Only 16 pct. of the Danes are aware that there is an EU election this year according to a recent Eurobarometer survey.
However, the students at a high school (Egaa Gymnasium) in Denmark north of the second largest city, Aarhus, seem to not only know about the upcoming elections. They think that EU matters to them, invest time in finding out about the Danish candidates’ platforms and who to vote for.
The high school held a debate over the EU with the Danish top candidates for the European Parliament elections. I attended the meeting as a journalist. I was surprised to see, how the high school students seemed to take an interest: They were listening, applauding at the appropriate moments and asking questions, which indicated that they know about the EU.
In Denmark you have to be 18 years old in order to vote. Only the oldest among the high school students are over 18. I interviewed two students aged 19. One of them was extremely knowledgeable, enthusiastic and passionate about the EU. He sees himself as more of a EU citizen than as a Danish citizen.
The other one was more pragmatic about the EU. Yet he thinks that EU matters a lot and that it is important to vote because a lot of the legislation in Denmark originates in the EU.
(8 votes, average: 3.63 out of 5)
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Great stuff, Thomas!
Did you manage to take any photos? Can we get a more in-depth look at your interviews? Did you have a chance to ask the candidates any questions?
And how did you find out about the meeting?
Lot’s of questions - your post left me wanting more information!
Joe
That’s brilliant. I wish the news covered these small but significant events more. You can get young people interested in the EU. Success!
We need something like that here…
From what I see the Danish society it’s not so much on the EU elections. I suposse this will increase during the next weeks. I feel there will be higher participation than expected.
I asked a good Danish friend about the elections and he told me: “Honestly, I think it’s non-sense that 5 million Danes have to vote for 15 chairs”. (actually is 13). I replied him, that the ratio is much better than for my native country Spain: 46 million inhabitants for 50 chairs!!
I think this got both of us thinking. What I feel is that when I told him that I would vote, he got more excited about voting too.
While I really like it, I think there was an grammatical error close to the end of the third paragraph.