The European Elections are over. Four months of blogging, of looking forward, of Thinking About It. Quite exceptional for Belgium is the fact EVERYBODY is obligated to vote… and so was I. Still, I did’t go. For the first time I went to the city hall instead to give my father permission to vote for me. That is what decent Belgian people need to do when they travel abroad on Elections-day. Of course I gave my father my vote-preferences on a piece of paper before I left to Paris. I could only trust he would take my instructions into account.
In Paris I experienced the elections as a bystander. Posters with faces that didn’t look familiar at all, a (not-so-busy-visited) voting office next to the Shoah Memorial Museum, some other students (I am taking a summer course in Human Rights at the moment) mentioning the elections, … but still, elections are not the same if you don’t paint the red dot yourself. In the evening I was sitting next to a Dutch girl in the hotelreception, laptop on our knees. We both cursed silently at the same time, said sorry and then realized we were both watching the EU-election results. Both Belgium and the Netherlands seem to fall for outspoken, blunt ‘freedom of speech’-prophets this year. Populistic, right… But should they be rewarded with so many seats just for making controversial quotes and having an outspoken face and appearance that stick to your memory? I try to understand… watched and compared results… it was a quiet evening in the city of love.
The next days newspapers would show pictures of happy politicians celebrating their new EU-seats, others explaining their loss as a success, others just denying the results… Back in the Netherlands the Dutch I met laughed about Wilders’ 4 seats. What is the Partij Van De Vrijheid going to do in Brussels, trying to destroy the European Parliament from within. Will Geert Wilders after his anti-European campaing stand up at the first meeting and propose as his first resolution: “hey guys, let’s just leave. We have had enough EU, it’s every nation for himself now” . Probably only four lonely seats would be in favour…
(10 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)
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Why Dutch people voted for such a party? What went wrong? If you consider this as a negative development. Give us your explanations!
My take on this is, Stergios (I’m Dutch and didn’t vote right-wing) that a lot of the Dutch voted for this extreme right party as a ‘protest-vote’.
You have to realize that we, the Dutch public, are rather ill-informed about the EU, the EP and its alleged rule-making.
The parties in the middle of the political spectrum have a hard time explaining what ‘Europe’ brings and their ‘gentle’ arguments are overruled by people such as Wilders that make a lot of noise, screaming that we’re done with Europe.
At the same time, the parties with a clear message about Europe won seats for the EP as well (more to the left and green). So it’s a migration of voters to both the left and right.
Is it bad Wilders’ party won 4 seats (probably 5 when Lisbon treaty is signed)? I wouldn’t dare answer that question. What I do know is that it’s a wake-up call for a lot of people.
I’ve read some opinionated articles in Dutch newspapers, stating that it’s been enough with him. People around me are a little shocked and perhaps those are the weak signs of more criticism towards (and the beginning of the end of?) Wilders and his fellow party-members.
Thank you Elmine,
Lets all hope that this empowerment of the far right is just a bad nightmare, from which Europe will wake up the sooner the better. In Greece, two of those lunatics where elected as well (they belong to the ID group, although they don’t support the idea of Greece withdrawing from the EU). Nevertheless, their political discourse is highly against immigrants, further integration and they just can’t stop spreading fear and hate against “otherness/alterity”. This is were abstention brought us to….
What struck me the most in your post is the fact that everyone in Belgium is required to vote.
QUOTE: “Probably only four lonely seats would be in favour…”
I think you’ll find that a large number of Eurosceptic - or outright hostile - EU MEPs were elected; for example the UK’s UKIP (UK Independence Party) were elected with 13 seats. So, not so lonely after all.
Anyone who votes for a Eurosceptic party MUST be ignorant and not know what they’re doing; they should be denied any future votes.
Where can buy shirt?