The Netherlands is electing 26 Dutch members of the European parliament on Thursday but by 13.30 only 15% of voters had bothered to turn out.

Opinion polls suggest the results will be very close, with the two Liberal parties VVD and D66 expected to remain ahead of Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam PVV.

In total, 19 parties are taking part in the elections. In 2009, the turnout was just 43% but some polls suggest it could shrink to 30% this time round. Other European nationals who live in the Netherlands, thought to number around 450,000, can also take part in the Dutch vote.

There are 766 members of the European parliament so the Dutch account for just 3.4% of the total number of MEPs.

Policies

Nos EU correspondent Chris Ostendorf points out that apart from the PVV, all the other main parties competing in the election continue to support the EU in principle, even if they want reforms.

‘Even the parties which criticise Europe want to solve problems at a European level,’ he says. ‘It is not so much about having less of Europe but about having a different Europe.’

In addition to questions about the Dutch influence on the European parliament, there are also questions about how much power the European parliament actually has.

Big issues such as emergency aid for eurozone countries or immigration are dealt with by the council of ministers rather than the parliament.

Results

The Nos will publish its exit poll shortly after voting ends at 21.00 hours.

However, the Dutch results will not be officially announced until Sunday evening, after the polling stations in other EU member states have closed.

Nevertheless, shock blog GeenStijl and opinion pollster Maurice de Hond are attempting to collect enough individual polling station results to come up with a good estimate.

Votes

GeenStijl and De Hond’s Peil.nl have called on supporters to be at the polling stations when the votes are counted and pass on the results.

The European Commission wants the Netherlands to keep the results secret because of fears they could influence other EU voters. Britain is also voting on Thursday but the rest hold their elections on Sunday.

However, home affairs minister Ronald Plasterk said on Wednesday the website’s plan does not contravene election law.

The 10,000 or so polling stations in the Netherlands are public and the votes per party in each polling station are also announced to the people present at the time. Dutch election law does not stop people recording and distributing this information, he said.

Check out the special DutchNews.nl election site for summaries of the main parties’ policies and for other election-related information.