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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union's marathon parliamentary election kicked off on Thursday when Britain and the Netherlands voted, with right-wing, anti-EU parties expected to attract a surge of protest votes in many countries on a low turnout.

However, a Dutch exit poll indicated that the anti-Islam, Eurosceptic Freedom Party of Geert Wilders' - which plans to forge an alliance with France's far-right National Front - hadfallen well short of its goal of topping the poll.

After two months of campaigning that opinion polls suggest has largely failed to inspire the electorate, some 388 million Europeans are entitled to vote in 28 countries, choosing 751 deputies to represent them in the European Parliament.

Despite efforts to mobilise voters by telling them they will for the first time indirectly be choosing the next president of the European Commission, pollsters forecast a low turnout, possibly below the 2009 nadir of 43 percent.

With Europe struggling to recover from economic crisis, including record high unemployment and negligible growth, the election is expected to produce a surge in support for Eurosceptics on both the far-right and hard left.

In Britain, final opinion polls showed the UK Independence Party, which wants to withdraw from the EU and impose tighter immigration controls, topping the poll and pushing the governing Conservatives into third place behind Labour.

If confirmed, that could raise pressure on Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, who has promised an in/out referendum on EU membership in 2017 if he is re-elected next year, to take a tougher line on reducing the EU's powers.

In the Netherlands, an IPSOS exit poll on public television suggested Wilders' Freedom Party would finish fourth with 12.2 percent, behind three pro-European parties, the centre-right Christian Democrats, the centrist Democrats 66 and Prime Minister Mark Rutte's liberals.

Wilders blamed the disappointing score on a low turnout, saying that "by staying home (voters) showed their loathing for and disinterest in the European Union. The Netherlands has not become more pro-European."

In the last European Parliament elections five years ago the Freedom Party came second. Andre Krouwel, a political science professor at Amsterdam's VU University, said Wilders had failed to get enough of his supporters to turn out.

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Far right suffers Dutch surprise as EU vote begins