Will voters in 2019 be more interested in the European elections than they have been so far? And will they be more likely to vote, whereas the participation rate in 2014 was 42.61%, slightly lower than in 2009 (42.97%) and continuously lower since 1979?
A recent Eurobarometer survey conducted for the European Parliament and published on Thursday 25 April (see EUROPE 12242/13) calls for caution. According to this survey conducted at the end of February, one in three Europeans knew that the vote would take place in May and only five percent could give the exact dates, from 23 to 26 May.
More than a third of Europeans of voting age (35%) said they would definitely vote. Almost a third of respondents (31%) indicated that they are unlikely to vote and 32% of respondents expressed indecision, some of whom are “likely” (18%) or “moderately likely” (14%) to vote.
The gaps are also widening at the national level. In only four Member States, a majority of respondents are sure to vote: Denmark (65%), the Netherlands (62%), Sweden (61%) and Belgium (58%), where voting is mandatory.
In contrast, in Italy, only 16% of respondents are sure to vote. They are 17% in Portugal and Croatia, 18% in Austria. The Czech Republic has the lowest proportion, with only 10% of respondents certain they will vote.
Too complex an institutional mechanism
According to Eric Maurice, head of the Brussels office of the Robert Schuman Foundation, it is likely that knowledge of these elections will increase towards the end of May with the rise of the electoral campaigns.
However, “it is not certain that people will vote more”, this observer told EUROPE, convinced that everything will depend on the context and the challenges presented to them. In the United Kingdom, for example, it is likely that possible European elections will turn into a mini referendum on Brexit.
For Jean-Michel De Waele, professor of political science at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), there are several reasons for this discouraging survey. First, political parties make the European elections a national issue. Secondly, the European Union remains “complex” for the majority of citizens who struggle to understand its functioning and decision-making process. They do not see concretely how this European vote can change their daily lives or solve their problems.
“The Commission says every time it has understood this. However, the mistake is precisely to believe that it is only a communication problem”, said Mr De Waele, Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the ULB in Brussels. “We are going to publish comics, different things, when it is a question of policy: the EU is not very attractive, it lacks leaders, it lacks unifying projects”, he observed.
The Spitzenkandidaten, embodiment of the ‘European self’
“The Junckers, Tusks or current Spitzenkandidaten” are no more mobilising, the political scientist continued. Emmanuel Macron tried to politicise this subject of Europe, but, according to Mr De Waele, he did so with a “still very Franco-French vision” of European affairs.
Eric Maurice shares this observation of the lack of real European leaders. Like Mr De Waele, he has little faith in the Spitzenkandidaten system confined to the “Brussels bubble”. For Mr De Waele, this Spitzenkandidaten system is a matter of “European self”.
These top candidates of European political parties who, in the event of victory in the European elections, could claim the presidency of the European Commission, remain very little known to the general public. At the end of April, a German survey showed that only 26% of Germans know the German Manfred Weber, the candidate of the Christian Democratic family of the EPP.
One way forward could be to set up transnational lists of candidates, a proposal which was rejected in February 2018 by the Christian Democrats for the May elections (see EUROPE 11956/1). Another way would be to work towards simplifying the functioning of the EU institutions.
“Some Europeans can hear a radical discourse in the progressive sense: nation States giving up some of their power, the end of the veto on issues such as taxation and the European Parliament at the heart of European power”, Mr De Waele said.
For Eric Maurice, for whom the lack of interest in the European elections is partly linked to a more general mistrust of politics, a sense of waste remains. The Juncker Commission's assessment is “not so bad”, he noted, as it has made progress on concrete issues such as filtering foreign investments for strategic reasons, the fight against the race to the lowest social standard and the protection of personal data. But “people do not see it” and cannot attribute it to the EU, he regretted.
According to the representative of the Robert Schuman Foundation, citizens' interest in European affairs could be sparked by reshaping the electoral network, with smaller electoral districts so that MEPs are closer to citizens.
So many avenues to explore while awaiting the arrival of new providential men or women in the tradition of Jacques Delors or Helmut Kohl who embodied a true vision of the European project, according to Jean-Michel De Waele. But these moments remain “rare”, in history, agreed the researcher. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)