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Choose your future: EU tries to raise turnout with viral campaign


A bawling newborn is lifted on to the chest of its exhausted mother. A tear slips down a father’s face. The camera cuts to another baby, revealing the moment of its arrival in the world. Shock, wonder, joy and relief flash across parents’ faces.

It is a novel way to get people to vote in this week’s European elections. The three-minute video is a departure for EU communications, which have often relied on checklists about abolishing roaming charges. The birth scenes are real, although some moments before and after were staged. Fifteen couples, from Greece, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Hungary, took part in the film.

For Brussels, it is also the birth of a new genre: the viral EU video. Since its launch on 25 April, the film, Choose Your Future, has been viewed more than 131m times all over the world. The longer version of the film has been subtitled in 33 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Russian and Turkish. It has also been translated into 31 sign languages. A shorter edit was cut for European TV channels.

Made by the French filmmaker Frédéric Planchon and narrated by a Danish schoolgirl, the film is intended to get people into the voting booths. “We tried to become more emotional and not just rational,” said the the European parliament’s chief spokesman, Jaume Duch Guillot.

The parliament believes its task is to inform citizens about the vote, rather than raise turnout, though EU insiders would love to reverse a 40-year-long decline in voting.

When Europeans in nine countries voted in the first direct elections to the European parliament in 1979, turnout was 62%. It has been falling ever since, hitting 42.6% in 2014. Even in Belgium, where non-voters risk a fine, one in 10 do not vote. For MEPs, it is an uncomfortable paradox: as the European parliament has gained greater power and influence, many voters have switched off.

European election turnout

Slovakia has the dubious record of the lowest turnout in the EU: in 2014 it was 13%, a figure that falls to under 5% in some towns and villages in the Čadca region that borders Poland and the Czech Republic. Olga Gyárfášová, an associate professor of European politics at Comenius University in Bratislava, said EU membership was perceived as being “very distant to people’s everyday lives”.

Moreover, for the last 15 years, little had divided the main parties on the EU. “Until recently there was a political consensus around European integration,” Gyárfášová said. “So even the political parties did not compete, did not position themselves. So as a consequence the campaign was not very visible, very strong.”

In older member states, European elections have long been seen as “second order” polls, or a chance to kick the government.

Sara Hagemann, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, co-authored a paper arguing that using European elections to influence national politics was a rational approach, especially when moderate changes to the parliament were unlikely to shift the EU agenda. But she thinks 2019 could be different because, from Brexit to bailouts, European and national politics have become increasingly entwined across the continent. “We do expect these elections to be about what is the value of Europe, [which] could drive up turnout,” Hagemann said.

The European parliament’s internal polling suggests turnout could be higher than 2014, a forecast “we have decided not to believe”, quipped one official. For the first time, the parliament has what it calls “a ground game”: a campaign to promote the elections via a network of 300,000 people in member states. Officials believe that 25,000 to 30,000 of them are actively campaigning to get out the vote.

“These are just Europeans who are concerned about the future of the European Union and who are simply trying to convince friends, family and co-workers and people about the importance of the European elections,” Duch Guillot said.

More than 2,000 events have been organised in the run-up to the elections. In Copenhagen, the teenage activist Greta Thunberg will address a rally “to make the election a climate election”.

Companies have also been promoting the vote. The music streaming service Spotify has made an election playlist, featuring one track from each member state, and users of the Tinder matchmaking app will get a reminder to vote when they swipe. The German railway operator Deutsche Bahn has also featured 50 pages of articles about Europe in its passenger magazine on long-distance trains, and this month on Europe Day it lit Berlin central station in the colours of the EU flag.

On Sunday night, it will become clear whether this has made a difference.