Germany: A look at Germany′s splinter MEPs, one year on | Deutsche Welle

In 2014, Germany’s highest court cleared the way for smaller parties to run for the European parliament. One year on, we’re taking stock of this motley crew of lone-warriors, euroskeptics and a money-loving jokester. Martin Sonneborn is an EU member of parliament (MEP) for Germany’s Die Partei, translated simply as The Party. Most days he gets up late and goes to the European Parliament mainly to get his per diem and to watch other MEPs. The journalist and satirist records his experiences in the well-known satirical magazine “Titanic,” for which he is also the publisher. Sonneborn garnishes his comical depictions of the European parliament with fierce criticism of the right-leaning Alternative for Germany, which is also new to the legislative body. MEPs from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) don’t escape his keen eye either. As he wrote of one particularly corpulent lawmaker in Brussels: “At the moment, he’s eating half a pig with cream sauce.”

Burundi: EU suspends €2m aid to Burundi amid violent crackdown on election protests | The Guardian

The EU is withholding €2m ($2.3m) of aid to Burundi amid increasing concern over the government’s violent crackdown on protesters opposed to President Pierre Nkurunziza’s attempts to secure a third term in office. The president’s decision to try to extend his decade-long rule has prompted weeks of unrest that have killed at least 19 people and forced tens of thousands to flee to neighbouring countries. His opponents argue the move is a clear violation of the constitution, which limits a president to two terms in office. The EU envoy to Africa’s Great Lakes region, Koen Vervaeke, said that although the union had disbursed €6m ($6.7m) of the €8m designated for elections, it had decided to withhold the rest until Nkurunziza heeded calls for a transparent poll.

Bulgaria: Groundhog Day in Bulgaria as new election looms | Reuters

Weary Bulgarians will vote in a general election on Sunday for a fifth government in under two years, a vote that could produce another fragile coalition struggling to root out corruption and revive growth in the eastern European state. Led by a former bodyguard, the centre right GERB party is tipped to win but will probably fall short of a majority. It could turn to smaller parties and also reach out to its main Socialist opponents for support for legislation. But there is widespread disillusion with the political class and Bulgarians are fed up with voting for the same faces again and again without their lives improving. Tens of thousands took to the streets last year to voice their anger.

Slovenia: Gloomy Slovenians pin little hope on snap election | AFP

Jolanka Horvat has watched her home region of Pomurje, in Slovenia’s northeast, slide deeper into poverty and joblessness over the past few years. And the 53-year-old seamstress has little hope of change after Slovenia’s snap election this weekend, the third in less than three years. “Our kids will have to go abroad to make a living,” the mother of two told AFP ahead of Sunday’s vote. “I expect nothing from this nor any other government… they just make promises but nothing happens,” she said, a refrain echoed around the country.  Once a model member of the European Union which it joined in 2004, Slovenia was hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis and narrowly escaped a bailout last year.

Ukraine: EU endorses Ukraine election, awaits Russian reaction | EUobserver

European election monitors and EU officials have endorsed Ukraine’s new, pro-Western leader, but doubts remain on Russia’s next move. “According to our observers, in 98 percent of the polling stations we observed, the voting was assessed positively,” Tana de Zulueta, a former Italian MP who led the monitoring team, told press in Kiev on Monday (26 May). “We received no reports of any misuse of administrative resources,” she added. Asked by EUobserver if this means a clear thumbs up on Sunday’s election, she said her job is to “observe if voting meets national and international legal standards … overall, we were able to report that this election did meet those standards.” De Zulueta’s election watchdog, the Warsaw-based Odihr, sent 1,200 monitors from 49 countries in its largest ever mission and its first in a country at war. She said she was “shocked” by what pro-Russia gunmen did to stop people voting in eastern Ukraine.

Europe: A Clash between National and European in the European Elections | EU Inside

For the first time in the EU, you will hear, we have a broad choice. We can vote for a specific candidate for the post of the European Commission president, not only for members of the European Parliament. The candidates of the biggest political families in Europe were selected in the American style – some more democratically (via primaries), others via the ordinary party procedure. Whatever the manner, they are already touring European cities and capitals competing for our vote. They even call their campaign with the same term as in the US – campaign trail. The culmination will be on May 15th when the five candidates will appear together in a debate which will be broadcast live within the Eurovision network and online. To sum up, European democracy in action. There is no doubt that it is more than exciting that, finally, the EU will come to us instead of us constantly going to the EU. The European political parties will fight for our vote, they will present us their ideas, plans, visions about the future of the Union not from the distant Brussels, but they will come in our capitals and cities. They will try to balance between nationalists, austerians, spenders, Germans, Greeks, the north and the south, the east and the west, between Euro-Atlanticists and pro-Russian forces. But there is a problem. In these elections, for the first time, the clash between the national and European political interest will be especially strong because the national parties make calculations of their own for these elections, while the candidates at EU level threaten to mess them up. And this is especially evident in the fact that there are two parallel elections for the post of European Commission president going on. One is the democratic one that I mentioned above and the other is the well known behind-the-scenes way in which the highest European posts are always bargained.

Editorials: European election: So what? | Deutsche Welle

During the last European Parliament election in 2009, fewer than half of Europe’s voters bothered to show up at the ballot box. What’s the EU doing to increase voter turnout – and what are its chances of success? For decades, the European Parliament in Brussels was seen as the place to put old politicians out to pasture. No wonder, then, that European citizens hardly spare much thought for Europe and its institutions. The numbers bear this out: Since the very first European election in 1979, voter turnout has steadily dropped. In 2009, only 43.3 percent of Germans exercised their right to vote, a figure also reflected in the average European turnout. The country with the lowest turnout was Slovakia, at 20 percent. There are many reasons that explain this voter disinterest, chief among them being that most European citizens aren’t familiar with the duties of the European Parliament and the extent of its authority. They’re unaware of how decisions made in Brussels and Strasbourg influence their daily lives.