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European policy

Ten ideas for overcoming abstention

(Archives B2) To overcome abstention, it is not enough to utter a few laments the day after the elections, to go and bury your head in the sand afterwards and wait for better times, crossing your fingers that The situation is not getting worse, we must act immediately! And in particular to overhaul a system that takes the citizens a bit for pears, by simply asking them to move one day every five years and to complete it the rest of the time.

  1.  Number of deputies per country proportionate to participation. A provision that would also require campaigning to encourage the vote.
  2.  European lists for each party.
  3.  Oblige each candidate to join a European party. So that citizens know who benefits from their vote and for what policy.
  4. Give a real European-sounding program: liberal, ecologist, socialist...
  5. Submit the Constitution to a European referendum leaving several questions open: Christianity, Unanimity, European Army….
  6. Tackling the real problems - Unemployment, poverty, violence, etc. - and not just the liberalization of certain industrial sectors
  7. Stop treating Europe like a punching bag. Too easy for a political leader to consider it as the cause of all the evils which justifies all the reforms, all the abandonments.
  8. Citizen objective… The will of citizens should be taken into account and decisions such as the authorization of GMOs, which are anything but requested by consumers, should not be renewed.
  9. Citizen mediation and inspection service. The rights available to European citizens are still poorly known and more poorly applied.
  10. Damages. In the event of a serious and clear breach of European rules, the citizens concerned should have the possibility of claiming compensation.

(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)

(Article published in France-Soir, June 2004)

Nicolas Gros Verheyde

Chief editor of the B2 site. Graduated in European law from the University of Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne and listener to the 65th session of the IHEDN (Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Défense Nationale. Journalist since 1989, founded B2 - Bruxelles2 in 2008. EU/NATO correspondent in Brussels for Sud-Ouest (previously West-France and France-Soir).

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