A man walks past a display advertising the European Parliament elections in front of the European Parliament in Brussels June 4, 2009.

BRUSSELS, June 4 (Xinhua) -- The European Parliament elections began on Thursday in Britain and the Netherlands, with 736 European Union (EU) lawmakers to be elected but turnout expected to be low.

About 10,000 polling stations opened in Britain at 7:00 a.m. (0600 GMT) and will close at 10:00 p.m. (2100 GMT), while the Netherlands started even earlier at 6:30 a.m. (0530 GMT) and would finish voting at 8:00 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Thursday.

More than 375 million EU citizens are eligible to vote in the election of 736 members in the European Parliament for the next five years. The number each EU member state has varies according to their population, which means the biggest country Germany would have 99 members while Malta, the smallest, would have only five.

Britain and the Netherlands are the two countries that took the lead in the elections, which would last until Sunday.

Irish people, who still have to decide later this year the fate of the EU Lisbon Treaty designed to reform the 27-nation bloc, would vote on Friday. In Italy and the Czech Republic the voting process will continue from Friday to Sunday.

Elections will begin Saturday in Latvia, Cyprus, Malta, and Slovakia, while in all the remaining 18 EU members the elections will take place on Sunday.

Official figures showed that voter turnout at the European Parliament elections has fallen steadily since 1979 from over 60 percent to around 45 percent, although the EU assembly is getting more power.

Dutch opinion polls have predicted a low voter turnout not exceeding 40 percent, slightly higher than 39.1 percent in the last elections in 2004.

On the eve of the elections, the outgoing European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pottering called on EU citizens to go to the polls.

"The elections to the European Parliament are of a greatest importance. They are a great occasion to re-launch the European Union and to address the issues that are important to citizens such as the economic crisis, unemployment, climate change, energy security, globalization or immigration," Pottering said in a statement on Wednesday.

Pottering warned that without enough participation, extremist parties may gain in the elections, which would affect everybody.

"Today approximately 75 percent of the European Union legislation is decided by the European Parliament together with the Council of Ministers and has a direct impact in our daily lives," he said. "The greater the participation, the less likely that votes for extremist parties will distort the outcome."

"With your vote you will take a decision about the future of Europe and about your future in our common Europe! Use your vote to decide which kind of European Union you would like to see. Go to vote! It is your choice!" he urged.