The European Parliament elections in the Netherlands have been won by two parties: Geert Wilders' nationalist anti-EU Freedom Party and the firmly pro-EU social-liberal party D66.

Fielding candidates for the first time, Mr Wilders' staunchly anti-European party will be returning four of the 25 Dutch MEPs. The other winners are social-liberal D66 and GreenLeft, both of whom are firm advocates of the European Union; each will send three MEPs to Brussels.
 
The Freedom Party MEPs will be headed by Barry Madlener; Mr Wilders will remain an MP in The Hague. The Freedom Party has ruled out joining any of the existing multi-party factions in the EP. In his victory speech, Mr Madlener repeated he will go for "less Europe, more Netherlands, Turkey never an EU member".
 
National effect
Formally the elections have no repercussions on national politics, but the vote is generally seen as a nationwide opinion poll on the performance of the Dutch government and opposition in The Hague. Emphasising that his party was now the country's second biggest in terms of voter share, Geert Wilders was quick to claim that the results are a call on the government to step down.
 
Opinion polls had been predicting that Mr Wilders' PVV would become the country's biggest party if general elections were held now. As it happens, in Thursday's EU elections the party narrowly failed to dethrone the Christian Democrats as the country's largest party.
 
The three parties that form the governing coalition together lost 6 of their 16 MEPs. The biggest blow was administered to Labour, the big loser in the contest, which was more than halved, from 7 to 3 seats. The Christian Democrats lost 2 of their 7 seats.
 
The third coalition partner, small Christian Union, remained stable at two seats, as did opposition Socialist Party. Opposition conservative VVD, which had feared being leeched by Mr Wilders' party, lost just one of its four seats.
 
Wait till Sunday
The European Parliament counts 736 seats. The final results of the Europe-wide elections will not be known until Sunday evening, when voting has been completed in all EU member states. Contravening Brussels' preferences, the Netherlands is not witholding the election results until Sunday. The tradition is for the outcome to be published as soon as the votes have been counted.

The table below summarises the Dutch results, with 92 percent of the votes counted.
Turnout was at 36 percent, slightly below the 40 percent mark of 2004.
 

EP 2009 election results (old seat count in brackets)