The Maltese European election campaign is entering the final stages and Europe features only marginally since it is mostly focused on national political issues. For this reason the main political parties may not be giving Maltese citizens a clear indication of why they should bother to vote inthis election.

This is a pity because the European Parliament is an important EU institution which shares law-making powers with member state governments. By abstaining from voting, citizens do nothing more than forego their right to choose their representatives in an institution whose decisions will affect their lives in the future.

The choice of the next Commission president hangs on the outcome of the European election and the visit to Malta by Martin Schultz and Jean-Claude Juncker – respectively the candidates of the European Socialists and the European People’s Party – underlines this importance.

So my take on this is “yes go out and vote” even if a strong turnout (Insha’Allah) will surely be used to justify keeping Europe out of the local European elections.

The practice of focusing European campaigns on national issues is not something which happens only in Malta. It has blighted European elections ever since the first one was held in 1979. What is perhaps exceptional about Malta is the extremity to which it is carried out.

There is another feature of Maltese political campaigning which is worth mentioning: it is always on maximum alert and for this it is perhaps also tiring voters.

Voter fatigue and apathy generated by the absence of Europe from the European campaigns could be a reason why an increasing number of voters prefer to stay at home.

It should not surprise anyone if in the forthcoming election we will see another drop in voter participation

It should not surprise anyone if in the forthcoming election we will see another drop in voter participation. A downward sloping trend in voter turnout seems to have been set from the start. In the first European election held in 2004, voter turnout was a respectable 82.4 per cent but it was much less than that of the 2003 national election, which was a whopping 95.7 per cent.

In the 2008 national election, turnout was 93.3 per cent, but in the European election held the following year, it plummeted to 78.8 per cent. In other words more than a fifth of eligible voters abstained from voting.

It is true that when comparing the European and national elections one has to keep in mind that foreigners residing in Malta have the option of voting in the European elections. But this makes a negligible difference to the voting trends discussed here.

Several candidates from all political parties whom I have met say that European issues do not resonate well with voters and that it would be naïve on their part to ignore the stronger mobilizing potential of the national as against European issues.

This is partly true but there is hardly any readiness on the part of campaign leaders to begin to reverse this trend or to increase the salience of European issues.

Averse to unnecessary risk, politicians are shy of putting Europe at the heart of the European election campaign!

Significantly, the leaders of all of Malta’s political parties began their political careers with a long stint in the European Parliament.

Alternattiva’s leader occupied the post of secretary general of the European Green Party for six years and was based in Brussels. But there is hardly any evidence that this has benefitted the ‘Europeanisation’ of Maltese politics in any major way. Maltese politics remain stubbornly national and insular.

This situation undermines the legitimacy of the European Parliament in the eyes of Maltese citizens and ensures that Maltese citizens remain eternally detached from the mainstream debates happening in Europe.

There is a lot going on in Europe at the moment.

I refer to the crisis in the Ukraine, Europe’s energy security, persistently high unemployment in some member states, intolerable levels of poverty in some countries, the rise of extremism, the resilience of the banking system, the revision of the Stockholm Program and the future of Europe.

But so far these matters have not been allowed to taint the unique characteristics of Maltese politics.

(The views expressed here are the writer’s personal ones and they do not necessarily imply endorsement by the Institute)

Roderick Pace is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the Institute for European Studies, University of Malta.

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