To vote or not to vote? from Demokratie & Dialog on Vimeo.

A few days ago, we met the Young Liberals in Berlin. Before telling you what the visit was about, let’s have a quick overview of our preparation.

We are a multicultural group of young people coming from Italy, the UK, France and Germany! We met before the meeting to prepare our questions: we were wondering who the Young Liberals were, what their target group was and what they were undertaking to convince young people to vote for them. As we don’t know Berlin very well, we decided to make a first stop in a nice area of the city and then we went to our meeting point. We took the underground and started to interview people about voting and non-voting, which was quite uncomfortable due to the different noises that you can expect in a subway.

We finally found our meeting point. Three ladies welcomed us: the director, the person in charge of communication and the person responsible for international relations. They showed us around their office, which is full of different relevant photos of Young Liberals and also different posters they had used for their campaigns. Then we introduced ourselves and the purpose of our meeting. They did the same and explained us how their organisation works.

Actually, the Young Liberals are not a party but a group of young people who aims at spreading liberal ideas. They mainly target young people from 18 to 30 in Germany and also beyond the borders. The Young Liberals are used to working with other countries of the EU and also with the USA. They are currently working on a big campaign for the next elections which will take place in September.

In order to reach their goal they use different strategies. First of all, they don’t wait for the potential voters to come but approach them directly. For example, during the summer they go to the different places where young people spend their time (festivals, cinemas…). They especially focus on first time voters who are maybe more likely to vote. Secondly, the Young Liberals use different tools, for example pencils or all sorts of items which can interest young people. They also use youth networks like Facebook. Some young volunteers are also involved in this group.

According to the Young Liberals, it is hard to define who the young non-voters are.

There are, of course, people who cannot vote because of legal reasons (youngsters under 18, migrants…). However, some people are entitled to vote but do not use their right.
We can still distinguish two different groups. The first one is those who do not vote because they are not interested in politics. The second group are those who do not vote in order to show their disagreement. They think this is a way to protest.

We think that there is a common characteristic in every European country. People are much more interested in local or national elections than the European ones. We asked the Young Liberals what they thought about the lack of interest of young people in European politics.
They first made a very intriguing comment: the first time voters in Germany were born after 1989, so they do not realize what Europe is doing for them any more.

In spite of the German specificities, we think the other answers the Young Liberals gave us are true for other European countries. People do not really feel the impact of Europe in their everyday lives. European Law is often misunderstood and Brussels is pointed at. Most of European citizens do not know that 70 or 80% of their national legislation is a transposition of European Law. Maybe this is due to citizens’ lack of information, which was the second part of their answer. People are not really aware of the EU decision process and they feel very far from their institutions. Thus, they do not really understand what is at stake in the European elections.

This is certainly partly due to what the Young Liberals called the “4th power”: the media. The European elections are not covered enough by the media. They are just talking about it in a pessimistic way, but they do not even talk about the elections themselves. A lot of people do not even know who their European MPs are. In Germany, the Federal Elections are much more on the news than the European ones. The media could certainly have more influence, especially among young people.

We would like to draw a quick comparison between what the Young Liberals said and the French situation. We also think that people do not realize how EU Law is affecting them at a local level. On the one hand, this is certainly due to the influence of the media. On the other hand, we think that there is a lack of communication of the European institutions themselves. For example, a lot of youngsters go to foreign countries thanks to European programs but do not even know where the funds come from. Maybe these youn people would be more likely to vote if the role of EU was more obvious in their everyday lives.

The lack of information is not entirely due to the media but also to the French Electoral Laws which prevent from publishing the official list of candidates earlier than two weeks before the elections. Moreover, the parties’ programs were received in the letter boxes only two days before the elections. This is also a reason why people are discouraged from voting.

The media also take advantage of the situation to talk about national issues.

The situation is similar in most of the European countries, but we are sure that things could change quickly if the institutions managed to speak the same language as their young citizens.

To end, we think that the Young Liberals, who have gained more and more influence lately, are a group who knows how to reach young people. Maybe we can say that their strategy should be used even on an apolitical level to raise the feeling of citizenship of young people in Europe.

Poster by Alix Lamotte