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In less than a month, on June 6, the Dutch will be able to go to the polls for the European Parliament elections. Today the Voting instructions launched to help people make a choice. The leaders of the Dutch parties also completed this today, to increase their name recognition.
Because Dutch MEP name recognition is not doing well in these elections. From a poll by I&O Research, which can be read in the civil service magazine Home Administration, it emerged more than a month ago that 71 percent of voters could not name a single party leader. In 2019 that was still a quarter. At the time, many Dutch people remembered the name of the then European Commissioner Frans Timmermans, who was now the leader of the GroenLinks-PvdA group in the House.
Bas Eickhout of GroenLinks is the most famous Dutchman at the moment; 11 percent of respondents know it. But Anja Hazekamp, who has been a member of the European Parliament for the Party of the Animals for ten years, is a stranger to almost all Dutch people; only 2 percent know her.
‘Europe needed it more than ever’
58 percent of Dutch voters also say they do not know which side in the European Parliament the Dutch parties belong to. The rest say they know, but sometimes they’re still wrong.
According to the outgoing Minister of the Interior De Jonge, the elections are “not yet acceptable enough” in society. “Pretty crazy,” he thinks. “We need Europe more than ever at this time.”
According to Christian Union party leader Anja Haga, herself at number three on the list of the most famous Dutch MEPs, it is important to do something about brand awareness: “The work is already in the European Parliament distant and abstract. I don’t know who the people are already, the willingness to go to the polls is not that high.”
Gerrie Elfrink from the SP scored 100 percent on the Stemwijzer: “No, I’m not surprised, because I know my party and the program.” He admits that the elections are not yet happening in the Netherlands: “But that is important. Europe determines a lot in our lives, such as prices in the supermarket and the approach to migration and migrant worker exploitation.”
‘The unknown is not good for democracy’
Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy from D66 says that he is only sometimes recognized in his hometown, The Hague. “But in general, the candidates for the European elections are rather unknown. That is not good for democracy, because it is based on trust. People need to know who they are giving that trust to.”
VVD party leader Malik Azmani is second on the list of the most famous Dutch MEPs with 10 percent. But he is not satisfied with that percentage: “My job is to show myself. That’s what I’m going to do, you’ll see me all over the country soon.”
More about the European elections in this special programme:
2024-05-08 13:29:30
#List #leaders #Europe #Stemwijzer #choice
