The Netherlands and Britain kicked off four days of voting across the 25-member EU Thursday to elect a European Parliament amid voter apathy and surging support for "eurosceptic" parties.

Seen in many countries as less a test of the European Union and more a mid-term referendum on governments, the world's only multi-national polls were still expected to expose mounting anti-EU feeling at a time of enormous change for the bloc of 450 million people.

The latest EU-wide poll of voter intentions, published Wednesday in Brussels, indicated that 52 percent of the electorate in the 25 member states would take part.

Despite fears that voters would turn their back on the process, however, a higher proportion of people went to the polls in the Netherlands than during the last European Parliament elections in 1966.

With three hours before the polling stations closed, 21 percent of Dutch citizens had cast their vote -- four percent more than in 1999.

The government was allowing municipalities to release provisional results later Thursday, much to the annoyance of the European Commission, which says no results can be published until votes have been counted in all 25 countries.

On a sunny day, cafe terraces in the Dutch capital appeared to be more popular than the voting stations.

The government feared a hit from eurosceptic candidates, along with a low turnout. Just under 30 percent of registered Dutch voters turned out in the 1999 poll, the second-lowest rate behind Britain's 24 percent.

An array of colourful candidates, from porn stars to athletes, from supermodels to ice hockey legends, also livened up the Dutch ballots.

In Britain, the balloting, taking place amid allegations of fraud sparked by a new system of postal ballots, was billed as a test both for Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose popularity has sunk due to the war in Iraq, and for the opposition Conservatives.

The Tories, despite running a strongly eurosceptic campaign, are being challenged by the upstart UK Independence Party (UKIP), which wants to take Britain out of the EU altogether.

Blair's governing Labour Party has encouraged voters to focus on the domestic issues that normally dominate local council elections, which were also taking place Thursday.

But Britain's alliance with the United States in the March 2003 invasion of Iraq continued to cast a greater shadow over the polls than the subject of schools, hospitals and the fight against crime.

In a working-class and immigrant district of London's East End, Muslim voters saw the elections as an opportunity to punish British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the war in Iraq.

"A million people marched in London against the war, but their voice wasn't registered," said Shafi, a 35-year-old who, like many others in the Brick Lane district hails from Bangladesh.

"The only way to be listened to is to vote today -- and to vote against Labour."

The only Labour candidate who gets widespread support in the area is Ken Livingstone, the fervently anti-war mayor of London who is running for re-election.

The other 23 EU member states will hold their elections on Friday or over the weekend.

Citizens in the 10 countries that joined the EU May 1 were voting for the first time in a European election.

But the expected turnout in the mostly ex-communist EU newcomers is lagging at 40 percent compared to an average 55 percent for the "old" 15 member countries, according to a pan-EU opinion poll released on Wednesday.

The EU assembly, the world's only multi-national legislature, is hobbled by the widespread public perception that it is a debating chamber with little effective power.

And its image is not helped by the equally widespread public perception that its members are on the fiddle, helping themselves to a generous array of perks and expenses at the parliament's two seats in Strasbourg and Brussels.

Still, the parliament has been amassing more power in EU decision-making over the years and will see its influence increase sharply if EU leaders finally agree on a historic constitution at a summit in a week's time.

But this issues have been eclipsed by national political questions.

In Germany, citizens could use the vote to send a message to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder over his unpopular economic changes.

The French left was seeking to repeat the victories it scored in regional elections in March. In Italy, the vote was likely to be a test of the cohesion of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition.

The 732 MEPs elected to the new parliament will have to approve the constitution, and also give their blessing to a president of the European Commission to replace Romano Prodi at the end of October.

Surveys suggest the centre-right European People's Party -- a broad church that ranges from ardently federalist Christian Democrats to British Tories -- will return as the biggest faction in the new parliament.

An alliance of centre-left parties is expected to come in second and liberals third. The great unknown will be the influence brought to bear in the new chamber by the eurosceptic lobby.