Porn queen and model among EU election candidates

Europeans are enjoying a smirk before the usually staid European Parliament elections, with curious candidates such as a porn star who dons risque outfits, a soccer player and a supermodel.

Voting for the parliament – not widely admired, but increasingly powerful – is held June 10-13 in the recently expanded, 25 nation European Union. It is the first time the 10 newly admitted EU nations, largely from the old Soviet bloc, get to vote.

But when it comes to peculiar politicians, they’re no novices.

In the Czech Republic, adult-film star Nora Baumberger (screen name Dolly Buster) stunned pensioners in a Prague retirement home last month with her plunging neckline. The 34-year-old belongs to a party formerly known as the Independent Erotic Initiative.

In Slovenia, a soccer player is hoping his popularity will earn him a seat in parliament.

Mladen Rudonja played 50 times as an striker for the national team and scored only once. But what a goal: It qualified his team for its first World Cup appearance, in 2002.

Interviewed by local radio, Rudonja had matters other than politics on his mind. “Sorry, I can’t talk now. I gotta go to training,” he said.

Another eye-catching candidate is Estonian supermodel Carmen Kass, who rose to fame after being spotted in a local supermarket aged 14. She promises to raise her tiny nation’s profile if she gets a seat.

“Everything I’ve gotten, I’ve gotten from Estonia. I want to give something back to Estonia,” said Kass, 25.

Italy – which gained dubious renown when it elected porn star Cicciolina to its national parliament in 1987 – has several unusual candidates: an art historian leading a ”party of beauty,”a Palestinian who asks voters to ”Bring Palestine into the Heart of Europe”and, most of all, the country’s most esteemed news anchor.

With lustrous red hair and an intense delivery, long-time state television anchor Lilli Gruber is one of the most recognisable figures in Italy. But in April, she quit the airwaves, complaining that her broadcasts were being twisted to favour the government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi, whose personal media empire owns the major rival private networks.

Unlike many of the other unusual candidates across Europe, Gruber has a strong chance. Italy is one of the most devoted television-watching nations in the world, and she is a widely admired journalist.

The centre-left coalition placed her at the top of a list of candidates for central Italy. Her opponent is Berlusconi, who symbolically heads the list for his Forza Italia party but will not take a seat if he wins.

In Britain, another TV personality/candidate has gained attention. Robert Kilroy-Silk was sacked by the BBC for his outspoken views on Arabs and is now running with the UK Independence Party, which advocates British withdrawal from the EU.

A European candidate whose medium is the word rather than the television is Portugal’s 1998 Nobel literature laureate, Jose Saramago, a long-time Communist who is on the party ticket in his homeland.