Parliament battles to boost turn-out

Date: 29/04/1999

By Gareth Harding

EUROPEAN Parliament officials have a recurring nightmare that when polling booths open for the June elections, no one will actually show up to vote.

The last four Euro-elections have seen this fear come closer and closer to reality as turn-out has slumped in almost inverse proportion to the powers that the EU's only directly elected body has accrued.

In a bid to reverse this trend, the Strasbourg-based assembly has launched its biggest-ever campaign to persuade the public that what the Parliament does really matters.

A special €5.5-million fund has been set up to increase awareness of the assembly's activities and a major publicity drive will move into top gear once campaigning for the elections begins in earnest early next month.

Central to this will be a push to 'get out the vote' on the youth music channel MTV. The Parliament has also produced a range of posters, pamphlets and other marketing paraphernalia aimed at highlighting its role as the public's eyes and ears in the EU labyrinth.

But with voters suspicious of standardised messages from Brussels, most of the campaign to persuade people to vote is being spearheaded by political parties and national authorities.

The variety of publicity material on offer from the Parliament's 15 national offices demonstrates that June's Euro-election campaign will be anything but uniform.

In the UK, where turn-out has traditionally been low, the main attraction will be a hot air-balloon emblazoned with the EU flag and a 'use your vote' logo. In Germany, body-painting and skating competitions will be held to try to boost the youth vote. In Ireland, special stamps and telephone cards will be deployed and the ever-philosophical French have enlisted René Descartes to their campaign by updating the thinker's most famous phrase to "je pense, donc je vote".

However, the greatest effort to drum up interest in the fifth round of elections to the Parliament is being made in the EU's three newest member states and in countries where the turn-out has plummeted in recent years.

In Portugal, where the number of people voting in Euro-elections has halved in the last decade, the national authorities have pulled out all the stops to ensure that the country does not have the dubious honour of languishing at the bottom of Europe's voting league this time round.

More than 500 buses will be plastered with posters, cash dispensers will remind voters of their duties and specially designed 'azulejos' tiles will be handed out to add a local touch to the campaign.

In the Netherlands, the authorities are focusing on what Europe means to people's everyday lives in a bid to reverse the slump in interest since direct elections were first held in 1979. "If you want to make people interested you must tell them about subjects that affect them," said one Dutch official.

A huge effort is also being made in Finland, where voters will be electing their MEPs for the first time since the country joined the EU in 1995. A personal letter has been sent to all the country's 160,000 first-time voters urging them to take part in the elections and great use is being made of the Internet.

Parliament officials are confident that the tide of scepticism and absenteeism can be turned this time round. Many point to the recent showdown with the European Commission which led to the resignation of President Jacques Santer and his team as evidence that MEPs can make a difference. Others stress the sweeping new powers which the Parliament is set to gain under the Amsterdam Treaty as proof that the assembly is now much more than a talking shop.

But when it comes to stuffing ballot boxes with voting slips, more mundane considerations often come into play. The Portuguese elections, for example, fall on a long weekend when most of the population usually heads for the beach. British officials also fear that after local and regional elections in May, voter-fatigue will set in and the upward trend in turn-out of the past four elections will be halted.