Dear European Voter;
Thank you for coming out to vote in these extremely important elections. Some of you might have questions about your EU vote or the EU itself, and this “FAQ” is only a extract from several document groups that pertain to the electoral process, management, and administration of the EU (those document groups are DG50432, DG-03425, and SDG15673295/A, respectively, though pertinent information may be found in other groupings and subgroupings. For a partially complete index, see EU Index Grouping 4r1). For future reference, this “FAQ” has been assigned the index number 7185-232-522 (or in Belgium, T2340-523-t334, in accordance with the Belgian Alternative EU Document Numbering Act (Resolution #5698, October, 2002)).
What are these elections about?
You are electing representatives to the European Parliament, not to be confused with the Council of Europe, the European Commission, or the Council of the European Union (also known as the Council of Ministers).
What’s the European Parliament?
The EP has the power to amend and reject legislation proposed by European Commission and Council of Ministers, and it also appoints the commission, scrutinizes activities of commission and council, and approves annual EU budget.
I’m not really sure I understand or care about any of this.
That’s not a question.
Okay, WHY should I care about any of this?
The continuing process of European integration (formerly known as “Pan-Europeanism” but altered under Provision 23 of the EU Renaming and Name Standardization Act of 2001) is a vital and tricky one, but necessary for the continued and ever increasing prosperity of EU member states and future members.
Does this really affect me, though?
Certainly. In a joint declaration, all seven major EU bodies affirmed unanimously in July, 2003, that the laws and standards of the EU governing body should be looked on as an important part of the fiscal and social progress of each individual member state. The election of the 626 MEP’s is blah blah blah…
See, YOU don’t even care about this shit, do you?
Of course we do.
So why’d you just peter out up there and write “Blah blah blah?”
We didn’t.
Yes, you did. Right up there.
Oh. Well, it must be a misprint.
Seriously, nobody cares about this, do they?
Well, the Council of the European Union recommended in 1999 (under Provision 1234u55) that all designated -
Come on. You don’t care, do you?
*Sigh* No, not really.
You wanna go get a drink?
Sounds good.
Fanny Roborat
26 comments
Molly Richardson
June 11, 2004 at 6:16 pm
1Adam, do you to maybe want make “he” turn into “the” in the necessary spots? As, for example, “(also known as he Council of Ministers)” –> (also known as the Council of Ministers)” and “an important part of he fiscal and social progress” –> “an important part of the fiscal and social progress”?
Help us read intelligently, here. Not translated badly from the something-other-than-English. Otherwise, you’re terribly clever.
Is there maybe something up with your “t” key?
An Adam not nearly so clever as our author
June 11, 2004 at 6:37 pm
2Molly,
Real Eurenglish contains suprising numbers of typos, oddities of grammar, and other things which would make you think it wasn’t written by native speakers.
Dee
June 11, 2004 at 6:50 pm
3Well, shoot. It’s not like there haven’t been other elections when folks didn’t have a clue who or what they were voting on.
“It’s morning in the EU!”
adam
June 11, 2004 at 7:24 pm
4Molly -
thanks - I shall employ the three hour rule and fix it. We big Hollywood types rarely have time for proofreading.
Jerry
June 11, 2004 at 7:31 pm
5Dear Big Hollywood Type,
Glad you haven’t let the recent success go to your head.
Sheesh…after the McClellen/Torture/French/Translation brouhaha, I’m surprised at you. Just wait ’til THIS hits the Eurblogs! Hee hee.
Linkmeister
June 11, 2004 at 8:53 pm
6For my sins I subscribe to a newsletter from the EU; Adam’s spot on.
A European
June 11, 2004 at 9:25 pm
7The problem isn’t that we don’t know what we are voting on. We sort of do. What we don’t know is what the people elected to the parliament will actually try to accomplish once they’re in place. In any case, the Euro 2004 is underway, and that is so much more interesting.
Sam Le Dily
June 11, 2004 at 9:28 pm
8Are you refering to socc–er–sorry, football, when you say the Euro 2004? because that isn’t clear to us Americans. Your sports bore us.
A European
June 11, 2004 at 9:36 pm
9Dear Sam, I know they do. That’s what makes you unique. Of course I was referring to foot-er-sorry, soccer.
tim
June 11, 2004 at 10:14 pm
10Given some of the alternative forms of government served up by Europeans over the years, “Ineffectual Stifling Bureaucracy” seems pretty darn attractive.
Bryan
June 11, 2004 at 10:32 pm
11Apparently everyone gets to join the fun, and a number of candidates seem to be people who make their money by removing their clothes while being filmed, an odd road to politics.
As near as I can tell, in some areas there are party lists and people vote for the party. If the party gets 10% of the vote, then the top 10% of their list is elected.
An interesting way to spend your day.
g
June 12, 2004 at 7:43 am
12It’s true that no one one cares, but the sad fact is that EU legislation overrides national legislation and the parliament has the final say for over 50% of the budget.
And thanks to rules about official languages (now 20, thats 189 translators) we now need translators for Finnish/Maltese, Polish/Greek and Estonian/Dutch.
Key
June 12, 2004 at 8:53 am
13Soccer is football. American football isn’t football because you pretty much never use your feet. Its rugby for wusses. *End Rant*
Basically, you use these elections to show how much we hate Bliar for the war in Iraq, since Labour were in 3rd place in the council elections (1st time in living memory the ruling party has sucked so bad)
candice
June 12, 2004 at 2:09 pm
14piffling request, adam: could you make the links to news-y things pop up in separate windows, not move me on to a different page? i kind of like being able to look at the news and FA at the same time.
just a thought.
i’ll go back in my hole now (where wwdtm is on).
Dee
June 12, 2004 at 4:05 pm
15Candice-
I think if you left click on the link you should get a menu that will allow you to open in a new window. I myself like to follow them from here and get completely lost.
Jerry
June 12, 2004 at 5:31 pm
16YEAH! Rugby! I LOVE rugby. No times-out, no subs except for injuries and only so many of those so after a while you either play hurt or your team plays short-handed, no padding, tackles don’t stop the play, heck, hardly any rules.
Ya gotta love a sport that has the “maul” as an official ply
Jerry
June 12, 2004 at 8:54 pm
17Adam - here is something I just stumbled onto. You might want to comment, and everyone should read!
http://www.gorenfeld.net/blog/2004/05/im-and-i-approve-this-messiah.ht ml
Murray
June 12, 2004 at 9:14 pm
18Jerry,
I don’t think that I’d get too worked up about it. There are so many more real issues to put your efforts into.
Sun Myung Moon may own and run the Washington Times, but he hardly raises a blip on the public’s radar screen.
Jerry
June 12, 2004 at 10:40 pm
19Murray,
Stealth bombers don’t raise much of a blip, either. But it would be hard to disagree about there being are more urgent and nationally threatening issue pressing us right now.
Linkmeister
June 13, 2004 at 3:06 am
20Dee, Candace…right-click, not left-click, at least in Mr. Gates’ environment.
Dee
June 13, 2004 at 6:31 am
21Linkmeister is correct. Ever since the Democratic Leadership Council was formed I’ve had trouble distinguishing left from right.
Key
June 13, 2004 at 5:12 pm
22Jerry: Why would you have a tackle stop the play? Otherwise what’s the point in tackling? And why would you need to substitue and have time outs unless you were too unfit to be playing or you had a stupid coach?
phaneron
June 13, 2004 at 9:00 pm
23BBC is reporting that voter turnout in the EU elections was something like 28%, with particularly low turnouts in the new eastern member states. I’d have expected enthusiasm in the east. Perhaps they are jaded.
What would you pundits make of this?
Lena
June 14, 2004 at 9:51 am
24The total turnout was around 43%, which is still extremely low. And I think you’re right, the people of some of the new member states are probably a bit tired of voting. In some of those countries less than 20% bothered to go to the polls.
g
June 14, 2004 at 10:40 am
25Another reason for them not to vote was that they have no clue about the EU parliament. Polls show that most people wish there were more information available in the media, but since the EU government is complicated (’boring’), there is very little newscoverage.
Ed
June 14, 2004 at 11:34 am
26good stuff on the ludicrous EU. Enabled me to forget for a while England’s devastating last-minute defeat yesterday to France in Euro 2004, another tiresome European institution which brings misery to millions and should be abolished immediately. In fact the England team should be congratulated for making clear their determination to withdraw from this clearly undemocratic organisation as early as possible (final decision dependent on results against Croatia and Switzerland)