THE NEED FOR GREATER EU CIVIC PARTICIPATION HAS NEVER BEEN GREATER!

If we are to re-engage people with politics, our democracy has to be participatory. It is about people participating and having the opportunity to influence various aspects of their lives. It is understandable that people are frustrated as society evolves and becomes more globalised and life becomes more complex (and harder for many), because it seems that voting at the ballot does not necessarily change circumstances significantly. That is all the more reason why we have to have a participatory democracy that works from the grass roots up and is about people interacting not just with the European Parliament but at all levels of the EU in a variety of ways.

We should be under no illusions about the fact that the majority of EU citizens have little interest in, or do not understand how the European Commission, the European Parliament and other EU institutions work or how they can take part in its deliberations. Many members of the public do not know what the European Commission's or the European Parliament's powers are. They do not know that committees exist or what they do, or that the public can have an input into their work. People do not know what consultations are taking place or how they can take part in them. Not everyone is comfortable with negotiating the internet or knows their MEP's e-mail address. We are deceiving ourselves if we think otherwise. If we are to engage with the public, we have to so in a proactive way.

The European Parliament was founded on four principles. The principle of openness means that its deliberations in the Plenary and its committees should be as widely seen as possible, with no one having difficulty in finding out about them. The principle of accountability means that the European Parliament belongs to the people of Europe and should have to report to the people of Europe for the actions it undertakes. The principle of equal opportunities means that we should strive to ensure that everyone has a chance to work with and in their European Parliament to advance their national and EU interests, and that there should be no equivocation as a result of differences. Finally the principle of engagement withy the people means that the European Parliament belongs to all EU citizens, not just to the politicians who work there.

Indeed there is a need to drive the public engagement that we keep heraing that all politicians want. Perhaps, indeed it is engagement with the political process, rather than the parties-political process, that will drive voter turnout back. We need to reignite the spark of public political debate and enthusiasm about the EU.

We need to increase civic participation and to implement a vision of a stronger relationship, based on a principle of on-going dialogue between EU citizens, politicians and poolicy makers. It should be as much about the process as the outcome. It should be about getting people together, enabling them to speak and to find ways of making progress, facilitating their participation in the political process and involving them in policy development. We need a vehicle to help citizens participate but also to explain to them EU decision-making processes encouraging them to value good process and to understand more clearly how decision-making processes work.

The turnout in the European elections is getting lower and lower. The turnout in the 2009 European elections was the lowest ever since direct elections for the European Parliament started thirty years ago. Only 43 percent of the 375 million Europeans entitled to vote went to the polls. Perhaps citizens' will to vote would increase if they saw a stronger link between their vote and EU decision-making. It is incumbent on us all to get the message across the EU so that people understand the role EU institutions play. Calling on national politicians to introduce a more European angle to their politics won't be enough in the 2014 elections.

At present EU leaders are anxious at the prospect that an unprecedented wave of euro-skeptic lawmakers might be swept into the European Parliament on a tide of anger about mass unemployment, economic stagnation and austerity measures. With the rise of  continental euro-skepticism, many voters feel the Union’s increasing dominance of national economic policy in the crisis means they can change government but they cannot change policy anymore. To an increasing number of citizens in southern European countries, the EU is a golden straitjacket that is squeezing the space for national politics and emptying their national democracies of content. In countries like France, Britain, Italy, Greece and the Netherlands, opinion polls suggest as much as a third of the vote may go to anti-EU populists and parties of the nationalist far right or the hard left. Shouldn't this be a warning to change course??