In spite of everything, don’t waste your vote!

According to opinion polls across Europe, voter apathy may be the major winner in the European elections. The rate of participation has been dwindling since the first ever election in 1979, and 2009 is likely to set new records for low turnouts — except in Belgium, Greece, Malta and Luxemburg, where voting is compulsory.

Europeans’ indifference to the question of who will represent them in Brussels and Strasbourg may have a lot to do with campaigns in member states, which were dominated by domestic questions like security, immigration, and taxation. As Italy’s ex- diplomat Boris Biancheri remarked in La Stampa, these are issues on which the European Parliament exerts a very limited influence. Biancheri also criticized Europe’s governments for not making a sufficient effort to explain how decisions taken by the Parliament influence the daily lives of Europeans.

For many political leaders, the vote from 4-7 June is simply an opportunity to measure their popularity — in the context of a proportional representation system — and to draw a few conclusions that may be used to tweak the balance of power in national governments. The sparse CVs and eccentric character of many of the candidates put forward by political parties —which was recently highlighted by the Romanian daily Cotidianul — is a further testament to a cavalier attitude to the role of European Parliament. But for the citizens of the EU, the vote which is being conducted now is the only chance they have to directly participate in the life of the Union. In spite of everything, it is an opportunity that should not be ignored.