BRUSSELS (NNA) – About 400 million people in 28 countries will be entitled to go to the polls on 22-25 May to elect a European Parliament for the eighth time. Yet never has the European idea been further from offering the citizens of Europe a political vision for the future. But civil society organisations have urged that the crisis should be seen as an opportunity to bring about change.

Most citizens now associate Europe with the debt crisis and bureaucratic interference. Thus it is no surprise that in a recent survey by German television, for example, 72 percent of Germans said they had little or no interest in the European elections. Indeed, there has been a consistent general decline in turnout for European elections throughout Europe. At the last occasion in 2009, the EU average lay at just 43 percent. In the UK it was even lower at 35 percent while Germany was still slightly above the average at 45 percent. Participation in many of the eastern European member states lay a lot lower than that with Slovakia barely even managing 20 percent.

In France the far-right anti-Europe Front National is predicted to win 24 percent of the vote, which would make it the strongest party in France. The Eurosceptic UK Indepedence Party UKIP, which advocates leaving the European Union immediately and blames most of Britain’s problems on the EU, is also leading the polls, with its percentage support ranging from the high twenties to the mid-thirties.

European solidarity

Civil society organisations see this lack of public interest as the expression of a crisis in the “Europe of governmental, business and financial market interests” which is more distant than ever from a Europe of citizens, as the German “Initiative Netzwerk Dreigliederung” (Network Threefolding Initiative) writes in its newsletter “Rundbrief für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus”. It calls for a consensus on the idea of a social and democratic Europe: “It is dependent upon ourselves whether an ethic of cooperation and solidarity is lived in Europe or whether the diverse cultures of Europe and the democracy to which they give rise – including human rights and the European social model – are increasingly sacrificed to the market.”

The international “attac” organisation emphasises on its German website that it sees “committed action for a Europe based on solidarity and against the increasingly anti-social and undemocratic orientation of the European Union” as a “great priority”. “Mehr Demokratie e.V.” (More Democracy) is calling for a European citizens’ convention to move the development of democracy in the European Union forward.

A campaign called “Founding Europe anew“ was started in 2013 at an alternative EU summit. It calls for the financial crisis to be overcome through solidarity and democracy. With the neo-liberal model of subordination to the dominance of the (financial) markets, the EU was aggravating the crisis rather than offering a way out. “Instead of naming political mistakes and greed for profits as the causes of the crisis, government deficits are being redefined into a (welfare) state debt crisis in order to legitimise a disastrous policy,” the alliance of academics, civil society activists trade unionists writes. Public expenditure as well as wages and social incomes were being radically cut as a result of conditions imposed by Europe while wage earners, the unemployed and pensioners were made to carry the costs of saving the banks.

No  secretiveness

Pan-European civil society alliances are more necessary than ever “to set up a pan-European package of changes in collaboration with the progressive forces in the European Parliament,” author Wilhelm Neurohr says in the “Rundbrief Dreigliederung”. He currently sees Europe at the crossroads: European civil society had to become more prominent as a “true pro-European movement” which can organise “a different Europe” in a sustainable and democratic way if it also sees itself as a European cultural movement.

The “backroom politics” of the EU Commission which had been at work in the Lisbon Treaty, the ACTA intellectual property agreement, the directive on the award of concession contracts for the privatisation of water services or the services directive could only be stopped through the engagement of civil society campaigning against secretiveness and for more rights for the European Parliament.

There are currently 765 MEPs in the European Parliament. The strongest group with 273 seats is the European People’s Party (EPP), a grouping of national Christian Democratic and Conservative parties, followed by the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) with 196. The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe has 83 seats while the group of the Greens/European Free Alliance and the European Conservatives and Conformist Group, which includes the British Conservatives, have 57 each.

Putting down markers

In the last week in which it sat, the European Parliament put down a marker by approving a uniform European mechanism for minimising the public cost of future banking crises in which it will not be tax payers but shareholders and bondholders who will first have to pay up if a bank goes bankrupt. Up to 100.000 euros in any savings account will be guaranteed.

The European Parliament also adopted new rules for the deployment of the Frontex EU border force which will, among other things, prevent African refugees intercepted in the Mediterranean from being pushed back out to sea. MEPs also tightened up the text of the rules to ensure compliance with the “non-refoulement” principle, which says that individuals must not be returned to their country of origin or any other country where there is a risk of persecution, torture or other serious harm.

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Item: 200514-01EN Date: 20 May 2014

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