"This Time I'm Voting" - Why?
Under the slogan "This Time I'm Voting", the European Parliament is currently running one of the biggest political campaigns in the European Union (EU) in order to increase voter turnout which has been extremely low at the last European elections in 2014. In this vein, the purpose of this article is to elaborate on why voting in the European elections matters?
In the last years, we hear that the European project is not having its best times and if we want to be honest with ourselves, indeed, the EU is currently facing an unprecedented crisis. Since 2010, the European debt crisis had an immense impact on the socio-economic development of many European countries and has sparked wave after wave of political uncertainty. In addition, the renewed terrorist threats and the disagreement between Member States over the standards of support and distribution of asylum-seekers have allowed populist parties to attract voters with their nativist and eurosceptic positions. After a crisis, voters are particularly attracted to the political rhetoric of populists, which usually attributes blame to foreigners or minorities. As long as the above topics remain high on the agenda of the governments, the EU will continue to be criticised and the populist parties will prolong their presence in the Party systems.
Without a doubt, European citizens want to see more actions against unemployment, more actions against terrorism, more actions against illegal immigration. They want to see real solutions to the real problems that concern their everyday lives. Despite the fact that Europe has gone through a series of crises in the last years, we should not allow the dark clouds cover how important and beneficial the European integration has been for all of us.
The European integration process has been a success story, we should be proud of our achievements and we should point out more often what good Europe is doing for its people. First of all, the European Union is a guarantor of peace and we must be grateful that we live on a continent of peace thanks to the EU. Nothing should be taken for granted. Nowadays the agenda of the EU is determined largely by Germany and France, two countries which before their co-existence within the Union, they had been in 2 centuries of deadly wars, with culmination the 2nd World War. The EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 for over six decades of contributions towards the advancement of peace and reconciliation in Europe.
Furthermore, the economic integration process has succeeded and Europe is functionally a single market with mainly a single currency that is the 2nd most traded currency in the world, behind only the U.S dollar. The single market based on the 'four freedoms' of people, goods, services and capital moving freely between all Member States, has brought enormous benefits to our lives - over 500 million EU citizens are free to move and settle where they wish in the EU, we became a powerful economic area, we reduced costs and prices for consumers and more that 3 million European jobs were created.
These are just a few of the achievements so far. The EU through thousands of directives and regulations is making our lives better and more prosperous in 35 different policy areas. It is not the purpose of this article to explore all those policy areas; nevertheless, I will briefly elaborate on what the EU is doing for its youth. The field of youth is a national policy area therefore harmonisation of Member States' legislation is excluded. Nonetheless, the EU has established several programmes aiming to give young people more opportunities in education and the job market.
For example, "Erasmus+" is a programme of €14.7 billion which supports education, training, youth and sport in Europe and provides opportunities for over 4 million Europeans to study, train and gain experience abroad. Furthermore, we have the "Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs", a programme which provides the opportunity to aspiring new entrepreneurs to work with successful business owners in other European countries in order to gain the necessary skills and knowledge to start their own business in their home countries. A new initiative of the EU is the "European Solidarity Corps" aiming to provide opportunities for young people to volunteer or work in projects that benefit communities and people in their own country or elsewhere in Europe. Finally, the "Youth Guarantee", with funding of €8.8 billion, supports youth employment by ensuring that all young people under 25 receive a good-quality job or continued education within 4 months of completing formal education or becoming unemployed. Although, I consider the Youth Guarantee to be a social policy which cannot effectively tackle the problem of unemployment by creating new jobs, the reports indicate that the programme is starting to bear fruits, therefore we should observe its results and its proper implementation by the Members States.
Last point I want to touch upon is what is the EU doing for us Cypriots? First of all, we belong to an alliance consisting of few of the strongest countries in the world. Specifically, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom are in the Group of Seven (G7), with the most advanced economies in the world. Furthermore, we receive hundreds of millions in EU-funding, we have the strong EU currency, we have progressed in many areas including equality, health and safety at work and pension systems, as well as, we have significantly developed our services sector, attracting many international companies and enabling legal and accounting firms to serve European and international companies.
Finally, the two most important benefits that come with Cyprus membership of the EU, is first, that the Cyprus Problem has become a European one, evidenced by the active role of the EU in the negotiations, such as the presence of a delegation of the EU led by Jean-Claude Juncker and Federica Mogherini during the negotiations on the Cyprus problem in Geneva in January 2017. Second, as a member of the European Union, Cyprus has aligned its interests with the Western countries with nothing preventing us from having excellent relations also with the countries of the East.
At the same time, the European Union is currently encountering several issues and the next European Parliament will have to work hard to challenge the challenges. The rise of populism and euroscepticism, threats to the rule of law, the changing international environment, the European perspectives of the Western Balkans and the challenges to further European integration are few or the areas that the Members of the next European Parliament will have to provide effective answers.
Therefore, in the next years we will need ambition and stronger cooperation within all the levels of society in order to help Europe progress beyond slogans. The traditional political parties have to re-engage with the public, increase accountability, introduce reforms better adapted to modern society, boost job creation and growth, provide economic opportunities to the young and properly integrate refugees. We have to draw lessons from our mistakes and look for new approaches to stop populism from gaining ground in Europe.
I provided some short views on why the European elections are not elections of secondary importance. We should therefore carefully choose the ones that we believe can better represent us and fight for our national interests in the European Parliament. I conclude with a message - especially to young people. Young Europeans today have experienced a long-standing period of crisis, without having had a say in the creation of the system that caused it. At the same time, we are the children for whom the European project was made for and now we should be the ones to decide about the future of the European Union. In the 2014 elections, 72 per cent of 16/18 to 24 years old did not vote, while more than 50 per cent of 65+ olds did. Such figures are unacceptable. If young people want politics to change, we must also be willing to participate. This is not merely good, but necessary for the society.
Written for the Cyprus Center for European and International Affairs, University of Nicosia. Press here to access the special issue.