EU Elections and Youth Participation: What Should We Expect from Tomorrow's Europe?

In June 2024, 366 million citizens from the 27 European Union member states will be called to the polls for the 10th European elections. Elections to the European Parliament are a watershed moment in European democracy, allowing voters to influence the political direction of the EU for the next five years.

Unfortunately, the EU has faced worrying rates of abstention in its elections, putting in peril the sine qua non of the representative democracies. The participation rate for EU elections declined continuously between 1979 and 2014, reaching a low of 42.6% that year. The European experience is part of a broader trend worldwide, namely persistently low voter turnout. As noted in the International IDEA Global Voter Turnout Trends report, the number of countries holding elections has increased significantly since the early 1990s. However, the average global voter turnout rate has significantly decreased during the same period. Furthermore, the global decline in voter turnout has coincided with the rise of many critical voices regarding the state of democracy worldwide. Under these conditions, people are less likely to vote, feeling that the political parties or leaders running are not addressing their concerns, resulting in a vicious cycle of progressive political alienation. 

The 2019 European elections marked a significant upturn in turnout compared to previous ones, although it only reached 50.6%. While this was the highest turnout since the 1994 elections, the fact that only half of Europeans voted for MEPs reveals the perennial issue of low voter participation in European politics. Yet, this increase was driven by the younger generation, with significant participation among the population aged under 25 (+14 percentage points) and 25 to 39 years (+12 percentage points) compared to 2014. This youth-led turnout is pivotal for the resilience of the EU democratic system and to ensure intergenerational exchange on and political representation of pressing topics such as climate crisis, human rights, equality, and digital innovation. Youth, in fact, are the ones that will most likely tip the balance in the next EU elections. In view of the prospect of the far-right gaining the majority in the Parliament and environmental and social sustainability related policies losing prominence, young people going to the ballot in June have the potential to design the future landscape of EU policy-making in the years to come.  

With these series of articles ahead of the European elections in June, Cuora Concept aims to give an overview on youth voting and participation within the EU, and its significance in the drawing of tomorrow’s Europe.