Brussels, 29/04/2009 (Agence Europe) - Once again, and maybe more than ever, opinion polls suggest that the turn out at the forthcoming European elections will be very low. Yet current circumstances should be working for a very high rate of voter turn-out. The “dramatic world economic crisis” should make EU citizens, even in non-euro area countries like the United Kingdom, even more aware of the need for the European Union. That is what former Italian Permanent representative to the EU Pietro Calamia said in the April-June 2009 Affari Esteri. Ambassador Calamia remembers, thirty years after the first direct elections to the European Parliament, the intense debate which took place a the European Council of 1-2 December 1975 in Rome, under the chairmanship of Aldo Moro, on the “very principle” of direct elections, and he remembers that Harold Wilson, supported by Denmark, presented two fundamental objections. The first referred to the very principle of a political election to be conducted on a set date, when in the United Kingdom, it was for the Prime Minister to decide the date of general elections. Secondly, the direct election of a practically powerless parliament (particularly in terms of the budget) could not be justified. That was not the political vision of Aldo Moro, who remarked that an elected parliament would call for greater powers, Calamia noted. His noted that, after the first European elections of June 1979, the freshly elected European Parliament, in December of the same year, threw out the European budget proposed for 1980. From that very first term, the European Parliament, on the initiative of Altiero Spinelli, adopted a draft European Union Treaty that would lead to revision of the Treaties of Rome and the adoption of the Single European Act, with its far-reaching political and institutional consequences. (M.G./transl.rt)