Sun Apr 13, 7:52 PM ET

VALLETTA (AFP) – Malta's pro-EU ruling Nationalist Party (PN) won a general election that confirmed the Mediterranean archipelago's wish to join an enlarged European Union.

Prime Minister Eddie Fenech-Adami told a jubilant rally outside his party's headquarters he would travel to Athens on Wednesday to sign the EU accession treaty, making Malta the southernmost outpost of Europe.

With counting of votes cast in Saturday's election ongoing, Fenech-Adami claimed victory and his Labour Party opponent Alfred Sant conceded defeat on the strength of early projections based on a sample of the vote.

The final result delivered by the electoral commission early on Monday gave the PN 51.7 percent, the Labour Party 47.6 and an ecology party Alternativa Demokrattika 0.7 percent.

The PN will have 34 seats in the new parliament, one less than in the outgoing assembly, with Labour taking an extra seat, giving it 31 in the 65-seat parliament.

More importantly for Brussels, the result validates a narrow Yes vote in last month's non-binding consultative referendum on joining an enlarged European Union, in the process sparking noisy street parties throughout the capital Valletta.

“This is second confirmation in a very short time of the country's desire to join the European Union,” Fenech-Adami said, referring to the March 8 referendum in which 53 percent voted Yes to Europe.

Under Malta's constitution, that vote had to be confirmed by a general election.

Fenech-Adami said the vote “brings honour to the country. Now the other 24 EU and accession states will look on us with confidence as a stable country.”

The first unofficial result was that the PN has obtained a majority of the votes (52). People should not go out to celebrate until the result is official..

Update: lots of carcades are on all the streets now.
The result is now official. I have been filming lots of
footage of the celebrations on the streets which I will put online.

MLP leader Dr Alfred Sant conceded defeat and accepted the election result.

Voting is closing at this time all over Malta and Gozo. Turnout was very large as is usual with Maltese general elections. This figure for all Malta and Gozo was of 49% at 2pm, and the official figure was 96% at 11pm. No incidents were reported throughout all the day.
UPDATE: The day after – ballot boxes in Luqa – when will counting start?

“Read more” is not working right now as there are too many hits on the server (SOLVED 🙂 )- so I am pasting a copy here which you can see on the main page.

This time there is much more security at Ta' Qali, even the counting hall has much more security with soldiers and army officials etc. It was late after midnight when all the ballot boxes arrived.

The figure of 96% is 0.6% more than the turnout for the 1998 elections, probably indicative of the importance of the Europe issue in this election.

District Percentage
1 96
2 96
3 96
4 96
5 96
6 96
7 97
8 96
9 95
10 95
11 96
12 95
13 95

In 1996, 96.2% voted.
In 1998, 95.4% voted.
This year there was increase of 0.6%.

No exit polls are held in Malta.

Ballot boxes are currently still being opened and it
is expected that counting will begin after all boxes are opened at 9.30am this morning.

Will keep you updated and as soon as there is an unofficial result this will be posted on the main page.

There are no queues so far and everything seems to be calm everywhere.