By Katie Loscher
April 2019
Between May 23 and 26 the European Parliament elections will take place. Held once every five years, the elections are an opportunity for European citizens to actively participate in the selection of European Parliament officials who will be representing them for the next five years and making decisions on how Europe will act on jobs, security, migration, and climate change.
The EP is effectively the lower house of the EU’s legislative branch. It can’t propose legislation (the European Commission does that) or decide on a budget. However, all EU laws must be approved by a majority of EP members to then be applied in all 28 member states.
Although these elections will directly affect all those living within Europe, trends have shown that voter turnout has drastically decreased throughout the years. A recent study has shown that the majority of Europeans choose to abstain from voting in the European Parliament elections. Turnout has decreased from 62 percent in the first direct election that took place in 1979 to 42.61 percent in the most recent 2014 elections. As of late, there has been a push to get more Europeans to vote in the upcoming elections, but it is unclear how successful the movement has been.
Perhaps Article 13 of the EU’s new copyright directive was the push voters needed to get them to the polls this month. Brexit, marking the first time a country will leave the EU, could also be an important factor contributing to voter turnout.
The British and Dutch will begin the voting process on May 23, but most EU citizens will cast their votes on May 26. The EP elections are a chance to take part in deciding what Europe will be in the years to come -- only time will tell if Europeans will take it.
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For more on the European Parliament elections, check out:
Kentmen, C. C. (2017). What about Ambivalence and Indifference? Rethinking the Effects of European Attitudes on Voter Turnout in European Parliament Elections. Journal of Common Market Studies, 55(6), 1343–1359.
Faure, Stephanie. (2019). All you need to know about the European elections. Al Jazeera.
Katie Loscher, originally from Illinois, has spent the past five years living in Vienna. Currently a graduate student at Webster Vienna Private University, Katie studies international relations and would like to focus her research on security studies and foreign policy. This summer she will be interning for Globsec, a security forum, in Bratislava, Slovakia.
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