REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BRUSSEL -- France's President Francois Hollande Monday called for reining in Brussels' power after eurosceptic and far-right parties scored stunning success in EU polls, sending shock waves through the continent's political landscape.
Hollande went on national television to call for the EU to reduce its role which he said had become for many citizens "remote and incomprehensible".
The embattled leader saw the far-right National Front (FN) come out on top in France's vote, pushing his Socialist Party to a humiliating third place.
"This cannot continue. Europe has to be simple, clear, to be effective where it is needed and to withdraw from where it is not necessary," Hollande said in his address to the nation.
Across the Channel, British Prime Minister David Cameron faced a similar sentiment from voters with the anti-EU UK Independence Party's victory at the ballot box.
Ahead of an Informal European Council in Brussels on Tuesday, Cameron spoke to several of his counterparts saying they should learn from the election results, a statement from his Downing Street office said.
"The PM has been making the point... that leaders should seize the opportunity of tomorrow's dinner to heed the views expressed at the ballot box that the EU needs to change and to show it cannot be business as usual," it said.
Cameron spoke to Chancellor Angela Merkel who experienced a different result with her own conservative party winning the poll in Germany.
"It's quite remarkable and regrettable but now the point is to win those voters back," said Merkel in reaction to the anti-EU trend elsewhere.
"A policy of competitiveness, growth and jobs is the best answer to the disappointment of those who voted in a way that we don't like," she said.
European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso put the best gloss on the outcome, stressing that combined, the pro-EU camp of the centre-right, centre-left and Liberals would still have "a very solid and workable majority in the European Parliament".
"Standing together as Europeans is indispensable for Europe to shape a global order where we can defend our values and interests," Barroso said, also stressing employment and economic growth as the best answer to current concerns.
Analysts said anti-euro and anti-immigration parties had tapped into growing voter frustration after years in the economic doldrums pushed unemployment in Europe to record highs, while governments cut spending to balance the public finances at Brussels' behest.
Parliament's latest projections give the centre-right European People's Party 213 seats in the new 751-seat assembly, with the Socialists on 190 and the ALDE Liberals on 64, followed by the Greens on 53.
The anti-EU vote should produce about 140 seats in all, giving them enough of a voice in the new assembly to live up to promises to weaken the EU from the inside.
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