Europese partijen zetten online filmpjes in om kiezers te winnen (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - French political parties have begun to wage war via video clips ahead of the EU elections, but low turnout prospects continue to dog the event. Meanwhile, Swedish voters have called for a new referendum on the euro by 2011.
French socialists have called to ban a short film released by their centre-right rivals, saying the piece of pro-UMP "propaganda" makes no reference to the European Parliament, Le Figaro reports.
The socialists' own clips - including a parody of an old Apple advert - won praise from media. But Le Figaro said the centrist MoDem faction's films are dull, showing old meetings and profiles of candidates, despite the rising personal popularity of party leader Francis Bayrou.
Czech Greens will on Tuesday (19 May) release a video featuring eurosceptic president Vaclav Klaus i as a rooster standing on a fence and crowing against Europe, with one Green deputy sharpening an axe and Greens leader Martin Bursik asking him, nobly, not to strike.
Polish politicians are using the internet to chase votes among Poland's big expat community, with the Russia-critical Law and Justice party targeting Communist-era emigrants in Chicago, while socialists and liberals focus on younger Poles in London, Dublin, Berlin, Paris, Toronto and Sydney.
A fresh study by PR company Fleishman-Hillard shows that MEPs are under-using new digital channels, however. Less than half visit blogs more than once a week and two-thirds have not heard of the messaging network Twitter, with most deputies thinking TV spots are a better way to reach voters.
Election organisers will need all the help they can get to attract people to the urns on 4 to 7 June, with the latest TNS survey in France showing 53 percent of Europeans are not interested. Apathy is fiercest in Lithuania, Slovakia and the UK. But the Irish and Dutch are keen to vote.
A Taloustutkimus poll showed that one third of Finns could not think of anything that MEPs should focus on while in office.
The Roman Catholic and evangelical churches in Germany have urged participation, saying in a joint statement that the EU is only sustainable "if it is carried by the trust of its citizens" and that the union stands for "freedom, prosperity and security."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel i said Germany needs a "strong" EU to get over the economic crisis. Romanian President Traian Basescu on a visit to Paris called for voters to support "European values," even if they do not love the political elite.
The UK's ruling Labour party has been so hard hit by an expenses scandal, that as much as 40 percent of its supporters could stray in the EU vote according to a ComRes poll for the Independent. A drubbing in the EU vote could force Labour to call a snap general election.
Outgoing European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering i blamed press for the negative mood. "The practical work of the European Parliament is often not sexy enough for the media," he told the Saarbrücker Zeitung.
But the problem in Malta is simpler, with the government having so far failed to distribute a record 41,000 voting documents with less than three weeks to go.
Referendums wanted
Meanwhile, Sweden is grappling with the issue of eurozone membership as it heads to the polls. Fifty one percent of Swedes want a new referendum on the euro by 2011 after rejecting it by 56 percent back in 2003, a Novus Opinion poll shows.
The EU's enfant terrible, Libertas, which wants fresh referendums on the Lisbon treaty, on Monday revealed that it is fielding candidates in 13 EU states and supporting other parties in four more countries. Germany and Austria are not on the list.
Polish papers Rzeczpopsolita and Gazeta Wyborcza predict Libertas will do well in France and the Czech republic. But it has a poor profile in the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Slovakia and Poland, despite its noisy presence in Polish media.
Italy's right-wing president Silvio Berlusconi i is in bullish mood. The media tycoon predicts his party will get 40 percent of Italy's EU vote, making it the biggest player in Brussels' main political group, the EPP-ED.
"Being the first group in the EPP would give us considerable influence on its decisions and on the European Parliament," he said in Corrierre della Sera.
But faced with the prospect of losing seats in the EU poll, Spain's ruling Socialists are increasingly trying to distinguish between the European and national political arenas. Whatever happens on 7 June, the party's secretary Leire Pajin said, will not have a great bearing on domestic politics.
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