No prizes for predicting that apathy and ignorance will ensure yet another record low turnout in this week’s European elections — just at the moment when 350-million people across the continent are eligible to vote. And that’s not only in the veteran European Union member states but, alarmingly, also in several of the eastern newcomers.
Portuguese punters are keener on watching Zidane and Beckham play in the Euro 2004 championship than on sending MEPs to Strasbourg and Brussels. Some eye-catching celebrities are standing, but Slovaks are unlikely to exceed the forecast 26% participation because their national hockey champ is a candidate. Ditto for Estonians drawn by the charms of supermodel Carmen Kass.
The former BBC chatshow host Robert Kilroy-Silk, star turn of the eurosceptic British Independence Party, will certainly have novelty value if he leads a dozen true Brits into the heart of euro-darkness — and teams up with a motley crew of Danes, Dutchmen and rabidly anti-EU Poles to form a significant new sceptic block.
That might not be a bad thing. The European Parliament is so deeply unloved and so remote that it welcomes almost any publicity, however embarrassing. That much was clear last year when Silvio Berlusconi cracked his side-splitting Nazi camp guard gag about an appalled German deputy. The reverberations seemed to flatter an institution that is routinely dismissed as a talk shop on a gravy train, a travelling circus lubricated by dubious expenses claims.
Even bad jokes, lost in translation, are better than no jokes.
Parliament, of course, is far more than a talk shop, and its already extensive powers of ”co-decision” with the European Commission and national governments will expand further under the new EU Constitution.
The expected centre-right majority expects member states to take its views into account when choosing a replacement for Romano Prodi, the commission president, though they missed a chance to give some democratic substance to the elections by failing to put forward their own candidates.
Lobbyists scrutinising the small print of waste recycling rules or takeover directives recognise the importance of MEPs even if their constituents have never heard of them. But nothing can compensate for the absence of familiar characters, knockabout debate, and a path from the back benches of the legislature up the greasy pole of executive power. Only the Greens operate at European rather than national level. And the only parties fighting on specifically European issues are Ukip and other populists desperate to leave the union.
Wishful thinkers seeking comfort in the grim times since September 11 2001 argue that mass protests over Iraq suggest the emergence of a genuine pan-European public opinion. Opposition to the war is certainly a significant factor in the elections.
The problem is that since Parliament does not have — and is never likely to have — powers over foreign policy, defence and other core areas of national sovereignty, there is no way of translating it into change at continental level. — Â