FLEECING GRANDAD WHILE HE SLEEPS:

Big issue in EU voting: Who cares? (Thomas Fuller, June 01, 2004, International Herald Tribune)

European voters on both sides of the former Iron Curtain will make history next week when they cast ballots in the first transcontinental elections for the European Parliament.

But despite a relatively high-profile roster that includes former prime ministers, a Polish race car driver and a Czech pornography star - and despite the increasing importance of the Parliament in passing laws that affect Europeans in their everyday lives - turnout for the elections June 10-13 may be a flop.

Only slightly more than one-third of Europeans surveyed in a Gallup poll in mid-May said they knew elections were coming and just about 45 percent said they were sure to vote, down from some 50 percent who voted in the last European Parliament elections in 1999.

Most surprising, perhaps, is that participation is expected to be lowest in the countries that joined the European Union just a month ago. In the Czech Republic, Estonia and Slovakia, less than one-third of people surveyed said they would go to the polls, apparently contradicting the notion that the novelty of their first European elections and the joy of being in the Western club at last would lift turnout.

Voters east and west say they do not understand how the Parliament works or what exactly it does, and that is disappointing news for the framers of the Union, because the Parliament is its only directly elected institution.

"I don't really know anything about the European Parliament," said Jan Wilczynski, a former ceramics factory worker living in Wloclawek, west of Warsaw, who attended an election rally over the weekend. "And I'm afraid not a lot of people will vote, because people have stopped believing."

Lobbyists and lawyers long ago understood the power of the European Parliament and have flooded Brussels to try to influence the laws. [...]

The paradox for the European Union, analysts say, is that in recent years the European Parliament has become increasingly powerful, in some cases surpassing the lawmaking powers of national Parliaments.

Experts estimate that the majority of laws passed in Parliaments in Paris, Berlin or other capitals in the EU originate in Brussels, suggesting that Europe is more centralized than most voters think.

"It's one of the few Parliaments that lives up to its role as a legislature," said Ben Crum, an expert on the Union's institutions at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels.

Heather Grabbe, director of research at the Center for European Reform in London, said that even though actions of the Parliament had a "major impact" on Europeans, it got little attention from them.

"It's actually quite rare to hear about something concrete that the European Parliament has done," Grabbe said. [...]

EU officials hope to make the Union more accessible to voters through Europe's first constitution. The aim is to simplify the lawmaking process and to gather all the treaties and amendments into a single document. Governments say they hope to reach a deal on a constitution by the EU summit meeting in Brussels on June 17 and 18.

Even if it is ratified, and that is in doubt, citizens will be left with a complex, legalistic document, rather than an American-style citizens' charter.

If the Europeans ever do happen to wake up from their long slumber, they'll find it's too late to save themselves.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 2, 2004 7:42 AM