Laurie BeaudonnetUniversité de Montréal, CERIUM ; Céline BelotCNRS Pacte, Sciences Po Grenoble ; Hélène CauneSciences Po Grenoble, Pacte ; Anne-Marie Houde, Université de Montréal ; Morgan Le Corre JuraticEuropean University Institute ; Damien PennetreauUniversité Catholique de Louvain, ISPOLE.

From Thursday May 23 to Sunday May 26, the 432 million European citizens of voting age were called upon to elect the European Parliament. Since the first election of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage, European elections have been recognized as "national elections of the second order". In other words, these elections are most often considered by the parties and voters themselves to be of lesser importance than those held at national level, particularly parliamentary elections.

The May 2019 elections were no exception to the rule, and turnout remained below that of first-order national elections, except in countries such as Belgium where voting is compulsory and people voted on the same day for other national ballots. Nevertheless, the 2019 European elections saw a significant rise in voter turnout. From 42.6% in the May 2014 European elections, it reached 51% in the 2019 elections. This was particularly the case in many continental European countries, including France, with an increase comparable to that of the European average. However, turnout has fallen in some southern European countries, such as Greece, Cyprus and Portugal.

Following the model of second-order elections, the European elections are a means for the parties to assess the balance of power. For voters, they are an expressive vote, with no visible impact on the choice of government; this favours small parties and, more generally, opposition parties. This vote is all the more expressive because it is held under proportional representation, not only in countries where proportional representation is the rule whatever the type of election (in Belgium or Portugal, for example), but also in countries where, as in France or the UK, proportional representation is rare or non-existent outside European elections. So it's often an opportunity to vote 'with your heart' or 'with your feet'.

The results recorded in the UK (where the eurosceptic camp grouped in the Brexit Party recorded 32% of the vote in the 2019 European elections, thereby leading to the collapse of the Conservative Party and, to a lesser extent, Labour), or in France (where the Rassemblement National, after making its first significant score in the 2014 European elections, repeated this success with 23% of the vote in the 2019 elections), tend to illustrate that a reconfiguration of certain partisan systems may well be underway.

Long characterized by two-party systems, the UK and France, are experiencing a shift in their party systems. In France, competition now seems to be polarizing around the LREM party-movement and the RN, while the government parties are experiencing a collapse, with LR and the PS between them garnering just 15% of the vote. In the United Kingdom,i the system seems to be fragmenting, with fewer and stronger parties [1].

It's not just far-right parties that have benefited from European elections. In France, for example, the Greens achieved their highest score in the 2009 European elections (16.3%). The 2019 elections saw them return to an electoral level they hadn't seen since, garnering 13.5% of the vote as a result of the dispersal of lists on the left. Together, the French-speaking and Flemish ecologists took three of the 21 seats allocated to Belgium. In Portugal, the animalist PAN party won its first seat in the European Parliament with 5.08% of the vote, having entered the Assembly of the Republic in the last legislative elections in 2015.

How can we understand these results? Did Europeans follow the campaign? Did it enable them to grasp European issues, or rather to position themselves on national issues? Is abstention a sign of citizens' lack of interest in European issues, or rather of the electoral campaign's inability to make sense to them?

As part of a survey conducted between March 4 and May 22, 2019 by members of the RESTEP research network [2], led by Laurie Beaudonnet of the Université de Montréal, we met with various groups of citizens in France, Belgium and Portugal. Without claiming to be representative, the discussions within these groups with their diverse profiles (students, young people without qualifications, young graduates looking for work, employees in the public and private sectors, senior citizens) nevertheless offer a unique perspective. In short, they help us to understand what does or doesn't make sense to citizens when they talk about European integration, and what matters to them when it comes to voting... or not.

Citizens aware of the campaign but not feeling competent competent

When asked about the European campaign, all participants - with the exception of senior citizens - expressed a certain passivity with regard to European current affairs, as well as a strong feeling of incompetence, i.e. the sensation of not being able to express an opinion on electoral issues due to lack of information, time or interest. In Belgium, this can be explained by the surprisingly quiet nature of the campaign, not only at European level, but more generally, since Belgian voters were called upon to vote on the same day for both their federal deputies and their regional councillors[3].

In France, a number of voters, particularly among the under-35s, explain their lack of interest by their lack of confidence in their own ability to assess the various political alternatives at European level. Others put it down to the very nature of the campaign, which was seen as excessively polarizing and reductive. As one participant put it: "If you follow the news, you get the impression that there are only two parties in France". The election results confirm the polarization of the campaign and of French political life around the RN/LREM duel we mentioned earlier.

This distance from the campaign and the European elections does not mean distrust of the European project. Of all the groups, only two participants declared themselves in favor of leaving the EU [4]. However, despite the fact that the environment and climate were always mentioned among the most important issues of the day, the Union's role as a driving force in the ecological struggle was rarely mentioned.

A campaign far from real business... european

When asked what issues the campaign issues the campaign should address, they put the climate emergency at the top of the list, whether it's a question of the environment or its repercussions on population population movements. Faced with the rejection of the traditional institutions of institutions of representative democracy, citizens repeatedly refer to their their ability to act as consumers, particularly in the field of ecology and a responsibility to act at local level to create links and improve community life.

Surprisingly, the crisis seems far away and the issues of unemployment, the single currency or debt are hardly mentioned. mentioned. In this respect, it is noteworthy that the group of young unemployed Belgians mentioned neither employment nor unemployment as the most important problems problems facing society. On the other hand, inequality inequality, at various levels, was a recurring theme in all the discussions. Many deplore the fact that European issues such as fiscal policy and defence fiscal and defense policy (in Portugal), Europe's economic model Europe's economic model (in France and Belgium), and the functioning of European European institutions.

All in all, an alarming conclusion for national and European democracy

These snapshots. On the one hand, the increasing polarization of the political associated in some cases with partisan fragmentation, but also the difficulty of acquiring the difficulty of acquiring information, as well as the exclusively national and the exclusively national orientation of political parties. their sense of political incompetence. On the other hand, the media and political parties equally biased and manipulative, are pitted against each other. Some citizens are aware of this mistrust. In several Belgian groups, after having been criticized party positions, citizens also admitted that it was unfair also admitted that it was unfair of them to criticize the lack of ambition of ambition, the utopian nature of certain proposals or the tendency to tendency of parties or politicians to conflict with each other. politicians

Until the parties European issues, it's pointless to expect European citizens to mobilize expect European citizens to mobilize and feel genuinely really invested in this election. And yet mobilization, particularly among younger voters, for the May 2019 ballot, suggests that suggests that, faced with a campaign focused on European issues, many citizens citizens would be ready to get involved!

[1] Of course, in the national elections are required in order to determine whether this effect this effect was linked to the European elections themselves, or whether it is a deeper trend.

[2] This project is funded by RESTEP and the Fonds de Recherche Société et Culture du Québec. The local managers for each country are Céline Belot (CNRS-Pacte) for France, Virginie Van Ingelgom (FNRS - UC Louvain) for Belgium Belgium, and Marina Costa Lobo (Institute of Social Sciences - University of Lisbon) for Portugal.

[3] The Belgian was nevertheless characterized by an unusual atmosphere, with many parties affected by "affairs" that severely damaged their credibility their credibility, at least in the short term. On the other hand, the sustainability of movements in favor of more ambitious environmental and climate environmental and climate policies has led to a rise in the polls for environmentalist forces, helping to encourage the major parties delay.

[4] It is important important to point out that the focus groups were held in Wallonia with exclusively French-speaking participants. As the breakthrough of the Flemish of the Flemish far right in the elections, the result might have been different had Dutch speakers taken part in the discussions.