EU voters cast protest ballot

To interest voters, he says, parties that have conducted their campaigns at a national level "must begin to assert themselves as serious players at the European level."

Many other analysts anxious to give European integration some real life agree. "We have to create a political space in Europe with large European parties," French Socialist leader François Hollande argued on French radio Monday morning. "To the extent that European affairs are clear and comprehensible we will see turnouts that match our great ambitions for Europe."

That won't happen, warns Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a leader of the European Greens, until Europe-wide parties put up transnational lists "headed by real European leaders who make it clear to voters that they are choosing a particular vision of Europe" - more integrated or less so, more state oriented or more free market.

This year the ecologist Green parties were the first to set up a continental campaign structure with common themes, posters, and slogans in all 25 EU member states. Though results varied widely between countries, "the parties most heavily involved in the Europe-wide campaign were the ones that did best, and the ones that didn't use it much did poorly," says Mr. Cohn-Bendit.

The European Parliament has significant and growing powers in running the EU. Created in 1979 as a democratic counterweight to the EU's powerful unelected Commission, it now has a much bigger say than most European citizens realize in the EU's $120 billion budget, and in drafting labor, transport, and environmental legislation.

Voters see no clear outcome from their trip to the polling stations, though. No new government was formed on Sunday night, when all the 157 million votes were in. Under a new EU Constitution, due to be adopted at a summit later this week, the European Commission would reflect Parliament's political make-up, and parties might present their candidates for the Commission's presidency as the head of their election lists.

But this will not happen for several years, and meanwhile, says Cohn- Bendit, European Parliament members must do more to explain the value of their work. Hardly anybody knows, for example, that the Parliament has voted against a recent EU agreement with the US under which European airlines will provide US authorities in advance with a wide range of personal details about all the transatlantic passengers they carry.

Parliament does not have the power to block the deal, but will vote Tuesday to take the European Commission to court to try to overturn it. "Here is a fundamental debate involving questions of personal privacy and security, but you won't find it in any newspapers," says Cohn-Bendit. "We have to do a better job of showing what we do."

"Most people discern Brussels as a mushy collective," agrees Mr. Everts. "European Parliament members should spell out the choices better, and explain what is at stake."

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