The European Parliament elections are approaching and parties are almost daily announcing new candidates. Finnish people haven’t been very interested about the European Parliament elections and the voting percentage in the elections of 2004 was 41,1 % and in 1999 the percentage was only 31,4 %. It is interesting to see if we will reach the 50 % in this election but I really doubt that, because according the latest survey of The Finnish Broadcasting Corporation YLE 48 % of Finnish people couldn’t name any candidate. If compared to the latest Presidential election (voting percentage 77,2%) and Parliamentary election (voting percentage 67,9%) Finnish people really are not interested about EU-elections and parties have big troubles to get convincing candidates for the elections.According to YLE’s survey about the most well known candidates the results was as following; Timo Soini (23%), Jani Sievinen (6%) and Anneli Jäätteenmäki (2%).Timo Soini is probably the most controversial congressman in Finland, Jani Sievinen is a former star athlete (though nowadays he is more familiar with his relationship with a Swedish model through Yellow Press) and Anneli Jäätteenmäki is Finland’s former Prime Minister who lost her post after a political scandal. So here are the most well known candidates and it is easy to see what is the state of EU-elections in Finland.
Jani Sievinen & Mari Samuelsen Probably the biggest reason for this situation is the fact that most of the Finnish people feels that it really doesn’t matter who are going to be our representatives in the European Parliament, since Finland has only 13 representatives and if the total number of MEPs is 736 our portion is roughly 1,8 %. In Finland people trust more to the administration, the President and the Parliament.
It is interesting to see what the voting percentage will be, since the creditability of the whole European Union has suffered badly during the recession and especially the creditability of the European Economic and Monetary Union.
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What is the election system like for these elections? In Estonia the parties have decided their lists and people do not actually have much choice - basically they choose the party.
ReplyDeleteOne remark: MePs are elected, commissioners are appointed.
It would be interesting if your group could compare the advertising campaigns. The campaigns have started, not only by the parties but also about the elections themselves to get people interested and voting - at least that's the case in Estonia.
In Finland we have the same system as in Estonia, so the parties decide the candidates.
ReplyDeleteCommissioner word is replaced. Thanks :)