The criticism began almost immediately after polls closed in the recent elections to the European Parliament. Fewer had turned out than ever: a third of Brits and Dutch, under a quarter of Poles and less than 20 percent of Slovaks. Surely, goes the conventional view, such blatant voter apathy betrays deep disillusionment with the European Union. Brussels, charged Euro-skeptics, is a distant technocracy out of touch with the common people. Euro-federalists agreed, but responded that the solution is to "democratize" the European Union—by which they meant creating an elected European Commission president, pan-European rather than national slates of parliamentarians and multilingual debating forums. The solution to dysfunctional democracy, in this view, would be even more democracy.
Yet all this is too pessimistic. Elections aren't perfect anywhere. The fact that 43.4 percent of Europeans—around 160 million people—turned out to vote for a body of politicians that allegedly "no one cares about" is actually quite remarkable. Surely, American commentators should not cast stones: turnout in midterm U.S. elections is generally lower. Even more important, prophets of a Euro-malaise miss the most important fact about EU democracy: European elections are not about Europe. In the EU, even more than elsewhere, all politics is local. Most voters said they ignored Europe and focused on national issues like unemployment, which was a top concern for 57 percent of Euro-voters, economic growth (32 percent) or pensions (31 percent).
A sizable minority vented its frustration by throwing votes away in protest—casting its lot with extreme right-wing parties. In Britain the Tories, weakened by scandal over parliamentary expenses, and Labour, dragged down by Gordon Brown's unpopularity, did poorly. Others voted Green to poke established Socialist parties. Right-wing parties did particularly well, fueled by anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic sentiment, fears about the economy and disenchantment with high taxes. In Sweden the "Pirate Party," formed to advocate unrestricted access to all audiovisual and Internet piracy, won 7.1 percent of the vote.
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