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Europe goes to the Polls

11:20am Tuesday, 15th June 2004

Now the dust is starting to settle, and Peter Snow's swingometer has been put back into the BBC storeroom for another year, one can begin to try and make sense of the recent European Parliamentary election results.

It seems that the UK electorate were not alone in their choosing to vote for Eurosceptic and anti-Brussels candidates. Not only in the UK, but in new Member-States like Poland and Slovakia, voters gave a big thumbs-down to a federal vision of Europe.

For those of us concerned about democratic engagement with our political institutions the fact that the Europe-wide turnout hit a record low of 44% comes as no surprise. But that doesn't make us any less keen to work out why.

This year Demos will be working with The Electoral Commission to review the experience of this year's set of European Parliamentary elections. Beyond the obligatory post-mortems, one of the questions we will be hoping to answer is why for so many in Europe, the European Parliament is considered an irrelevance.

Comments

1
One idea I would like to throw comes from liberal philosopher Will Kymlicka (home page is http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~philform/) He argues that democracy is still most relevant to citizens at the national (rather than trans-national) level. On this reading, the European Parliament (which attempts to engage citizens directly in trans-national elections) is a worthy but sadly misguided project, at odds with voter experiences and desires. The unshakable pan-European apathy towards MEPs and their activities is strong evidence indeed. The answer is not UKIP style withdrawal, but shifting powers from the Parliament to the European Commission which represents national governments at the trans-national level. This is intended to *increase* democracy by locating accountability in a familiar place, at a level which is closer to voters. For my money there's something in it. Any takers?
Posted by James Page  at 12:42pm on Tuesday, 15th June 2004
2
We've just seen something rather interesting over this side of the(small)pond; a marked rise in numbers voting in certain constituencies that historically have been apathetic to both national and euro elections. Early indications are that it's a young vote for 'new' political players and that it is organised. Sinn Fein has been the more visible beneficiaries of this. Which *might* suggest that highly local, community level activism / political grafting is about to come back into fashion. It will be interesting to watch your work with the Commission develop....
Posted by Jack 'IronFist' Dalton  at 1:52pm on Tuesday, 15th June 2004
3
I strongly believe that the declining number of voter turnout is due to public disillusionment of politics. They see politicians as self-serving individuals and this is evident by the expense claims and other forms of corruptions in the political arena. Politicians really do need to make considerable effort to show that they represent the interests of their constituents and not corporate organisations or sectional interest.
Posted by Paras Paras  at 9:58am on Wednesday, 16th June 2004

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