No one would suggest that the 2009 EP elections could provoke as much buzz and fuss as the current presidential elections in the US. While the elections in the US are centred around catchphrases such as ‘change’ or the personality of the individual candidates (or running mates) the 2009 EP elections will be dominated by apathy, debates over low turnout and the possibility of Declan Ganley manoeuvring the EU into a potential further ‘crisis’.

The Eurobarometer special report on the European elections reinforced these fears by showing how small the minority is that actually cares about the EU and European level politics. A mere 16% of the population interviewed knew that there will be European elections next year while a whopping 51% claimed that they aren’t interested in the elections.

Calls for a more democratic EU that gives its citizens more power exist plentiful. There are diverging opinions as to whether the EU should make more use of referendums or whether the Commission should be politicized so that citizens would actually be able to have an influence over EU policy priorities. These are important debates but the more important issue, I believe, is to understand that more democracy in the EU also means more responsibility for the voters.

In a mature democracy elections provide the people with the tools to set the agenda and influence the political systems they live in. Generally speaking people embrace this right to vote and the significance it bears for a country’s political future. The EU as a political system lacks this maturity. That is to say, although people across the EU are demanding referendums on EU issues they don’t actually know or care about the democratic tools the EU already offers them. Therefore, when people are able to cast their votes next year many won’t actually use this opportunity to shape Europe but instead they will use the elections as an opportunity to shock their national (predominantly pro-European) governments and/or teach the EU a lesson by voting for fringe parties.

Enter the European far right.

Fringe parties? No, actually I am talking about parties that have managed to establish themselves as ‘genuine’ mainstream parties. Take Austria as an example:

The FPÖ is predicted to win around 20% of all votes cast in today’s Austrian general election. Together with the BZÖ which has its roots in the FPÖ the parties of the far right could reach around 30% of the votes. This is the same FPÖ that a week ago greatly supported the pro-Cologne initiative and its Anti-Islamisation Congress and the same FPÖ whose Youth group Ring Freiheitlicher Jugendlicher recently spread stickers showing a cigarette box in the Austrian national colours with a ‘health warning’ claiming ‘Immigration can kill’ (see story about this in German). There is a rather potent chance that the FPÖ could partake in the next Austrian government. That would mean that a party which openly opposes the EU, immigration and a diverse society would be back on the top table of European politics.

Remember 1999? Well, maybe the EU will issue sanctions against Austria again just like they did then when the FPÖ, then under the leadership of Jörg Haider, managed to enter a government coalition. Maybe, the EU will not react at all. The problem, however, is that leaders across the EU will speak of an isolated case in Europe or maybe even admit that the far right is rising in a select group of European countries. What they won’t do, however, is look a few months ahead and ask themselves what would happen if the European far right managed a similar result in the EP elections.

And Austria is by no means an isolated case. Far right parties have entered the mainstream in Italy, France, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania. And even if far right parties have not featured prominently in recent national elections across Europe, the fact that EU elections are second-order elections and that people really couldn’t care less makes it more likely that people will give a protest vote to a fringe party. Just take the British National Party (BNP) in the UK as an example. In the 2005 UK general election the BNP gained less than a 1% share of the votes but in the year before the same BNP almost gained 5% in the EP elections. I argue that many people who would never dream of voting a far right party in national elections view EP elections as a possibility to vent frustration with their established parties and teach them a lesson.

If my prediction of low voter turnout and disproportionately high turnout for fringe parties at the 2009 EP elections holds true then some people may be grateful that EU elections don’t yet have any direct impact on the policy priorities of the EU. An EU advocating ‘Unity in Diversity’ and an EU advocating ‘Anti-Islamisation’ just wouldn’t go hand in hand. The EU will become more democratic with rising maturity of its political system but as long as European citizens don’t comprehend that EU elections aren’t just a joke, increasing the power of the people could lead to exactly the opposite to the strong and unified Europe that pro-Europeans are striving for.

Of course this is a chicken and egg dilemma. How will people recognise that EP elections are important if the result does not directly impact on policy priorities? The EU should be more democratic but democracy cannot be injected into a political system by merely changing the electoral system. Mature democracy must be manifested in the people not the institutional setting.

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