EU has knack of turning off voters

Ask voters in many west European countries what they think of the European Union and the answer is often apathy or rejection, or both.

While the EU has successfully introduced the euro common currency, enlarged to 25 member states and developed fledgling common foreign and security policies in the last decade, its track record with the electorate has been mostly dismal.

Sixty years of European integration has been driven mostly by political and business elites. Few ordinary citizens identify instinctively with the EU or could even name its key leaders.

"You don't fall in love with a market," former French European Commission President Jacques Delors has said.

Turnout at European Parliament elections has fallen every five years since the first direct pan-European election in 1979, hitting a record low of 45.7 per cent last year.

The EU has lost four referendums on closer integration in a decade in Denmark, Ireland and Sweden. Opinion polls show it risks losing another one or two in the next month on the EU Constitution in founder members France and the Netherlands.

On the plus side, 10 mainly ex-communist east European countries voted overwhelmingly to join the EU club last year. Only oil-rich Norway has ever voted against EU accession.

Political analysts say only a minority of voters - right-wing nationalists and left-wing anti-capitalists - are strongly opposed to the EU, which is widely seen from outside Europe as a success story worthy of emulation.

But sectoral grievances, anger at national governments and economic or social discontent can coalesce into an anti-Brussels mood with unpredictable results at the polls.

"Governments take credit for the good things and blame the EU for anything that's unpopular. It will always be a scapegoat and will never get credit for anything it does," said Mark Leonard of the Centre for European Reform think-tank.

"The popularity of the EU is also a function of the stage a country is in in the economic cycle. Name a single institution that isn't unpopular in France or Germany now."

Furthermore, Mr Leonard argued, the EU doesn't provide any of the services that ordinary citizens most care about - health, education, transport and police.

"Even if the EU does some pretty bold and exciting things, such as enlargement or creating the euro, it's always turned into a very dull, bureaucratic exercise," he added.

The EU suffered its first major electoral setback in 1992 when Danes voted by a tiny margin to reject the Maastricht Treaty on European Union. They reversed that vote at a second attempt after Copenhagen secured opt-outs from the single currency, defence and EU justice and home affairs cooperation.

The Danes dealt a second blow to the EU in 2000 when they defied their government and voted against joining the euro.

Then the Irish voted "no" in 2001 to the Treaty of Nice reforming EU institutions, only to change their minds in 2003 after a pledge that new European defence arrangements would not breach Ireland's traditional neutrality.

In 2003, Swedes voted against joining the euro despite the support of almost the entire political establishment. Some of these votes reflected a deep feeling that the EU was impinging on an ancient national identity.

But in many cases, voters used European elections or referendums to cast protest ballots against their national governments or express economic or social distress rather than making a choice on European policy.

It is that tendency to make a seemingly free protest statement in what is perceived as a "secondary" election in which the fate of the national government is not at stake that has supporters of the EU Constitution most worried.

"The French don't really want to say 'no' to the (EU) Constitution, they want to say 'merde!' (shit!)," Jean-Louis Bourlanges, a strongly pro-European centre-right French member of the European Parliament, said last month.

The main concern of supporters of European integration is to mobilise what they see as the silent pro-European majority to come out to vote and not stay home out of apathy.

Even in pro-European Spain, where 77 per cent of voters endorsed the Constitution in a February referendum, the turnout was just 42 per cent.

A low turnout in France or the Netherlands could spell defeat for the treaty.