popular frustration with the harsh spending cuts the government has adopted in recent years to meet the terms of its economic rescue programme.

The surge in support for the far-left raises doubts about how much longer the centre-right government can last with a parliamentary majority of just two seats, although government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou said there was no question that the government would not finish its four-year term.

"It's easy for people to cast a protest vote in European elections," he told Greek television. "The political scenario of a government collapse, which Syriza was trying to paint, has not been borne out by the facts."

Projections by German television indicated that Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats would secure 36% of the vote, down from a 23-year-high of 41.5% in last year's federal election but still a clear victory.

The centre-left Social Democrats were forecast to take 27.5%, according to public broadcaster ARD, with turnout up from the last European elections in 2009.

The anti-euro Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won parliamentary representation for the first time with an estimated 6.5%, the best result so far for a conservative party created only last year.

"Germany has cast a clear pro-Europe vote and the high turnout is a good signal for the idea of European unity," said David McAllister, the top Christian Democrat candidate.

Ukraine has gone to the polls in a presidential election seen as the most important in the country's history, as it battles a pro-Russia insurrection in the east.

Turnout was strong in the capital, Kiev, and the west but most polling stations remained closed across swaths of the rebel-controlled industrial east.

"Ukraine is now another country so I don't see why we should take part in this election," said one woman in the rebel-held city of Donetsk who gave her name as Elisabeta. "It doesn't matter what the result is, it doesn't concern us today."

The west regards the vote as a crucial step in preventing Ukraine from disintegrating further after Russia seized the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in March in retaliation for the ousting of pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych.

Ukraine's prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, had issued an appeal for voters to turn out in force on Sunday to "defend Ukraine" in the face of a crisis that has plunged east-west relations into a post-cold war low.

"I hope this election will finally bring peace to Ukraine," said 38-year-old businessman Oleg as he voted in the western nationalist bastion of Lviv near the Polish border.

But in the Donetsk region alone, where rebels declared independence earlier this month in defiance of Kiev, only 426 out of 2,430 polling stations were open, and none in the main city.

Even before polling day, election officials had reported numerous cases of intimidation and attacks on polling centres and rebels threatened on Saturday they would disrupt the vote "by force if necessary".

Violence had flared on the eve of the vote in eastern flashpoint of Slavyansk, where two western photographers and their Russian translator were wounded after being caught in gunfire between separatist and Ukrainian forces.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin – authorised by parliament to invade Ukraine if necessary to "protect" ethnic Russians – had appeared to make a major concession on Friday by saying he was ready to work with the new Kiev leadership.

"We understand that the people of Ukraine want their country to emerge from this crisis. We will treat their choice with respect," he said.

Russia, threatened with further western sanctions if it disrupted the vote, also said it had started withdrawing from Ukraine's border about 40,000 soldiers and dozens of tank battalions whose presence had raised deep suspicions about the Kremlin's next move.

Ukraine has mobilised more than 82,000 police and 17,500 volunteers to ensure security for the vote, being overseen by 1,200 international monitors.

The packed field of candidates features clear frontrunner Petro Poroshenko – a billionaire chocolate baron and political veteran who sees Ukraine's future anchored to Europe – and 17 far less popular hopefuls that include ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

The election should give the new president a stamp of legitimacy as he or she battles against the insurgency and tries to repair relations with Ukraine's former masters in Russia.

However, opinion polls show Poroshenko falling just short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a second round on 15 June, meaning three weeks of further political uncertainty.

The snap ballot was called by Kiev's interim leaders who took power after Yanukovych fled in the bloody climax of months of protests sparked by his rejection of a historic EU alliance.

The charred buildings and flower-heaped barricades still crisscrossing Kiev's Independence Square – also the cradle of the 2004 Orange revolution that first shook Russia's historic hold on Ukraine – serve as poignant testimony to the more than 100 people killed during the winter.

The authorities acknowledge problems staging polling in the steel mill and coal mine-dotted regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, where rebel leaders declared independent republics after hastily arranged referendums on 11 May.

At least 150 people have been killed since the separatists took up arms against Kiev in early April, according to an AFP tally based on UN and Ukrainian government figures.

Ukraine is hoping that up to $27bn (£16bn) in global assistance it won after the old regime's fall may help avert threatened bankruptcy and revive growth in the recession hit country. But the new leadership will also have to negotiate with Russia over vital supplies of gas, with Moscow threatening to halt shipments if Ukraine does not pay a bill by early June.

Before voting got under way, Ukraine's interior minister, Arsen Avakov, said on his website that the election computer system had been the victim of a cyber attack and that counting would have to be done manually – but a spokeswoman later said the website had itself been hacked and the report was not true.

Voting closes at 5pm GMT, with the first results expected from 9pm.

"I hope this election will launch a process of change for the better … but I don't expect a magic wand," said Inna, a voter in the eastern city of Kharkiv that remains under Kiev's control.

Analysis: Jamie Robertson, BBC News - The gas deal between Russia and China was signed at 04:00 China time, which gives some indication of the level of urgency over these talks. Mr Putin appears to have been determined not to leave Shanghai without a deal - and he got one.

But the financial details are a "commercial secret", so we don't know how much he had to give away to get it. Certainly China needs the gas to help it cut its coal-fired smog levels, and it wants to diversify supply. But it had the luxury of time in which to negotiate, something Mr Putin was short of.

The perceived motive for the deal is that Russia needs a second market for its gas, so it can face up to European sanctions. Given that the "Power of Siberia" pipeline won't start pumping gas into Chinese factories until 2018 at the earliest, its economic effect on the European crisis will be limited.

More important may be the investment that China will make into Russia's power and transport infrastructure. Putin may not have managed to sign the most advantageous of gas deals on Wednesday but the opening of economic doors with China could well be the greater achievement.

Rain Newton-Smith, head of emerging markets at Oxford Economics, said: "The whole tenet of the deal has a symbolic value - it says that the two countries are prepared to work with one another. For instance there were other elements such as Chinese participation in Russian transport infrastructure and power generation.

"It is similar in many ways to China's investments in Africa where they drive a hard bargain over the price of raw materials but then provide infrastructure for the economies they are doing business with.

Jonathan Marcus, the BBC's defence and diplomatic correspondent said tensions between Russia and the west were not just over Ukraine: "There are fundamental differences over Syria and about the whole direction in which President Vladimir Putin is taking his country.

"Thus this deal could symbolise an important moment of transition - when both in economic and geo-political terms, Russia's gaze begins to look more towards the East than towards the West."

Siberian power

Another sticking point on the deal has been the construction of pipelines into China.

Currently there is one complete pipeline that runs across Russia's Far East to the Chinese border, called The Power of Siberia. It was started in 2007, three years after Gazprom and CNPC signed their initial agreement in 2004.

But financing the $22-30bn cost of sending it into China has been central to the latest discussions.

China is Russia's largest single trading partner, with bilateral trade flows of $90bn (£53bn) in 2013.

The two neighbours aim to double the volume to $200bn in 10 years.

Spiegel's online edition in German on Sunday, cites an internal North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) draft document pertaining to discussions occurring within the military alliance and among individual members about possible scenarios if Russia were to launch a military campaign in Eastern Europe. The draft document arrives at the conclusion that Russia's ability to "execute a significant military action without much warning poses a wide-reaching threat for maintaining safety and stability in the Euro-Atlantic zone." NATO has observed a Russian troop buildup near its border with Ukraine, but Russia claims it has no current plans for a military move. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, but the alliance is keen to show that it can effectively defend its Baltic members should the need arise.

Troop exercises - On Friday, NATO launched a large-scale operation in Estonia known as Exercise Steadfast Javelin 1 to "reflect NATO's collective defense in the Baltic region," according to a NATO statement. Six thousand troops from several NATO members including the United States (pictured above) are taking part in the exercise, which runs through May 23.

The leader of the exercise, General Hans-Lothar Domröse, said in the statement that "there is no doubt the Alliance is strong and NATO's resolve to assure its members of the ongoing utility of the Washington Treaty remains central to our actions."

The Washington Treaty refers to the alliance's founding North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington, D.C. in 1949.

According to information obtained by Spiegel, however, NATO would have a difficult time defending against a potential Russian incursion under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. This states that an armed attack against one NATO member is to be considered an attack against them all, and the attacked nation is to receive swift assistance as deemed necessary from the other members. This could include a military response.

Ukip delivers

LONDON - Ukip has delivered the first tremors of the political earthquake promised by Nigel Farage as the party weakened Labour's grip in its northern heartlands and caused the Conservatives to lose control of at least eight flagship councils.

Labour pulled off coups by winning David Cameron's favourite London council, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Cambridge, as well as looking set to take Merton and possibly Croydon. But outside the capital, it struggled to make expected gains in key targets such as Swindon and Portsmouth, while losing Thurrock to no overall control because of a surge in Ukip votes.

Farage also ate into Conservative strongholds, causing the party to lose control of eight councils, including Maidstone, Southend-on-Sea, Castle Point, Basildon and Brentwood - the constituency of local government secretary Eric Pickles.

By 6am on Friday, with 100 of the 172 councils up for election in England and northern Ireland still to declare, the Tories had lost 93 seats, Labour gained 74, the Lib Dems lost 72, Ukip gained 84, the Greens gained one and other parties were up seven.

The results of the European parliament elections, which also took place on Thursday, will be announced on Sunday.

The biggest collapse in the share of the vote appears to be for the Liberal Democrats, which lost Portsmouth council.

Ukip did not appear to have broken through in London, where it was polling in single digits, but the party experienced a huge surge to more than a third of the vote across some wards in Essex and big cities such as Sunderland, Birmingham and Hull, where it previously had little or no presence. In Rotherham, Ukip is the official opposition after winning 10 seats and ousting several prominent Labour councillors including the deputy leader of the council.

Hundreds of Italians took part in  protests in Rome against European media distorting reports about the situation in Ukraine. The public demonstration took place in front of the Ukrainian embassy, at the initiative of Giulietto Chiesa, an Italian public activist, prominent journalist and former member of European Parliament…. "No one in Italy knows the truth about what's happening in Ukraine. We're being fed nothing but falsehoods. We must awaken our people, and slowly but surely they are becoming more aware," Chiesa told Itar-Tass. He added that he believes that the current situation in Ukraine is not just a "regional crisis," but presents "an unparalleled threat to all." The last straw was the murder of 48 Ukrainian civilians in Odessa, and many of those who attended the rally in Rome came to voice their protest against the resurgence of fascism and Nazism in Ukraine and in Europe. "No to fascism, no to war, no to NATO in Ukraine!" chanted the participants of the peaceful protest.Hugo Moro, one of the rally's participants, said that the assembled Italians want to express their solidarity with the Ukrainians who fell "victims of conspiracy and the new Nazi government in Kiev."There were young people and older people among them, and the majority of those assembled say that do not trust the mainstream Italian media. Many of them are supporters of leftist political parties who traditionally oppose fascism, though it should be noted though that there are many right-wing Italians who support Russia's stance on Ukraine and on many other international issues.According to Chiesa, it means that adherents of both sides of the Italian political spectrum consider Russia to be "the only country capable of opposing the ever-present dictate of the US".The rally on the Roman square spread to social networks too. Many Facebook users shared pictures made by the protest's participants, so that the manifestation virtually took place in many other cities.According to Chiesa, no less than fifty such rallies took place in Italy during the last few weeks.