Why do the Euro-elections leave us cold?
Rising degree of abstention from electoral politics generally:
There is an overall trend away from electoral participation, and this is a worldwide phenomenon. There are many differing explanations for this trend, addressing a huge range of varying factors. Whether the reason is basic disinterest, general mistrust of specific aspects of a national or European process, or disenchantment resulting from a series of disappointments, the fact remains that there is a consistently high level of abstention from European elections.
But it should not be forgotten that European elections are atypical, in that people are electing national representatives for a supranational parliament. Also, in contrast to other elections, they do not result in an executive government but only in “representation” within a complicated institutional framework.
The electoral process itself:
Voters cannot vote for an individual candidate. Rather, they have to vote for a party list, and it is the party which decides the order of candidates on its list. It is only when the total votes for each party have been counted that it can be determined whether a particular candidate has been successful. This means that the euro-election amounts to a “beauty contest” between parties, on the basis of manifestos which tend to contain only general aims rather than specific commitments. Voters who would have specific expectations from a particular candidate are thus discouraged, because they are not used to voting for representatives in a process that is completely divorced from the selection of those who will govern them.
Perceived distance between EU institutions and citizens – the so-called “democratic deficit”:
The European Parliament (EP) is the only directly elected EU institution, but the way the institutions interact does not allow voters to feel that issues raised with their MEPs will be heard in a way that will lead to results.
Critics of the EU say its process is technocratic and elite-driven, with a very limited forum for policy-formulation, peculiarly obscure processes of decision-making, and a lack of effective political accountability. In practice, lobbies for vested interests operating around the Commission and Council can exercise more power in terms of policy formulation than the EP. The power of the EP is qualitatively less than that of the other main EU institutions, such as the Commission, the Council or the European Court of Justice.
While the national ministers that make up the Council can argue that they get their political legitimacy from their respective national elections, in many cases the European Treaties have transferred policy-making powers to the Council, and away from national parliaments, without a parallel transfer of accountability to the EP.
