European Parliament elections: we aren't voting for chickens

That the upcoming elections for the European Parliament this June are approaching under the radar cannot be much of a surprise. Unlike its domestic counterparts, the European Parliament is far removed from most political debates and the media spotlight with the subsequent effect that the average European has little idea as to what is going on. With little over a month to go until polls open in the UK on 4 June, one could be forgiven for not even knowing an election was to about to take place. There has yet been no media attention, no national debate, no mention of any of the key issues – by and large, nobody has paid any interest. Indeed, were it not for the seasonal revival of interest in the far-right British National Party and the upcoming Party Political Broadcast season, all but the keenest Europhile could be forgiven their ignorance.

All this leaves the responsibility for stoking up interest in the European Parliamentary elections in the hands of the European Union itself. Without any of the usual press and broadcast coverage that accompanies national election days, the EU has to resort to a major public advertising campaign to raise awareness. Yet of the trickle of posters and print adverts seem unlikely to tempt more voters to the ballot box this year than the paltry 38.2 per cent of the British electorate that showed up in 2004 – less in Scotland. The reason for this is rather obvious: the EU lacks sex appeal.

In an attempt to relate the European Union to “real people” the campaign attempts to celebrate the past successes of the parliament. Unfortuately—given that firstly the EU is, by nature, still very much an economic union and secondly that the parliament is by far its weakest institution—such successes are hardly mind-blowing. Indeed, one such poster looks in danger of reinforcing a greatly distorted stereotype in implying the EU is only good for wrapping masses of red tape around anything that moves: need one recall the fuss stirred up by the untrue “straight banana” myth of a few years back? The offending advert portrays two supermarket-packaged chickens—one covered in information as to where its from, how it was reared, what it was fed on; the other, though, conspicuously unlabelled—and features the tag line “How much labelling do you want?” and then encourages the onlooker to vote.

While undoubtedly the ad-exec and bureaucrat in charge of drawing up an awareness campaign must have struggled to come up with a theme so apolitical and down-to-earth as grocery shopping, food-packaging regulation is hardly sexy. And this is the problem with the European Parliament in a nutshell: only those with a special economic interest are truly likely to care about the seemingly alien economic regulations on which the EU spends most of its time. The heavy-duty political issues—crime, education, health—remain the reserve of domestic legislatures. And even these struggle to pull in the voter numbers. The complex relationship between the European Parliament and the twin powers of the Council of Ministers and the Commission only serve to add to voter apathy – after all, the Parliament doesn’t actually instigate legislation, but rather acts in a ratifying capacity through the co-decision procedure.

That is not to say that one shouldn’t vote in the European Elections this summer; simply that the reasons for doing so are not the ones that the EU’s advertising and websites put forward. As the political theorist Andrew Moravcsik points out, European elections are remarkable for the presence of political extremism on both the left and the right. Mass voter turn-out is the only sure-fire way of guarding against this.

Instead of chickens, we should be shown the faces of Nick Griffin, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Robert Kilroy-Silk smirking above the tag-line: “Do these men really represent you?”