News : Europe goes to the polls

Europe goes to the polls

June 03, 2009

From 4th–7th June an estimated 375 million people across Europe will be eligible to vote for the European Parliament (EP). This is the seventh election in 30 years of the EP. The state of the economy and efforts to tackle climate change are just two issues that new Members of European Parliament (MEPs) will have to deal with.

The European Parliament is elected for a five-year term and the first direct elections to the European Parliament took place in June 1979. The work of the European Parliament is important because in many policy areas, decisions on new European laws are made jointly by Parliament and the Council of Ministers, which represents Member States.

Parliament plays an active role in drafting legislation which has an impact on the daily lives of nearly 500 million people living in the 27-member bloc. Areas covered include environmental protection, consumer rights, equal opportunities, transport, and the free movement of workers, capital, services and goods. Parliament also has joint power with the European Council over the annual budget of the European Union.

The European Parliament now has only a ‘consultative’ role on judicial issues, foreign policy, taxation, industrial policy and in agricultural affairs, but EU member states are not bound to follow the Parliament's opinion. The European Parliament also has major supervisory powers over the activities of the European Union. It can take the Commission or the Council to the European Court, if it believes they have broken EU law. It can also launch inquiries into alleged breaches of EU law in individual member states.

But if the EU's stalled Lisbon Treaty for greater integration of the Union is finally agreed on by all 27-member states, the EU Parliament will gain powers over the entire EU budget, many areas of justice policy, and the appointment of the High Representative, the EU's top diplomat.

Although Europeans elect a common Parliament for Europe, and all elected members enjoy the same status, the elections themselves are organised by each EU country in line with its own electoral laws and traditions. This includes the exact day one which Europeans vote. This year, there will be four days of voting, from 4 – 7 June.

Traditionally, the Dutch and the Britons go to the polls on Thursday, Ireland votes on Friday, while Italy takes both Friday and Saturday. Most of the other countries, including Germany, vote on Sunday. The last voting booths close on Sunday at 10 pm Central European Time. Only then can the first results be announced—even from those countries that had voted days earlier. Dutch media, however, publish their projections after polls close in the Netherlands on Thursday. The German media announce their first projections at 6 pm on Sunday, but it takes ten days before the final, official results are made known because Portugal needs that much time to counts its ballots.

The The European Parliament hemicycle in Strasbourg

The The European Parliament hemicycle in Strasbourg

Members of the European Parliament do not sit and act according to national groupings, but organise themselves into political groups. Political groups draw together political parties from across the EU which share ideological principles and political views.

In the outgoing Parliament there are seven political groups: the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats (EPP-ED), the Socialist Group in the European Parliament (PES), the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), the Union for Europe of the Nations (UEN), the Greens & European Free Alliance (Greens-EFA), the European United Left & Nordic Green Party (GUE/NGL) and the Independence and Democracy group (IND/DEM). Additionally, a number of members, not belonging to any political group, sit as independents.

Each EU country continues to exercise its own voting procedures and has its own nominating process for choosing candidates. The only common aspect they share is proportional representation, which is mandatory in all member states. All the eligible voters of EU countries can vote in any country they choose, regardless of whether they are a citizen of that country or not. That means a Dane can vote in Ireland, a German in the Netherlands, or a Greek in Spain.

The big unknown in this election is voter turnout. For the last 30 years, since the EU Parliament has been directly elected, voter participation has dropped steadily. The latest survey (4-15 May) done by the EP points to a 49% turnout. 43% of respondents said they were certain to vote and a further 6% said they were very likely to do so. The numbers saying that they plan to vote is clearly up on previous surveys, even though doubts remain as to whether they will in fact do so.

As to campaign issues, unemployment is still the top concern for 57% of Europeans, followed by economic growth (45%). Next come insecurity (32%), and the future of pensions (31%), which now come well ahead of inflation, purchasing power, and other broad concerns such as climate change and terrorism.

Current EP President, Germany’s Hans-Gert Pöttering is one of only a handful of MEPs who are still in Parliament having being elected in '79. Talking about the changes Europe has witnessed, he pointed out that in 1979—when Europeans directly elected there representatives—the European Parliament represented the citizens of the then nine Member States of the European Community, while today it represents approximately 500 million inhabitants from 27 European Union countries.

Pöttering said, "Today we have a politically integrated European Union that has brought peace, stability and prosperity to Europe, which has made war inconceivable among its participants, which has the largest single market in the world, and which engages in common policies across a huge range of areas of government. In 1979 the European Parliament was basically a mere consultative body. Today the European Parliament is self-confident and powerful."