Eight months till the elections” “” “

The watchword is: defeating abstention. In view of the elections on 10/13 June 2004 for the renewal of the European Parliament, there’s a mood of great ferment in Brussels and Strasbourg. The number of citizens who went to vote to elect their own representatives to the EP fell from 64 to 49% between 1979 (year of the first election by universal suffrage in the then 9 member states of the EEC) and 1999 (the last election). “Elections in 2004, democracy beyond the frontiers”. “Citizens need to be convinced of the fundamental role of the Parliament in the European institutional system”: Pat Cox, president of the EP, is multiplying his meetings and contacts to formulate an effective strategy to this end. . “Of course – he admits, delegating his words to his spokesman David Harley who is also the EP’s director of information – the real challenge is to demonstrate the actual effect that the decisions taken at Strasbourg have on people’s lives”. For these reasons, a special task force has already been set up; it includes the executive of the EP, the leaders of the parliamentary groups and some senior EU bureaucrats with expertise on the matter. Cox is sure that “2004 will be an important year for the redefinition of the Union, beginning with the constitutional treaty. And then the enlargement to ten other countries is planned for next year, while the renewal of the Commission is due to take place in the autumn”. All these momentous changes will give further visibility to the EU – also in the media – and bring the institutions, including the Parliament, closer to citizens. “It’s the first time in history – points out Cox – in which the composition of a single Parliament will be decided in 25 states with over 350 million electors, and this is a great moment in the history of democracy. However, paradoxically, while the powers of the assembly have grown in recent years, the ‘popularity’ of the Parliament seems not to have grown, with the result that a lower number of electors now bother to vote. It’s an alarm bell we don’t want to ignore”. A task force, little money and many ideas. But the good will of the EP’s President risks colliding with reality. In the EU budget, the appropriation for this campaign of communication is really meagre: the funds allocated are equivalent to 0.02415 euro per elector. For his part David Harley is ready to downplay the gravity of the situation: “we know that the number of people who bother to vote is declining. It’s happening in Europe, but also in the USA”. The elections in June next year, he adds, “are one of the essential moments to give democratic foundation to European integration. Everything possible needs to be done to sensitise the citizens of the 25 member states. It’s vital that the laws approved here have a positive repercussion on national legislations and directly on people’s lives. It will be important during the electoral campaign, which will be influenced by the individual national situations, to discuss Europe, the reforms, our economic system, welfare and international policy”. Voting booths in supermarkets? Isabelle Montoya, of the communications directorate in Brussels, offers a more down to earth analysis: “we have asked ourselves what we need to do to bring European electors to vote. We started out from the data of one of our own surveys, according to which 16.9% of citizens thinks that the action of the European Parliament on their own lives is really important, whereas 47.2% consider that the activities and decisions taken by the EP may have ‘some concrete effects'”. In response to the statement “the European elections are really important”, 19,7% of those interviewed replied they “fully agreed”, while 45.3 said they “partly agreed”. How, therefore, can the tendency to vote be promoted? “To this question – continues Montoya – citizens suggested that voting booths be installed in supermarkets (21%), others asked to be able to vote via Internet (28.6%), others again asked for the chance to be able to express their vote at the place where they work (30.3%)”.