It looks like Greece will probably have early election somewhere between late Spetember-late October as well...

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

Er, though they are in 2007, not 2008. I seem to have lost my ability to parse numerical values...I blame global warming ;)

"The basis of optimism is sheer terror" - Oscar Wilde

I should have said the last scheduled national parliamentary elections (that's 3 qualifiers for ya!).

There will also be a few elections in some of the states of Germany, which could be very important for the balance of power internally in Germany. But the people in the Council of Ministers and in the European Council will stay the same for over a year and three months.

(More qualifiers: Depending upon the date of elections in Greece/Spain, and if no government falls. Plus Slovenia also elects a president in December this year but I don't know what his role in the EU institutions is, more like the French president (all-decisive) or more like the German president (none at all))

Did mention Groen!. But I didn't link the Wiki before. The spot I don't know.

Wiki mentions the following on the VLD:

Ideologically, the VLD started as a right-wing, somewhat Thatcherite party under its founder, Guy Verhofstadt. On economic issues the VLD rapidly became more centrist and gave up much of its free-market approach. Party chairman Bart Somers called in November 2006 for a "revolution" within the party, saying that "a liberal party," like the VLD, "can only be progressive and social."

I guess that how you rate the stance of a party depends to some extent on where you're coming from, but I don't think the Open VLD is a bunch of marketistas. Of course they are still more oriented towards the market than most European social democrats (as is also the case with the left wing of the Democratic party, or the British LibDems). I'd place them on the left rather than on the centre largely on the basis of their social agenda.