Sunday was voting day across Europe, and the results have been commonly described as an “earthquake.”

But since groups referred to as “far-right” and groups called “hard left” seem to have won in different countries, it’s hard to generalize except to say that it was a rejection of the status quo (although that didn’t happen in Germany) and a rejection of European unity. I have long been puzzled by the designations of right and left in Europe, although “left” is easier, because it seems to be Communist and/or socialist. But “right”? Is that a synonym for “anti-immigrant”? Or “anti-EU?” Or for both? I doubt very much it stands for what we would call conservatism in the US.

This seems to be a good enough description of what happened this election cycle:

All across Europe, voters have lost faith in traditional parties in direct proportion to the collapse of economic growth. In countries with free-market growth policies ”” such as the Baltic states ”” ruling parties actually gained votes in Sunday’s vote. But in Spain, France, Greece, and other countries, the traditional major parties of the Left and Right won less than half the vote. Even in Germany, the large nation most clearly committed to European integration, an openly Euroskeptic party pulled in 7 percent of the vote and will enter the European Parliament for the first time.

The reason for all this ferment is clearly economic dissatisfaction…

Sadly, European Union leaders have in the past demonstrated a bullheaded refusal to listen to voters who are skeptical of European centralization.

In other words, Europe is a mess, and it doesn’t look like these elections will fix it.

Here’s another summary that seems to make sense of the trend the elections revealed despite the left/right contradictions:

To a greater or lesser extent, the story of this Euro-election has been the rise of the minor parties ”“ some of them bizarre, some of them downright potty, but all of them united by a visceral dislike of the EU bureaucracy: its arrogance, its remoteness, its expense, its endless condescension and its manic and messianic belief in its right to legislate for all 500 million people in the EU.

…From Dublin to Lublin, from Portugal to Pomerania, the pitchfork-wielding populists are converging on the Breydel building in Brussels ”“ drunk on local hooch and chanting nationalist slogans and preparing to give the federalist machinery a good old kicking with their authentically folkloric clogs…

…[T]here is a revolt going on ”“ and we know how Brussels generally reacts to such vulgar expressions of democratic feeling. When people have voted against the federalist impulse in the past ”“ like the populations of Denmark, or France ”“ they have been asked to have another go; to vote again until they get the right answer. This time, I expect the Eurocracy will try to ignore the election results; they will try to brush them aside. Men like Jean-Claude Juncker, the ex-prime minister of Luxembourg (pop. the same as Wolverhampton) will appear on global media to denounce the European electorate for being so tasteless and irrelevant as to ask for change…

They are wrong, wrong, wrong. This European election is an expression of revulsion and discontent and it is a mandate for reform.

But the hallmark of the EU is to not listen to mandates. It’s a little like Obama and the Democrats regarding the passage of Obamacare: we know better than you little people. If we keep doing what we want to, some day you’ll see our wisdom and you’ll like it too. And even if you never do, that’s tough. We really don’t care, because we have our own agenda.