The Polish prediction (great title for something, huh?) factors in a general "disarray" in Polish politics. But you don't have to be politically fragile, it seems, to have a weak EU turnout.
According to this 1999 BBC report, as the EU's power has grown, voter interest has actually declined:
The UK turnout - the lowest in the union at just 23.3% - also followed the pan-European downward trend since the last elections in 1994, when 36% of UK voters made it to the polling stations.
This year, all countries but Ireland have seen fewer people putting a cross on ballot slips.
"What people don't realise is they have failed to vote for people who have the power to change their lives," said Mr Brittan.
This EU voting roundup shows a few high vote-producing states (e.g. Luxembourg, Italy, and Greece, which all cracked 70 percent), but generally the major nations did not recruit many balloters. Germany, the UK, and France were under 50 percent compliance. The Dutch returned 29.9 percent. MEP (Member of European Parliament) voting played out to an average of 60 percent that year, but this would appear to represent a very wide range of national results. According to the EU's own research, "Although around 7 in 10 respondents said they intended to vote in the June 1999 elections, actual turnout rates were far lower, ranging from 24 percent in the UK to 90 percent in Belgium where voting is compulsory." [emphasis mine -- hey, how do you enforce compulsory voting, anyway?]
The Danes, bless them, had a record high turnout (87 percent) in 2000 -- in which they rejected the European Union.
According to this paper by Hilary Silver out of Brown University:
Nor are European Union institutions sufficiently democratic and responsive to popular opinion. Only half the Europeans surveyed by Eurobarometers support their country’s membership in the EU, and less than 45 percent feel satisfied with the way EU democracy works....
During times of rapid social change, citizens need reassurance that their sacrifices and risk-taking will be justified in the long run. That takes leadership. Given the weakness of the European Parliament, national elections serve as the main outlets for sentiments of malaise, mistrust or misery.
My quick gloss is that the more real the benefits of membership are to the citizens, the more likely they are to come out and vote. Slovenia, which could use some backup, got 60 percent out to approve the EU -- though that may have been inflated by the simultaneous referendum on NATO, which offers military support that voters in that troubled region might appreciate.
It may also suggest that the EU is, to many European citizens, a done deal. But that doesn't mean they expect anything of it. The Union is first and foremost an economic entity -- a way for the members to exponentiate their bargaining power in big, global deals. And as we have seen from our own globalization efforts hereabouts, that doesn't necessarily help the working folks -- not in any way we can feel (or spend), anyway.
In 2002 the Irish, having rejected in 2001 the eastward expansion of the EU to include 12 new members, were given a second chance to approve it by a nervous Irish government. It got over that time, but the turnout was under 50 percent. Seems like they responded, weakly, to badgering -- OK, OK, quit bugging me, I'll sign up.
Increasingly, here and abroad, we are becoming disengaged from our politics. The establishment of a new level of governance doesn't excite the Europeans any more than a new management structure would excite the workers in your average corporation. Maybe that's the new paradigm for what we are used to calling democracies -- corporate citizenship. The big boys propose the plan, and wait for it (or push for it) to gain momentum. We do vote, still, but with diminishing interest. Eventually, maybe, we'll just get the memo.
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