Croatian Parliament Speaker and Social Democratic Party main committee chairman Josip Leko on Sunday evening said that the chief reason for the poor turnout to the European Parliament (EP) election is that citizens have still not realised the significance of this European law-making body but also because of the crisis in the European Union and Croatia.
"One of the reasons is that people have not realised the importance of the EP and they lack practical knowledge of just what the EP decides on and that its reputation and democratic legitimacy and responsibility toward European policy is growing. The other reason is the fine weather, and the third is the crisis in Croatia and Europe. That is what I consider to be the key reasons for the relatively poort turnout", said Leko.
Asked whether he thought a possible reason for the poort turnout was a clear message to politicians, Leko said that every election is at the same time a message to politicians and to the policy.
Asked whether in this case the message was a negative one, Leko said that he wouldn't qualify it as such, seeing that other European countries show even lower turnouts to EP elections. However, the elections are still considered to be legitimate, he added.
