Low turnout for the first European elections in Croatia
With a record low turnout of voters, just a bit over 20 percent, Croatia was electing 12 members to represent the country in the European Parliament. Croatia will join EU on July 1st but the MEPs had to be elected earlier and only for a short mandate of one year as the regular European elections are scheduled for 2014.
The results have been a surprise too as the leading opposition party – HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) – a conservative center right party – has won 6 seats in Bruxelles and Strasbourg. HDZ made a pre-election coalition with Euro-sceptic and hardliner Ruza Tomasic and she managed to enter the European Parliament of their election list as well, getting a lot of preferential votes as the election system was consisted of open lists.
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(Photo: Vlado Sestan/sxc.hu)
