Europe holds 'most important' EU vote

Europeans start voting on Thursday in four days of elections to the EU parliament that will influence not just Brussels policy for the next five years but, to some extent, the very future of the Union project itself.
In 2014, nationalists hostile to the EU doubled their presence in the assembly, topped the poll in Britain and went on to win a 2016 referendum there that yanked out one of the bloc's biggest members. Almost.

Five years on, polls show eurosceptics gaining again. But Brexit is yet to happen, and may not; Brussels' fiercest enemies will still struggle to top 20 percent; and the far-right goes into the weekend hit by scandal over its Austrian flagbearer's videotaped collusion with a supposed Russian oligarch's niece eager to buy favor.
Others who want to halt or reverse federalist trends, if not scrap the European Union altogether, also face headwinds....