Finns least aware of EU Parliament election

Finnish people trust in their own government and parliament

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Of all the EU nations, the Finns are least aware of when the next elections to the European Parliament will be held.
      According to a Eurobarometer poll, only two per cent of the Finns answered correctly when asked the date of the next EU Parliament election.
      Accuracy to within a month would have sufficed for a correct answer.
      Almost equally ignorant as the Finns were the British and the Cypriots. The best informed are the people of Luxembourg, of whom just over one in three knew the date of the next election.
     
In Finland the election day is Sunday, June 7th.
      The knowledge of this - or rather the absence of such knowledge - was one of the findings of a Eurobarometer poll conducted in the autumn of 2008.
      On Friday of last week, the Finnish office of the EU Parliament made public some of the poll’s more precise figures concerning the EU Parliament.
      When asked to identify the most important component of the so-called European identity, two out of three Finnish respondents mentioned the common currency, the euro.
      Only the Belgians rated the euro’s significance even higher.
      As a uniting element, the euro was seen as clearly more important than democratic values, history, European economic development, or culture.
     
What may give the EU Parliamentary candidates something to think about is the fact that the Finns have adopted a very reserved attitude towards the EU Parliament in general.
      More than half of the people in Finland consider the EU Parliament inefficient, not very well known, and not overly democratic.
      In Finland the trust in the national Parliament was the second highest in Europe, right after that in Denmark. The Finnish Parliament enjoys the trust of 71 per cent of the people. The Finns’ confidence in their government, in turn, is greatest in the whole of the EU.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  COMMENTARY: Missing with both Borrells (3.10.2006)
  Finnish attitudes toward EU grow more negative than before (21.12.2005)

Links:
  European Parliament: Eurobarometer poll shows economic fears ahead of June European elections
  European Parliament Elections 2009 (Wikipedia)

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