The 2009 Euroelections: a common but fragmented political area

Source: Special Eurobarometer 299 / The 2009 European Election http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_299_en.pdf

With more than a year to go to the European elections, the electoral campaign has not yet begun, and the main election issues have not yet been given any media coverage. Although the fact that polling is still a long way off needs to be taken into account when analysing the results of this survey, a certain number of conclusions can nevertheless be drawn at this stage:

photo: http://www.europecounts.org.uk/

♦ Awareness of the event is still very low. Only 16% of Europeans know that the European elections will be held next year, in 2009. Furthermore, 51% of them declared that they are not interested in these elections. However, awareness of the exact date has improved slightly and will continue to improve as voting day gets nearer.

♦ Against this background, it is not possible to determine the turnout for next June’s elections. We can simply say that 30% of Europeans are currently certain that they will vote compared with 14% who will definitely not vote. We can identify four main reasons for the intention not to vote: a lack of information, a lack of interest in politics, the feeling that the European Parliament is somewhat remote from citizens and the feeling that voting will not change anything. The first three of these reasons will be decisive in determining the turnout. If they are taken on board at this stage by candidates, political parties and European institutions, albeit may be possible to modify future electoral behaviour.

♦ The voting criteria for the 2009 elections combine national ad European dimensions. The two aspects are therefore at the heart of the decision-making process of future voters. As often, national issues will play an important role in the European elections.

♦ Finally, in general, Europeans want economic issues to dominate the campaign. In economically difficult times, they want the campaign to give priority to unemployment (47%), economic growth (45%) and inflation (41%), followed by global and security-related themes. Themes directly related to the European Union are placed last. But these priorities cannot conceal the differences in results between countries: the preferred themes vary very significantly from one Member State to another.

Although European public opinion recognises the existence of a European political area, such issues still face competition from national political concerns.. The differences in campaign theme priorities by country and the importance of national issues in the voting criteria reflect a common but fragmented political area.

Europeans want to see practical economic problems at the heart of the 2009 European electoral campaign. Only a very significant improvement in the economic situation could modify the priorities that Europeans want the campaign to address.

The two main challenges of the 2009 European elections will be to inform European citizens about the European Parliament’s role and the ability of candidates to offer practical solutions at European level to the economic crisis.