John Avison: Analysis of forthcoming European elections, June 4

May 25 2009 By John Avison

SIGNS are that the European elections next month will be met with a stifled yawn right across Kirklees.

If anything spurs people to get out of their armchairs on June 4, the threat from the British National Party (BNP) will be it.

Nobody seems interested in the fact that the European Parliament now sets 70% of the laws endorsed by its 27 member countries with a total population of nearly 500m. Its hotly-debated budget for 2010 is £139bn.

And that’s partly the problem. The European Parliament’s powers are just too huge, its money-shunting just too immense to comprehend.

We feel, with some justification, that our own votes for six MEPs in the tiny outpost of our region, Yorkshire and Humber, are meaningless.

Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik warned that the far-right BNP party would need as little as 11% of the vote in our region to collect a euro-seat in the 783-strong Parliament which sits in Brussels.

This is because European Parliament seats are awarded by proportional representation on a region-wide basis. The number of seats each party wins is calculated according to the share of the vote that party achieves in each region.

Sadly, Shahid Malik’s warning was eclipsed by revelations about his expenses claims.

We can’t even think about politics today without considering the all-party disgust with and distrust of our politicians of all stripes engendered by the current expenses scandal.

We just don’t know whether this will keep people away from the polls on June 4.

But there are some signs that apathy does not rule.

The forthcoming European elections have engendered mention on no fewer than 12 million Google sites. This is three times more site mentions than in 2004, the last time Europe went to the polls.

In 2004, just over 3.5m Yorkshire and Humber people were interested enough to vote.