Out with the old: Gen Zers ready to take the
reins
Hailing from across the political spectrum, young
people are looking to breathe new life into EU policymaking.
JUNE 1,
2024 4:00 AM CET
BY ŠEJLA
AHMATOVIĆ
Don’t talk
about us — talk to us.
That’s the
message coming from the new blood, which is gunning for more influence in
Brussels ahead of next week’s European election.
With MEPs
averaging 54 years of age — and the oldest being 83 — young people are looking
to get their voices heard in the hemicycle.
In the 2019
election just over 50 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, with turnout
among young people setting a record.
For the
coming mandate, participation will likely be even higher. Many EU countries
will for the first time allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote for candidates for
EU legislative seats.
“There are
millions of conferences in Brussels on how to make young people go out and
vote,” 26-year-old Croatian independent candidate Nina Skočak told POLITICO.
The recipe is simple, she said: “Just include us and it’s going to happen
automatically.
“It’s
frustrating. They should not just talk about us — we need to talk about issues
that concern us because we’re affected.”
Skočak is
one of a cohort of Gen Z candidates running for office, hoping to breathe new
life into Europe’s “outdated” party politicking. The Croatian MEP-hopeful is
part of an independent “Gen Z list” submitted for Croatia’s European election
that includes 11 other candidates under the age of 30.
“Transparency
is the key,” Skočak stressed, adding that the EU remains a mystery to many
because it “seems super far away” from people’s daily lives. “I try to explain
what’s happening here in this bubble and how it can affect Croatia,” she said.
“With social media, it’s really not that hard — you can be creative.”
With
200,000 followers on TikTok and 44,000 on Instagram, the part-time influencer
shares snippets of her private life, from a second-hand clothing haul to videos
in which she explains the workings of the Brussels labyrinth to her followers.
French
liberal candidate Shannon Seban (28), part of the pro-Macron election list
Besoin d’Europe (A Need For Europe), is another Gen Zer using social media —
alongside traditional campaigning — to demystify EU policymaking.
“The most
efficient way is to go outside and speak with people,” Seban told POLITICO. “We
need to speak about Europe, not only two months before the election — we have
to speak about Europe on a daily basis.”
Still,
politicians profess surprise when people avoid voting booths during European
elections, she added, noting that in France, 76 per cent of eligible voters
aged between 18 and 34 do not intend to vote. “But if we don’t use our right to
vote, it means we are giving up.”
In Germany,
4.8 million people aged between 16 and 22 will be eligible to vote next week. A
look at the voting behavior of 18- to 29-year-olds in 2019 shows that the
Greens received more votes than the Christian Democrats and Socialists
combined.
The Greens’
youngest candidate, Can Diego Aru, told POLITICO that “young people in
particular have a feeling of being left behind and not being taken seriously.”
The
23-year-old law student entered local politics at 18 and worries about the
prospects awaiting young people in future. “When my grandparents and my parents
came to Germany from Turkey, they didn’t have much,” he said. “Just a promise
that the next generation would be better off at some point.
“We now
can’t fulfill that promise.”
Aru added
that “more incentives and more opportunities” are needed, and that while the
average standard of living in Germany is high, massive gaps between social
classes persist.
“Some parts
of Europe don’t even have a minimum wage, [while] Eastern Europe struggles with
high youth unemployment rates,” Aru continued — issues that concern many
people, regardless of age.
In
Slovakia, 27-year-old conservative candidate Slavomír Gregorík is also worried
about living standards.
“The
average Slovak is worried about rising food prices, housing availability and
governmental support for young families,” he said, adding that he is promoting
traditional values to offer an “alternative to [the] progressive mainstream” so
that moderate voters don’t “turn to euroskeptic and pro-Russian forces.”
After the
country’s prime minister, Robert Fico, was shot and critically injured May 15,
his Smer party briefly suspended its election campaign. “What we need most
right now is to de-escalate tensions and prevent this from happening again,
because people will be afraid to go out and become politically active,” he told
POLITICO a day after the attack.
Gregorík, a
candidate for Slovakia’s Christian Democrat party, sees his age as largely an
advantage.
“Some
people don’t take us that seriously — but that also means that we can express
our views more freely because we’re perceived as idealists,” he said.
“Fresh
ideas and skills, new forms of communication, and at the same time no scandals
— I think that is what sets us apart.”
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