Europe’s leaders were struggling on Monday to come up with a convincing response to the hostility displayed by millions of citizens in the continent’s largest democratic exercise.
From Berlin to Birmingham, governments surveyed the damage done by the huge vote of no confidence in EU institutions.
Ben Bot, the Dutch foreign minister, called the unprecedentedly low 45% turnout over four days of voting a ”disaster” and demanded urgent action to ”sell” Europe better.
Ministers and analysts agreed that the results meant it would be even harder to clinch a deal on the EU constitution at this week’s Brussels summit.
The worst turnout — 26% — was recorded in the 10 states that joined the EU only last month in a fanfare of superlatives about reunifying a long-divided continent.
David Harley, spokesperson for the European parliament, said it was ”disappointing and pathetically low”.
Turnout in Slovakia was just 17% and in Poland, the largest of the eastern European entrants, 21%.
”We saw this coming,” said Marco Incerti of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. ”But the sheer scale of abstention was unexpected.”
In Italy, a TV journalist received twice as many votes as the premier, Silvio Berlusconi, in Rome. Lilli Gruber, one of Italy’s most recognisable faces, got 236 689 votes, compared with Berlusconi’s 116 262. His Forza Italia party took a beating across the country, weakening its position within an already fractious government.
In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder vowed to press on with unpopular economic reforms despite the worst national election result for his Social Democratic party in half a century.
It was no better in France, where the unpopular centre-right government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin was trounced by the opposition Socialists for its handling of pension and welfare reforms. Spain, where the Socialists came to power in March vowing to withdraw troops from Iraq, was a rare exception to the punishment meted out to incumbents.
The combination of a historic low turnout and the rise of anti-European parties, from Britain’s Ukip to Poland’s Self-Defence League, left leaders floundering.
”Europe,” said Pat Cox, the outgoing Irish president of the parliament, ”has been too absent in too many campaigns.”
Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said the result underlined the need for greater transparency and efficiency in the new constitution.
Negotiations on simplifying decision-making are already tough, but Britain’s ”red lines” on safeguarding national vetoes may look even redder now that Ukip’s Robert Kilroy-Silk has made his mark.
The same will be true of other weakened governments.
The Constitution needs to be ratified by every member state, and low turnout could prevent those holding referendums reaching the necessary threshold.
The poor showing in the east made life easier for anti-European parties such as those in Poland, which used the vote to exact revenge for losing the EU membership referendum last year.
”For the new countries, Europe is too complicated,” said Wilfried Martens, a former prime minister of Belgium and president of the European Peoples party, the centre-right grouping in the Strasbourg assembly.
”I hope that the new Constitution will create a clear and more transparent political system that will replace technical and bureaucratic Europe,” he said.
Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the former prime minister of Denmark and president of the centre-left party of European Socialists, said: ”We have a gap between the aspirations of ordinary people and the EU’s record on jobs and growth.
”Our task is to break through the glass ceiling between national frustration and European possibilities.”
Incerti said: ”Leaders conducted 25 national campaigns, not a single European one. In an enlarged EU it is not enough for a political group to win in one country because the gains of French Socialists, say, are offset by the losses of Polish Socialists.”
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, France’s Green leader, said: ”Most of the campaigns debated only national issues so it is not surprising that citizens were not properly mobilised to vote or that Euroscepticism was fostered.”
For example, a French person may elect an MEP in protest at national tax policies, but the European parliament has no power over French tax — or over policy in Iraq, the biggest common theme in the elections.
In Parliament, it was business as usual on Monday. As the results came in, the only real excitement was the match between England and France.
Talks on the Constitution continued, with growing concern that failure this week — after that at December’s summit — would again show the EU in a poor light.
The ”political credibility” of the union was now at stake, warned Brian Cowen, Ireland’s foreign minister. ”We need to show that Europe works.” – Guardian Unlimited Â