The people of Europe — or at least the European Union — have spoken, and what many of them said can be crudely translated into a raised middle finger towards Brussels.

Although opinion polls had been predicting a massive protest vote, nobody really thought it would be as bad as it turned out to be. Fringe parties on the left and the right in many countries won more seats than their larger and more established rivals.

And although the German-led centre-right coalition will still have a majority in the European Parliament, extreme right wing and socialist groups will make life difficult for status quo politicians.

In Britain, Nigel Farage performed even better than his United Kingdom Independent Party had in the local council elections a few days earlier. In fact, it won 27 per cent of the vote, placing it ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives. The deeply demoralised Liberal Democrats came a dismal fifth, behind the Green Party.

The Conservatives are now having the jitters about the by-election in Newark next Thursday. Although they won the parliamentary seat here by 16,000 votes in the last general election, a series of ministers and other party bigwigs are descending on this constituency to make sure the Ukip tsunami does not wash up the shore here. Should the Conservatives lose, their prospects in the 2015 general elections would be decidedly bleak.

As Farage, with his usual self-confidence, asserted: “It is a political earthquake … The people’s army of Ukip now marches on … Anything’s possible after tonight’s result.”

In France, the results were an even bigger shock. Marine Le Pen’s National Front won 25pc of the votes cast, giving it the biggest group of French seats in the EU parliament. The party leader immediately announced, with some justification:

“The sovereign people have spoken loud and clear, as in all the great moments of its history. The people demand one type of politics only — the politics of the French, for the French and with the French.”

But while the right did very well in the UK and France, in Spain and Greece, it was the left that challenged the establishment. Here, socialist alliances demanded that the EU do more to help their countries overcome their economic crises.

Despite the clear message that millions across Europe want change, Angela Merkel and her centre-right partners are determined to retain control of the EU and its institutions. Although many, including Francois Hollande, the French president, and David Cameron, the British PM, are demanding a fresh face in the EU presidency, Merkel has put all her weight behind her candidate, Jean Claude Juncker. After serving as the prime minister of Luxembourg for 18 years, Juncker was elected president of the Eurogroup, and is now poised to preside over the European Commission.

A deeply conservative figure, Juncker is viewed by his detractors as somebody incapable of pushing through the kind of reforms voters are demanding. But Germany is easily the most powerful member of the EU after having rescued the Euro from disaster following the economic crisis that has battered many European countries.

Juncker, despite the strong German backing he enjoys, will be unable to resolve a contradiction at the heart of the European project: how to ensure the Euro’s health without tighter EU control over the budgets of member states? The current mood is for less, not more, interference from EU bureaucrats. Neither French nor British voters will accept more dictation from Brussels or Berlin.

A recent example of the absurd lengths EU regulations go to standardise goods is the move to demand that certain perfumes change their ingredients. This is because “one to three percent of users may be allergic to some of these ingredients.” The fact that Chanel No 5 has been in production for 93 years without causing an outbreak of the bubonic plague would suggest that it is not such a danger to public health as regulators are making out.

However, the bloated Brussels bureaucracy is constantly creating bizarre new regulations to justify their existence. So a range of safety rules that have caused costs to rise are now in place in restaurants, hotels, shops and factories across Europe. These expensive and time-wasting edicts are fuelling anger against the EU and its institutions.

The other major issue that has propelled right-wing parties to the fore in the recent election is immigration. Ukip has gained from the perception that under EU rules, citizens can move freely between member states. With relatively high unemployment, many Britons fear they will lose their jobs to new migrants from East Europe who are willing to work for lower salaries.

France has around 6.5 million Muslims, or 10pc of the population, living within its borders. And once somebody has residency status in any EU state, he or she can move to another member country. Thus, North African migrants, once they have legal status in Italy, can easily move into France, increasing the number of Muslims there.

Given this climate of increasing intolerance, it is difficult to see how the EU can maintain the momentum towards greater integration — and ultimately, to full union — that is its stated goal. Often, human beings simply refuse to be part of a political experiment.

Tailpiece: Despite these elections in numerous polling districts across Europe, there were no complaints of rigging. Ditto in India. I hope our Election Commission has taken note of this odd phenomenon.

Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2014