Most worrying perhaps in a new EU-funded Eurobarometer survey of 27,600 voters across Europe, released on Wednesday, is that 44 percent say that the EU is headed in the wrong direction, against 32 who say it is headed the right way. That points to a further surge for anti-establishment and Euroskeptic parties. [...]
Together, the European Parliament and European Commission are planning to spend more than €30 million on get-out-the-vote advertising and support, aimed in particular at young people and those with soft support for the EU. [...]
That’s on par with surveys conducted prior to the 2014 European Parliament elections, in which turnout dropped for the seventh time in a row to less than 43 percent. In Slovakia just 13 percent voted. [...]
Between them the center-right European People’s Party and the Continent’s Socialists won 53 percent of the vote in 2014. This time the Socialists in particular are in trouble: Expected poor showings in nearly all the big EU countries including Germany, France, Italy and Poland mean dozens of socialist seats are at risk, and with them Parliament’s pro-EU majority. [...]
None of the parties plans to run primaries to select their spitzenkandidat and voters cannot cast a ballot for them directly. There’s also the issue of quality. Under the current system, serving prime ministers and presidents are unlikely to run because it would require them to campaign for the Commission post for months.
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