On the 6th March 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the European Parliament. While welcoming her, the Institution’s President Hans-Gert Pöttering laid out the unique characteristics of the Parliament:
We are the only democratically elected international institution. We bring together the elected representatives of nearly 500 million Europeans from over 150 national political parties in 27 countries, sitting in seven political groups. In June, we will take our record to the people, in the only transnational elections of their kind anywhere in the world: 375 million citizens will have the right to vote.
The Parliament has just launched a publicity campaign to increase voter turnout for June’s election, which has been in decline since the first direct elections in 1979. You can see the website here & billboards will be erected (below) which will emphasise choice rather than civic duty as the primary reason to vote. According to a Parliament spokesperson “We will not call on citizens to exercise their civic duties. Instead, we want to highlight that there are major policy choices confronting the EU which will impact on people’s lives.”
See what you think, below:
