Toothless European Citizenship / Šimon Uradnik

and topics during European Parliament elections are relevant; to the latter, the behaviour of voters. Ad the descending perspective, national vs European themes in the European Parliament elections. According to S. Hix and B. Høyland, the elections for the European Parliament are massively dominated by national and domestic concerns and interests as a result of the fact that these elections are somewhat the secondorder elections 132 which the national political parties perceive only as an instrument to gain or maintain political power in first-order elections. 133 Nevertheless, D. Braun conducted an empirical study which had analysed the salience of European issues in the 2019 European Parliament elections in relevant mass media outputs in five selected Member States during four weeks prior to those elections. 134 Although she draws a conclusion that the European Parliament elections in 2019 were characterised by tremendous stress on European matters than in the previous elections; 135 from data utilised and submitted there, it cannot be stated at all that the importance of European affairs during the elections was high in all five examined Member States. European issues’ salience attacked above 50% only in France, probably due to the vast success and support of the party ‘La République en Marche!’ which had actively raised pro-European topics. 136 The second place is not surprising as slightly above 40% was the situation in the United Kingdom generally caused 132 Behind this concept, a peculiar theory is depicted as follows: 1) turnouts are much lower in these secondorder elections, 2) government and big parties lose, 3) petty, extreme, and protest parties win, 4) government parties lose primarily around the midterm of the first-order elections; to that effect, see Karlheinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt, ‘Nine second-order national elections: A conceptual framework for the analysis of European election results’ (1980) 8/1 European Journal of Political Research accessed 5 th April 2023; Hermann Schmitt et al, ‘It All Happens at Once: Understanding Electoral Behaviour in Second Order Elections’ (2020) 8/1 Cogitatio 7 accessed 5 th April 2023. 133 Simon Hix and Bjø Høyland, The Political System of the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2011) 157. 134 Daniela Braun, ‘The Europeanness of the 2019 European Parliament elections and the mobilising power of European issues’ (2021) 41/4 Politics accessed 5 th April 2023. 135 Ibid 457. 136 That actually contradicts the theory of K. Reif and H. Schmitt, see note 132 above, since this party was founded by then-incumbent president Emanuel Macron and thus would be doomed to failure according to them; however, they placed second slightly behind ‘Rassemblement National’. For this purpose, see ‘2019 European election results’ accessed 10 th April 2023.

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