Extremist and fringe parties are expected to make gains when voting begins next week for the European Parliament, a little-loved but highly symbolic assembly that increasingly makes vital decisions on issues ranging from climate change and online privacy to cellphone roaming charges.
Polls indicate that voters from Romania to Ireland will show up in record low numbers to select the only democratic institution in the EU, yet one that many voters around the nations that form the still-evolving union see as wasteful and somehow irrelevant.
Polls suggest that the center-right European People’s Party will return as the largest group, followed by the Socialists and centrist Liberal Democrats. But even small gains could provide meaningful platforms for extremist parties, such as the virulently anti-immigrant French National Front and the British National Party, which stands a good chance of winning its first seat.
Observers say that could increase the gnawing sense of public disappointment with the 51-year-old EU, which many see as an aloof bureaucracy out of touch with ordinary voters and insensitive to the national sentiment they often retain despite integration.
Perhaps worse still is the feeling that the union seems to be failing to deliver the prosperity that caused many to put national feelings aside. Its response to the global economic crisis has been widely seen as indecisive, piecemeal and halfhearted.
Parties skeptical of greater European unification are expected to see greater success than the fringe parties, potentially giving a louder voice to mainstream voter dissatisfaction with the EU.
“For the parliament, it’s very much a test of its credibility,” said Jacki Davis, an analyst at the European Policy Center, a Brussels-based think tank.
Some 375 million voters across the 27-nation union will be able to cast their ballots between Thursday and Sunday in the second-largest elections in the world, after India’s. Mainstream parties and candidates have been desperate to avoid a repeat of the last vote five years ago, which saw fringe and extreme parties take more than 50 seats in the 785-seat assembly — now down to 736 seats under new treaty rules.
An EU survey of 28,000 EU citizens released this week showed only 43 percent of those polled would “definitely vote.” That’s down from 62 percent who actually turned out to vote in the first such elections in 1979 and below the previous record of 45.5 percent in 2004.
“The lower the turnout the more likely fringe parties are likely to do well and that’s because those who are really motivated to come out and vote will vote,” Davis said.
While many previous candidates were not taken seriously in their home countries, national parties have lined up some veteran candidates for the parliament this time, including French Justice Minister Rachida Dati, 43, and former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, 56, as well as a slew of other ex-ministers and EU commissioners.
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