but may be of interest to local readers.

Elections for the European Union's parliament have usually been of little interest elsewhere. But the balloting earlier this month produced an interesting result. In ten of the 15 member nations, the centre-left parties were defeated by their centre-right foes, who thus became the biggest grouping in the European Parliament for the first time since the popular election of representatives in that body was instituted in 1979.

It's difficult to know whether this shift in party loyalties at the European level reflects a likely change of electoral fortunes at the domestic level.

It's even hard to know whether it will have more than a modest affect on the EU itself, where the Parliament is an institutionally weak body and the practical differences between centre-left and centre-right parties are real enough but not exactly earth-shattering (something akin to the differences between Democrats and Republicans in the United States). But the EU is playing an increasingly influential role on the international scene, so developments regarding its parliament are worth noting.

Like most elections, these were affected to some degree or another by differing local circumstances (e.g., unemployment in Germany, hostility toward adopting the euro in Britain). But can any broader trends be seen -- or at least imagined? It's interesting that during the past couple of decades, the center-right tended to rule inside many important EU nations (most notably, the Christian Democrats in Germany and the Conservatives in Britain). Yet during this same period, centre-left parties dominated the European Parliament. Now that centre-leftists have gained power inside many big European nations -- e.g. Gerhard Schroder in Germany, Tony Blair in Britain and Massimo D'Alema in Italy -- voters have given the edge in the EU balloting to centre-rightists.

Perhaps voters don't trust either side -- centre-left or centre-right -- to predominate at both national and continental levels at the same time. Is this an informal, spontaneous system of checks and balances? Apart from this possible development regarding the relationship between electoral choices at the national and continental levels, there is another interesting possibility raised by the recent election results. As noted above, left-leaning parties have generally dominated the European Parliament for the past 20 years. Not surprisingly, this has helped them tilt the EU's policies and personnel toward the portside. Insofar as the European Parliament plays what many predict will be a growing role in these matters (competing in influence with the Eurocrats in Brussels and the governments at home), will this bring about a shift in policies and personnel -- e.g., tighter reins on the EU's spending, less "progressive'' approaches to social programmes of all sorts? That would be welcome, but we'll see.