Apathy is biggest threat in French EU elections (News Feature)

By Siegfried Mortkowitz Jun 6, 2009, 10:02 GMT

Paris - Muriel Gaffet said she will not join millions of her fellow French citizens in going to polling stations Sunday to vote in the EU parliamentary elections.

'I'm going to stay in bed,' said Gaffet, a customer services consultant for a major French bank in Paris. 'I have always voted before. Always. But it just doesn't touch me. I don't feel concerned by it at all.'

Gaffet does concede that she worried about the effect of her abstention on her son, who will be eligible to vote for the first time in any election on June 7.

'He said, 'You have always told me that it was our duty to vote, and now you're not voting.' I don't know if he will vote,' she said. 'But he said it just doesn't speak to him.'

According to a Eurobarometer survey released by the European Commission and published by the weekly Le Point, Gaffet is in the large majority of voters who will not bother to cast ballots in this year's EU elections.

The poll found that only about 34 per cent of the estimated 375 million eligible voters will vote on average in the 27 EU countries.

According to that figure, France should be above average with about 44 per cent of its 44.5 million registered voters going to the polls.

But that figure must be compared with the 84 per cent voter turnout for the second round of the 2007 French presidential election or the 60 per cent turnout in the two rounds of the parliamentary elections of that year.

Apathy toward the EU elections is not a new phenomenon, but it is increasing in France. In 1979, a turnout of 60.7 per cent of French voters cast their ballots in the EU elections. In 2004, that figure had fallen to 43.1 per cent.

'The problem is,' Gaffet said, 'with local elections you know the parties, the issues, and so on. This European vote is just beyond me. I'm just not motivated. It's a grave problem.'

One reason the majority of French voters will stay home on Sunday is the lacklustre campaign by the major parties and the absence of a debate on important European issues, such as Turkey's possible EU membership or the relocation of factories to low-wage EU member countries.

'I had the feeling that this was not about Europe at all, but about the next French presidential elections,' said David Chiche, a married engineer with two young children.

Chiche said he would also not vote on Sunday. 'I have other things to worry about,' he said. 'I heard nothing during the campaign to make me want to vote.'

In fact, the French EU campaign did not arouse any media interest until Thursday, when the heads of two parties that polls show running neck and neck for third place insulted each other during a televised debate.

Francois Bayrou, leader of the centrist Modem party, accused the head of the Europe Ecologie slate of candidates, EU law-maker Daniel Cohn-Bendit, of being too cozy with President Nicolas Sarkozy and of being soft on paedophilia.

Cohn-Bendit shot back by calling Bayrou 'vile,' 'pathetic' and 'obsessed with becoming president.'

Another factor that may have a negative effect on voter turnout on Sunday is the weather, which is forecast to be rainy and unseasonably cool.

But there are people in France who take Europe very seriously and insist on going to the polls, rain or shine.

Audrey Hak, who runs a tobacconist's shop in a north-eastern neighbourhood of the French capital, said she would definitely cast her ballot because it was important 'to express myself.'

'Europe touches us all,' she said. 'If you live in Europe, you have to be concerned.'

An elderly woman waiting to make a purchase agreed. 'We had better,' she said.