The European Parliament elections kicked off on 23 May with Britain and the Netherlands opening their polling stations. Other nations will cast their ballots between Friday and Sunday.
The Spanish people are due to vote on 26 May, however, it appears that they are not so enthusiastic about the upcoming elections. According to Ipsos, 45 per cent of Spaniards do not show interest in the European Parliament vote, with only 12 per cent being highly interested in the event.
“For the majority of the [Spanish] population, these elections are not important, because they do not know what consequences they will have”, says Dr Santiago Nino Becerra, Spanish economist and professor of economy at Ramon Llull University in Barcelona.
Commenting on the upcoming vote, the academic insisted that there is a lot at stake not only for the Spanish economy, but also for the wider European one.
“For Spain, it is the European elections that are especially important because they will determine the new European control bodies that will have to solve really important things, namely, the configuration of state accounts. One should remember that Spain has a huge problem with the state budget deficit”, Becerra elaborated.
For his part, Carlos Vidal Prado, professor at the Department of Constitutional Law of the Spanish National Distance Education University, agreed that the country’s citizens continue to view European institutions as something “far out”. However, according to the professor, the people are increasingly realising that decisions taken at the European level eventually affect their everyday life.
“We [Spaniards] owe much to the EU, and if we want to influence the work of European institutions, we must take elections to the European Parliament seriously”, he believes.