Parties and Parliament

European Parliament has started it´s election campaign on 1st of April - two months before the official election is held by 375 million potential voters. The billboard campaign consists of ten subjects, covering problems as the product labelling, fuel for cars, energy, social life, safety policy and others. The commercial is available in every European language, but will not appear in every country uniformly. Especially those areas which had little voter participation in the 2004 election will be the target of the campaign, e.g. Slovakia and Poland. Nonetheless Germany, Spain and Italy decided to offer free advertising space.



How to reach 375 million potential voters?

In fact: How to reach 375 million potential voters, who are in charge of voting the future european representatives, but who do not really care? The campaign is covering new areas, which are well-known from the US election campaign in 2008. Next to television and radio spots, billboard advertising and seminars online social networks as facebook and MySpace will be used to hire voters. The slogan is quite simple and identical for every member state: European elections, it's your choice. The total cost of the campaign is €18 million.

That political parties campaign for upcoming elections is as normal as the election itself, but what should a parliament campaign for? Democracy respectively the most direct way in participating in politics as a citizen. Therefor you normally declare aims to achieve, communicate your ways and instruments to implement these aims and try to convince the most part of the public, that every other alternative is of less effectiveness and accuracy. Because the European Parliament is not entitled to take sides, the institution is promoting the choice between different opportunities. It´s up to you to decide. But problems remain. The European Parliaments campaign is definitely not of extravagant creativity and at least it is offering decisions the public is not going to decide. Neither the European Parliament. The choice of used energy for example is attached to the authority of every European member state. Finally the campaign is not facing the problems causing comparably few turnouts. Most people still do not understand the balance of power between the European institutions, the position and impact of the European Parliament and consequently their barriers.


Not every asked question is the right one to be asked, because it is either too personal - e.g. the order between family and career - or of less importance. The European Parliament is in the difficult situation to provide the public the problems that need to be solved, but not to take over partisanship for certain solutions.