Thank you for voting liberal
ELDR President Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroeck MEP
I would like to thank you for having voted in last weekend’s European elections. Preliminary results show that ELDR member parties’ candidates will return with about the same number of MEPs. For me that is a sign of trust from our liberal voters. Particularly as the liberal MEPs - in a European Parliament with fewer seats - are set to strenghten their influence to defend and promote our ideals of freedom and democracy.
However, I noted that the turnout in European elections dropped to about 43%. In some member states only 20% of the citizens made the effort to go and vote. European politicians will have to find out the reasons why the trend in turn-out went downwards again. There could be many reasons. Some seem obvious, such as too much focus on national issues or a lack of media attention. But there must be other reasons too. I would appreciate your views.
Tags: elections, freedom, low turn-out, trust
June 13th, 2009 at 11:59
I think a lot of the problem is that many people simply don’t see the European Parliament as being relevant. This isn’t helped by the number of politicians that use European elections to campaign on national issues, but the Parliament doesn’t do itself any favours by being so restrained.
What it needs is a large dose of impassioned, old-fashioned, debate. MEPs need to be louder, brasher, noisier and more combative so that parliamentary debates become worth watching and the media starts talking about the issues being discussed.