Great concern before European elections

More than ever, the EU must prepare itself for refusals to vote and protest votes during the upcoming European elections. Only a correction of course, initiated by the grand coalition in Germany, can prevent the progression of EU-sceptics and populists, writes Dieter Spöri.

Dieter Spöri was a member of the SPD-faction in the German Bundestag and served as finance expert in the party for many years. He is honorary president of the European Movement Germany.

Half a year before the next European elections in May 2014, the EU seems to be sinking deeper and deeper into a democratic crisis. The member states of the EU, particularly those in the euro zone, continue to drift further apart on economic and financial matters. As a result, the political and emotional gap between the countries also continues to grow.

Germany's newly-formed grand coalition should attempt to credibly demonstrate an economic trend shift as its central European policy goal, following the financial and economic crisis. If this does not occur, the European elections next May are likely to surpass all of our fears and apprehensions.

It is precisely for this reason that mainstream players in European politics are rightly observing this important occasion in European democracy with uneasiness and anxiety. Voter participation threatens to fall further than the 2009 record low of 43%. Populist groups of euro-sceptics at the edges of the European Parliament could spread quite extensively – with parallel effects on national and regional elections.

Nevertheless, Germany can help keep Europeans from drifting further apart and prevent growing anti-EU sentiment in the member states. But only if it offers Europe tangible facts, rather than merely rhetorical calls for a new balance of financial seriousness and economic revival.

Even the best informational advertising carried out by European policy actors cannot change this fact. This includes the €16 million information campaign launched by a well-meaning European Parliament in September. As we have seen in the past, voter participation in European elections always continued to fall despite campaigns and appeals of this nature.

The reason for this negative response can be found amid necessary and sweeping compromises causing citizens to see electoral alternatives as blurred and especially vague. If the EU's citizens do not grasp, why Brussels intervenes without their direction, if there is no financial understanding of what is being offered by a united political party-cartel, citizens are bound to question how much impact their voices have.

This sentiment will lead to continuously stronger political disillusionment and refusal to vote. A growing sense of powerlessness or lack of influence among voters will lead to mounting frustration over the established party-cartel.

However, in this case refusal to vote is still one of the moderate consequences of this frustration. The more dangerous response comes in the form of protests for anti-EU populist formations whether in Greece, France, the Netherlands, Finland or – according to current surveys – in Austria and Germany.

Up to one third right-wing populists in the European Parliament?

According to trends in the latest opinion polls, right-wing populists could win up to a third of the seats in the European Parliament. The right-wing extremist party Front national could quite possibly position itself at the head of all parties in France. If the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) does not bring about its own demise through internal conflicts and uncertainties, it may have a chance at achieving double-digits in the elections on 25 May. Still, the AfD's position in the next European Parliament is already as good as secure, due the new 3% electoral threshold.

At the same time, plummeting voter participation works like a turbo-charging effect, significantly strengthening right-wing populist anti-EU groups. In several countries, militant protests on the streets are growing and the democratic system is noticeably destabilised.

Since the euro crisis set in, this trend has taken shape in a number of threatening scenarios. On the one hand, southern crisis countries plus France feel economically choked and cyclically damaged by the one-sided savings and austerity programmes implemented by Germany. Meanwhile, assistance funds from donor countries only flow through the struggling financial systems and back out into foreign markets.

On the other side, national budgets of stable donor countries, like Germany, benefit from extremely inexpensive lending conditions. However, citizens there fear excessive financial demands due to transfer payments as well as the integrity of their pension plans because of the extremely low interest rates. In Germany, often referred to as the "island of the blissful", 72% of the population mistrusts the crisis strategy of governments, the EU and the ECB.

Escape from the European crisis becoming increasingly difficult

In both country categories, namely in the North and in southern crisis countries, refusals to vote and voices of protest are likely to increase substantially. When a convincing change of course in European politics is not perceived, this trend is likely to have a cascading effect on elections at the national, regional and even at the local level. The German federal government must figure out a way to reverse this negative protest trend through a positive shift in European policy. Otherwise, in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia for example, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats will not only be rubbing their eyes after the results of European elections, but also after local government elections.

Additionally in Germany, it is no longer possible to cover up the fact that the much-maligned low interest-rate policy of ECB-President Draghi was logically and unavoidably derived from Merkel's policies. There, the SPD and the Greens supported the one-sided crisis management which crippled demand and for many years, has choked the economies of the crisis countries and beyond.

Only a credible change of European course, with a grand coalition as the initial fuse of new European crisis management, can still block the progression of anti-EU populists. Otherwise growing parliamentary weight of anti-Europeans threatens to make the escape from crisis in Europe continually more difficult and increasingly unlikely.