EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ELECTIONS: EU POLITICS IS LOCAL

Prior to 1979, several prominent political leaders envisioned that direct elections to the European Parliament would transform the EU into a ‘genuinely democratic polity’. Amongst them, former European Commission President Walter Hallstein said direct elections would force those entitled to vote to engage in the questions and policy alternatives on which the European Parliament would have to decide. “It would give candidates who emerged victorious from such a campaign a truly European mandate from their electors; and it would encourage the emergence of truly European political parties,” he said.

The gap between President Hallstein’s vision and today’s reality is all too visible. The European Parliament is not constructed in the same way as a national parliament, where the electoral outcome results in governments being ‘hired and fired’. Nor does it visibly change or directly dictate the EU agenda for the immediate future. While national elections naturally lead voters to expect such visible changes either in government structures and/or in policies, candidates for the European Parliament have to deliver a more complex message to voters.

The election of MEPs certainly influences EU policies and the composition of the European Commission, but only insofar as agreements are reached between the EU institutions and, within the Parliament, between the main political groups.

The results are well-known and well-documented: with no clear government/opposition dynamics and few perceived political ‘pay-offs’ from voting, citizens have not used European elections as an opportunity to voice their preferences on EU issues. Rather, they have used this as an opportunity to express their opinions on national parties, national politicians and national policy issues. They have found little evidence to suggest that the way they cast their vote will influence their daily lives in any significant way, and voter turnout has continued its downward trend .

EU politics remains local : 28 separate European campaigns actually occur rather than a single one. Not only are the elections held under national rules, making it difficult to run pan-European campaigns, but local issues—including national politics more than EU-relevant matters—dominate the campaigns, including on such common matters as the economic crisis. The outcome of the polls is largely shaped by domestic agendas. European voters tend to rely on national elections to weigh in on European politics. This shows a more complex problem than the caricatural “democratic deficit” often blamed on the European Union.