A weak result” “

The number of voters has dropped, and the “eurosceptic” forces have grown within the European Parliament: the results of the elections for the renewal of the EP have confirmed the fears felt on their eve and undoubtedly do not represent a positive signal in the overall process of continental integration. The lights were burning late into the night at the Brussels headquarters of the EP where the results of the ballots in the 25 member states, in many cases coupled with national or local elections, converged. The first significant factor in these election results is the further drop in the percentage of voters: 45.3% of the overall electorate. At the last elections in 1999 the corresponding percentage was 49.8%. The negative trend – a constant ever since the first election of the European Parliament by universal suffrage in 1979 –, assumes especially worrying proportions in the ten new accession countries, where the overall voter turnout was only 25.4%. Voter participation was far higher in Malta and Cyprus; but very low, only about 20%, in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. According to a projection published in the EP headquarters on Monday, 14 June, the Parliament’s composition will be roughly as follows: the largest group will be the People’s Party (275 seats), followed by the Socialists (200), and the Liberal Democrats (66). The Greens will be in fourth place (41 deputies), followed by the United Left (36), the UEN moderate right (28), and the eurosceptics of the EDD (17). Lastly, 69 seats that, on the basis of the current composition of the EP, could form the group of the independents, should also be taken into account. “NEGATIVE INFLUENCE OF FAILURE TO APPROVE THE CONSTITUTION”. The failure to approve the Constitution prior to enlargement or to the elections had a negative influence on voter turnout. Monsignor Giuseppe Merisi, representative of the Italian bishops in COMECE (Commission of the episcopates of the European Community) is convinced of this, and insists on the “need to approve the Constitutional Treaty as soon as possible, so as to define with greater precision the identity and major goals of the Union”. In this sense Merisi underlines “the request for an explicit citation of the Christian roots in the preamble to the Constitution. This would help to clarify the values that are at the basis of European construction and to define its cultural and religious profile. I am convinced – adds the bishop – that this uncertainty had a negative influence on the decision of the electors of Eastern Europe to desert the polls. The peoples of the new accession countries especially have a need to draw closer to the Union and feel it belongs to them; they ask for its anchorage in strong values and, at the same time, a greater concreteness by the EU. If a certain enthusiasm in the Union is lacking, that’s due to the fact that people don’t always understand its influence and the positive role it could have in the daily lives of individuals, families and peoples”. Lastly Merisi stresses the need to have politicians familiar throughout Europe: “recognisable faces that may represent the EU, leaders of supranational stature with whom the peoples of the 25 can identify”. francE: RECORD ABSTENTION. Voter abstention hit an all-time high in France on Sunday, 13 June. Over 56% of the French did not bother to vote, exceeding by three percentage points the rate of abstention at the last European elections in 1999 (53.24%). “I am very saddened by this result – commented Bishop Hippolyte Simon of Clermont to SIR –; it shows that the European question has not yet been sufficiently understood by the electors and that the political authorities did not do a good job of explaining Europe to the electorate as they ought to have done”. According to the bishop, the abstention of the French was influenced by a weak electoral campaign and “one especially paralysed by national questions”. “For a native of Normandy like me – added the bishop – the result was even more saddening because we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy the previous week. Today I see the contrast between the sacrifice made by those who came to liberate Europe sixty years ago and the disinterest and apathy of the voters who deserted the polls yesterday”. According to Bishop Simon, “what’s lacking in French citizens is any desire to make an effort to inform themselves, and to grasp the importance of European questions and I believe that everyone, especially the politicians and the media, must examine their conscience. All have responsibility”. “In France, for example – Msgr. Simon noted – we still have no MEP entirely dedicated to Europe”. The Churches, on the other hand, have done and are still doing a lot to foster European integration. Bishop Simon spoke, in particular, of the pilgrimage to Compostela promoted by the European Churches in April to raise the awareness of the peoples of Europe and recalled that the Semaines sociales de France that are celebrating their centenary this year, and to be held in Lille from 24 to 26 September, will be dedicated to the theme “Europe, a society to be invented”. GreECE AND CYPRUS. The low voter turnout and the results of the European elections following enlargement do not surprise the representatives of the various European episcopates. On the other hand, they have expressed their concern about “widespread euroscepticism”. “If one wants to construct a Europe based only on the economic level and the single currency – says the president of the Greek bishops and archbishop of Athens, Monsignor Nicolaos Foskolos, in a comment to SIR – the risk that one runs is that of seeing citizens desert the polls. We need to think of a Europe of shared values such as those of Christianity. In Greece, however, some 70% of the electors did show interest in the EU. According to provisional results, they rewarded “The New Democracy” party of premier Costas Karamanlis. Perhaps the Government’s non-involvement in the Iraqi crisis helped”. “Greek MEPs – the archbishop also notes – ought also to include a representative of the Orthodox People’s Coalition, a group linked to the Orthodox Church, sign of a certain revival of Orthodox fundamentalism that does not bode well for ecumenical dialogue”. “In Cyprus the parties that want a divided island were rewarded at the polls – says the Latin Vicar of Nicosia, Father Umberto Barato –; the result was almost a replay of the referendum in April on the reunification of the island held just before the enlargement of 1st May. It should be said – Father Barato points out – that only the Greek-Cypriots voted: i.e. those who had rejected the Annan plan for the island’s reunification in the referendum”. slovaKIA, slovenia AND HUNGARY. In the view of Msgr. Marian Gavenda, spokesman of the Slovak bishops, “the elections in Slovakia would seem to confirm a low voter turnout, estimated at around 20%” (though no exit polls or projections had been published by the late evening of yesterday). So are the Slovakians eurosceptic? “Perhaps – says Gavenda – but the blame for that must lie with an electoral campaign devoid of contents and programmes and very superficial. If the Church had not made an appeal for participation in the elections, the voter turnout would have been even lower. The first results would seem to support the right-wing coalition in government followed by the centre-left SMER party headed by the populist lawyer Robert Fico. A lot of work needs to be done to promote Europe”. As in Slovakia, the rate of abstention in the polls was very strong in Slovenia too. “The provisional data suggest that only one elector out of every five voted – says Msgr. Andrej Saje, general secretary of the Slovene Episcopal Conference -. Contradicting the results of pre-electoral opinion polls, the centre-right polled better that the centre-left governing coalition, in office since 1991. It will be interesting to see what reflections this vote has within the country. We are in line with other countries where the government party emerged from the elections defeated”. In Hungary, Msgr. Andràs Veres, secretary of the Hungarian Episcopal Conference (who had issued a statement before the elections, urging Christians to vote and ascertain what parties respected Christian values), has expressed the hope that “the victory of the conservatives may help advance a process long underway in the European Parliament: namely, the calls for the incorporation of Christian values in the European Constitution and in the laws of the future Europe”. In his view, the massive abstention of voters in the ten new member countries is due to the fact that “governments failed to provide citizens with sufficient information on the EU and the European Parliament, or to speak of the significance of these elections. Simple people did not understand what it was all about”. portUGAL. It’s a Europe “that Europeans still do not have truly at heart” given the high level of abstention in the elections. That’s the view of Father Nuno Brás da Silva Martins, Rector of the Pontifical Portuguese College in Rome. In Portugal the government party lost a lot of votes, “but abstention also increased – points out the rector -. In actual fact the situation has not really changed, because the Socialists also won in the last European elections”. Prior to the elections, various Portuguese bishops had urged citizens to vote. “Abstention is not a good sign – says Father Bràs – especially for those in Brussels, because the European elections have already been characterised by this phenomenon many times before. That means that the politicians must review their attitudes”. “I would ask the new MEPs – he concludes – to consider Europe as it is, in truth. I would ask them to look beyond the economy and the bureaucracy and to try to build a Europe that is really close to citizens’ hearts, a Europe that may truly unite the peoples, because of one thing we can be sure: it won’t be the economic values that make the European Union. GrEAT BRITAIN, finland AND SPAIN: “WEAKENED SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY”. The bishops of England and Wales had urged Catholics not to support candidates and parties that foment ethnic and religious divisions within local communities and whole regions of the world, to seek a political leadership that tries to heal divisions and build bridges, and to try to form a truly inclusive Christian community. In the aftermath of the local and European elections, in which the Labour Party of premier Tony Blair registered a defeat, especially at the hands of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) campaigning for Britain’s exit from the EU, the bishops of ENGLAND AND WALES repeat the recommendations to the electors they had published on the eve of the vote and speak of their “concern about the weakening of the sense of responsibility and decline of the spirit of solidarity, the collapse of the cement that binds individuals together in a society”. The bishops also welcome the communiqués of other Christian churches that have condemned the politics of racist parties as “incompatible with the Christian message”. Similar in tone is the statement issued in the aftermath of the elections by Bishop Josef Wrobel of Helsinki, who declared that “the fact that 47.1% of electors voted in Finland, compared with 31.4% five years ago, is positive” but that “no particular changes can be expected in [EU] policy, dominated by a great liberalism that is also expressed in other fields such as that of ethics”. In Finland the electoral results saw the victory of the industrial bourgeois party (23.7%), followed by the centre party of premier Matti Vanhanem (23.2%) and by the social-democrats (21.1%). “There’s still ignorance of the fact that we belong to a larger community than the local one, and that explains the low voter turnout”. That’s the comment of Jesús María Arrieta Sagasti, rector of the Diocesan Seminary of San Sebastián, in the Basque region of Spain. According to Arrieta, “people lack an awareness of the consequences of belonging to Europe” and “no strong European consciousness exists among voters”. In the Basque region, where participation in the vote is generally high, people took no interest in the European elections. “In Europe people fail to see either Europe or the European Constitution as something close to them; they see it as something hypothetical that has no impact on the daily life of citizens”. Of the same opinion is Txomin Pérez, of the Junior Movement of Catholic Action in Spain, who argues that there was such a low voter turnout “because there was a great deal of boredom and disillusion” about Europe. “Citizens – he points out – fail to understand the importance of these elections; there’s disagreement with the structures and a retreat from European issues. People speak of the Europe of investments and of agriculture, but not of the Europe of legislation and social policy”. polAND: “avERSION FROM POLITICS”. “The abstention of the Poles was predictable: the fact that the more right-wing or conservative political forces won the elections is undoubtedly due to the current political situation, where the left is trying to hold together at all costs a government in serious crisis. People felt this profound malaise and transformed it into a decision to abstain, as a form of protest”: that’s the view of Monsignor Zbignew Kiernikowski, bishop of Siedlce, one of the dioceses with the highest percentage of abstention. The Polish bishops, prior to the vote, had made an appeal to the population in the form of a document with the title “Christian responsibility for the motherland”, in which they had underlined the importance of a conscious participation in the construction of the common European destiny, and the need to bring to it the rich heritage of Christian tradition of the Polish people. “The political formation ‘League of the Polish Family’, which supports the Christian values of defence of the family founded on marriage, the defence of life, the rejection of abortion and euthanasia, and the refusal to legalise homosexual unions, was the second leading party in the polls, winning 10 of the 50 seats. Its aspirations are in large part shared and promoted by the Church. Apart from the results of this or that political coalition, the low level of voter participation in the elections suggests that a decided aversion to politics has been created, a very dangerous development. In its appeal to the Poles – concludes the bishop – the Episcopal Conference of our country underlined the great responsibility of building a better future for everyone. That is a commitment we need to pursue”.