WARSAW (AFP) ― They are generally pro-EU, enjoying the generous subsidies and opportunities to work abroad that come with membership, yet few eastern Europeans bothered voting in parliamentary elections that wound down Sunday.
“If we top 20 percent turnout, it won’t be a disaster,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk grudgingly admitted early on the fourth and final day of continental voting.
“It would be bad if we wound up at the tail end of turnout figures,” he added as he cast his ballot.
As results rolled in, it turned out that 23 percent of his countrymen made their way to the ballot box.
But even that was better than Slovakia, which hit a rock bottom 13 percent turnout ― thus maintaining its 2009 record as the EU member with the least enthusiastic voters in the parliamentary polls.
“I couldn’t pick a candidate. There are too many. I always vote in every other election but I don’t see any sense in voting in European elections,” said Bratislava resident Marcela Kundrathova.
Turnout across the ex-Soviet east was just 32 percent at the last election in 2009, compared with 52 percent for western Europe.
Less than 30 percent of Latvians turned out for their vote on Saturday, according to the national electoral commission, and Romania saw similar results.
“The low turnout is a result of the fact that the EU is not a polarizing issue,” said Martin Slosiarik, an analyst with the Bratislava-based FOCUS polling agency.
The 11 central and eastern European countries that joined the EU over the last decade command a combined 199 seats in the new 751-member parliament.
Much of the problem lies in the fact that decisions taken in Brussels and Strasbourg seem remote from people’s concerns in the east.
A survey by FOCUS found that 49 percent of notoriously euroskeptic Czechs believe their 2004 entry into the EU had no effect on their day-to-day lives.
“Czechs think of the European Parliament vote as a second-tier election,”
said Prague-based political analyst Tomas Lebeda.
In Poland, the region’s heavyweight with 38 million people and 51 EU lawmakers, “people don’t realize the degree to which they’re affected by what goes on in the European Parliament,” said political analyst Stanislaw Mocek.
“There is a limited understanding of Europe’s institutions.”
Many voters display little faith or respect in their candidates.
“I have nothing against the European Union and the European Parliament but I don’t trust the candidates who are supposed to be representing my region,”
programmer Szymon Kornacki, 28, told AFP.
In the Czech Republic, interest in the elections “has been waning, since the candidates are generally second-tier politicians,” sociologist Jirina Siklova told AFP.
“When a party needs to get rid of someone, it sends them to Brussels.”
