Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Anti-immigration parties hostile to the EU have done well 
 
 Eurosceptic and far-right parties have seized ground in elections to the European parliament, in what France's PM called a "political earthquake". 
 
 UK Independence Party and French National Front both performed strongly. The three big centrist blocs all lost seats, though still hold the majority. 
 
 The outcome means a greater say for those who want to cut back the EU's powers, or abolish it completely. 
 
 UK PM David Cameron said the public was "disillusioned" with the EU. 
 
 Mr Cameron said their message was "received and understood". 
 
 Vote 2014 
 
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 LIVE: Full coverage of results 
 
 French President Francois Hollande has called an urgent meeting of his cabinet, as Prime Minister Manuel Valls promised tax cuts a day after the results which he described as "a shock, an earthquake". 
 
 Chancellor Angela Merkel - whose party topped the poll in Germany - described the far right victories as "remarkable and regrettable" and said the best response was to boost economic growth and jobs. 
 
 Jose Manuel Barroso, outgoing president of the European Commission, stressed that the pro-EU blocs still had "a very solid and workable majority". 
 
 He said a "truly democratic debate" was needed to address the concerns of those who did not vote, or "voted in protest". 
 
 Image copyright AFP 
 
 Highlights 
 
 Italy In final results, centre-left PM Matteo Renzi (above) scores strong 40%, fending off ex-comic Beppe Grillo's anti-establishment Five Star with 21%, and ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia with 17% 
 
 (Based on exit polls/provisional results) 
 
 France National Front storm to victory - 25%, 24 seats; Centre-right UMP 21%; President Hollande's Socialists a poor third with 14% - lowest ever EP score 
 
 National Front storm to victory - 25%, 24 seats; Centre-right UMP 21%; President Hollande's Socialists a poor third with 14% - lowest ever EP score Britain Eurosceptic UKIP in first place, with 27%, Conservatives on 24% and Labour about 25%, Greens beating Lib Dems 
 
 Eurosceptic UKIP in first place, with 27%, Conservatives on 24% and Labour about 25%, Greens beating Lib Dems Germany Angela Merkel wins another election - 35% for her Christian Union, 27% for the centre-left SPD. Eurosceptic AfD score strong 7% 
 
 Greece Partial results show far-left Syriza on 26%, PM Antonis Samaras' New Democracy on 23%. Far-right Golden Dawn set to get three MEPs, with 9%. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras has asked the Greek president to call early national elections. 
 
 European election results: At a glance 
 
 EU supporters will be pleased that election turnout was slightly higher, at 43.1%, according to provisional European Parliament figures. 
 
 The revolt had been a long time brewing and the battle lines are drawn 
 
 That would be the first time turnout had not fallen since the previous election - but would only be an improvement of 0.1%. 
 
 "The people have spoken loud and clear," a triumphant Marine Le Pen told cheering supporters at National Front (FN) party headquarters in Paris. 
 
 "They no longer want to be led by those outside our borders, by EU commissioners and technocrats who are unelected. They want to be protected from globalisation and take back the reins of their destiny." 
 
 Provisional results suggested the FN could win 25 European Parliament seats - a stunning increase on its three in 2009. 
 
 Matthew Price, BBC News, Brussels 
 
 Despite the huge gains for anti-EU parties and those that wish to reduce the power of the EU, it is unlikely that the European Parliament will adopt a fundamentally different approach. 
 
 The main centre-right and left groupings still hold the majority of seats between them. Add in the Liberals and the Greens and parliament is overwhelmingly pro-EU. In that sense if the main groups in the parliament choose to ignore those who didn't vote for them last night, they can. National politicians however, can't afford to ignore them. That's where this election is likely to really shake things up. 
 
 This will have an impact not just on domestic politics, but on the national leaders when they meet in Brussels at the European Council - where their job is to shape the direction of the EU. 
 
 Protest parties will force EU rethink 
 
 Hard-left gains 
 
 Across the board, the centre-right European People's Party was set to win 214 out of the 751 seats, with 28.5% across the bloc, according to estimated results issued by the European Parliament. That would make it the biggest group - but with more than 60 seats fewer than before. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Jeremy Vine uses graphics to show how EU citizens voted 
 
 That puts it ahead of the Socialist group with 189 seats (25.17%), Liberals with 66 (8.79%) and Greens 52 (6.92%). 
 
 EPP leader Jean-Claude Juncker insisted the majority of people had voted to be a part of Europe. 
 
 "The extreme right, contrary to what some of the media has said, did not win this election," he said. 
 
 "We will have a clear pro-European majority in this house," added the man who is the frontrunner to be the next president of the European Commission. 
 
 The Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Democracy group appeared to have around 38 seats, including the 24 confirmed seats for the UK Independence Party (UKIP). 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Nigel Farage: "The people's army of UKIP have spoken tonight" 
 
 But the number of non-attached right-wing MEPs is set to rise, boosting the Eurosceptic camp. 
 
 UKIP leader Nigel Farage, commenting on his party's success in Britain, said: "The inevitability of European integration ends tonight." 
 
 The anti-bailout hard-left group in parliament was set to make big gains, largely thanks to Syriza in Greece and United Left in Spain, gaining about 12 seats. 
 
 Martin Schulz, the former Socialist president of the European Parliament - said of the FN victory: "It's a bad day for the European Union, when a party with a racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic programme gets 25% of the vote." 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Angela Merkel said the response to the far-right swing must be to boost employment and the economy 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Morten Messerschmidt, of the Danish People's Party, was among the Eurosceptic winners 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption But many Socialists had a disappointing night - including their candidate for Commission president Martin Schulz 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption Sweden's Feminist Initiative becomes the first formally feminist party to send an MEP to Brussels 
 
 The election is the biggest exercise in multi-national democracy in the world. The vote will affect the lives of the EU's 500 million citizens. 
 
 The parliament's powers have expanded since the last election in 2009, and it is hoping to have a decisive say in who gets the EU's top job, president of the European Commission. 
 
 You can follow full coverage with all the latest updates at bbc.co.uk/vote2014. ||||| “The real effect of these elections, with big ‘Euroskeptic’ gains in many countries, will be less what happens in Brussels and more what happens within the member states,” he told reporters in Brussels via a video link. “I think the day when we have more referendums on E.U. membership and membership of the euro will have come much, much closer with these results tonight.” 
 
 After more than three decades of falling turnout, however, this year’s election managed, barely, to halt the downward spiral, with a parliamentary official saying preliminary results showed 43.1 percent of eligible voters had cast their ballots — compared with 43 percent in 2009. 
 
 Mainstream center-right and center-left blocs will continue to dominate the assembly, with the center-right European People’s Party expected to emerge with 212 seats in the 751-member legislature. But fringe forces will gain a larger platform to promote their hostility to the bureaucracy in Brussels and to immigrants in their home countries. 
 
 Leaders of some of the mainstream parliamentary parties held out hope that voters’ drift to extremist parties could be reversed. 
 
 “This is a bad day for the European Union when the party with such an openly racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic program gets 25 or 24 percent of the vote in France,” Martin Schulz, the current president of the European Parliament and the Socialist contender to run the E.U.'s main policy-making body, the European Commission, told a news conference early Monday morning. “The reasons behind such a vote for a party like this party in France is not that people are hard-core extremists,” he said. “They are disappointed. They have lost trust and hope,” he said. 
 
 Hailed by Europe’s boosters as a way to hold back a wave of public disenchantment and narrow the chasm between citizens and officials, voting for the legislature began last Thursday under the slogan “This time it’s different.” 
 
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 But a series of televised debates between the leaders of rival political blocs and other efforts to engage with voters have had scant success breaking through a wall of public indifference to what many Europeans scorn as a remote and overly costly Tower of Babel. The legislature has 24 official languages and shuttles between Brussels, the headquarters of union’s administrative machinery, and the French city of Strasbourg, 270 miles away. 
 
 “The European Parliament is predicated on the idea of a European ‘demos,' ” Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, a London-based research group, said, using a term meaning shared political culture. “But if this demos does not exist, the Parliament has a very hard time connecting with people.” 
 
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 Politics in Europe remains highly local, making it hard to identify Continentwide trends despite regular pleas from officials in Brussels that voters need to think more as Europeans and widen their horizons beyond national borders. Voter turnout slumped in 17 countries, including Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic, but rose in 11 others like Sweden and Germany. 
 
 Aside from its efforts to restrict snooping by American intelligence agencies in the wake of revelations by Edward J. Snowden, Mr. Grant said, the European legislature “exists inside the Brussels bubble and doesn’t talk about things most people care about.” Its principal concern, he added, “has been to get more power for itself and more money for the European Union.” 
 
 The entire assembly decamps once a month to Strasbourg, only to return to Brussels a few days later at a significant cost to taxpayers. Scrapping the trips to Strasbourg would save about $140 million a year. 
 
 The shuttles have left the Parliament open to ridicule as a “traveling circus.” But the arrangement is required by a treaty that cannot be changed without unanimous approval by member states, something that is impossible so long as France refuses to abandon a role for Strasbourg. 
 
 A vivid example of the paralysis that grips decision-making in a bloc that began in the 1950s with just six member states but has since expanded to 28, the Strasbourg shuttle has helped fuel the mounting public exasperation that improved the fortunes of the National Front, UKIP and other fringe groups. 
 
 In a sign of how fragmented European politics remain, however, a Dutch party that shares UKIP’s hostility toward immigrants and the European Union did far worse than expected. 
 
 Widely seen as a sideshow to national legislatures, the European Parliament has struggled for years, largely in vain, to galvanize public interest, despite a steady accumulation of power.
– Europe's parliamentary elections have resulted in big gains for those opposed to European Union power, including far-right parties in France, the UK, and Greece, the BBC reports. "The people have spoken loud and clear," said the leader of France's National Front, Marine Le Pen. "They no longer want to be led by those outside our borders … They want to be protected from globalization and take back the reins of their destiny." The party won just three seats in 2009; this time, it's poised to take 25, the most of any French party. French president Francois Hollande's party won just 14% of the vote compared to the National Front's 25%. "This is a bad day for the European Union, when the party with such an openly racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic program gets 25% or 24% of the vote in France," says current European Parliament president Martin Schulz. In Britain, the "Euroskeptic" UK Independence Party won 27% of the vote, winning a national vote for the first time and knocking the two main parties, Labour and Conservative, into second and third place. In Greece, the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn scored three seats, the New York Times reports. Overall, those on the center-right and center-left will stay in charge of the European Parliament, the Times notes. Still, the leading center-right bloc, the European People's Party, has lost about 60 seats, the BBC reports. Voting turnout was 43.1%.