European elections loom

In a little over two weeks, in a vast exercise spread over four days and 28 countries, as many as 350 million Europeans will go to the polls to vote in elections to the European Parliament, the EU’s only directly elected body.

 

As celebrations of democracy go, it approaches the United States, Brazil or India for scale, at least in terms of numbers – an opportunity for huge swathes of Europe’s population to determine who will shape the continent for years to come.

 

And yet, despite Europeans having directly elected their own parliament since 1979, there is very little ‘buzz’ on the streets of Brussels or other EU capitals ahead of the May 22-25 vote. Turnout is expected to fall for the seventh time in a row, dropping to just over 40 percent, pollsters predict.

Read More: As European elections loom, parties struggle for attention | Reuters.