The State of the European Union. The European Parliament faces its most important elections yet

SPAIN BEFORE A NEW EUROPEAN POLITICAL CYCLE 23 Spanish citizens and the future of Europe If the Spanish government chooses an ambi- tious role in the EU, it must take into account that, fortunately, the public has recovered its traditional majority pro-European conviction and, just as importantly, it has done so with great consistency, as all the opinion polls pub- lished show. The first was the Eurobarometer of September 2018. Clearly above the average across the 28 Member States, 68% of those polled thought that the country belonging to the EU was posi- tive and 75% (15 percentage points higher in a year) thought that Spain had benefitted from being a member of the EU. Those figures were confirmed by the Barometer of December 2018 conducted by the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS). In all, 72% of the public backed Spain securing great- er influence in the EU. What for? To promote a European minimum monthly wage (77%), cre- ate a community Economy and Finance Ministry (60%), or to make it a priority to address unem- ployment, immigration, education, health care, gender equality, inequality among citizens and countries, economic problems, or security and terrorism. In addition to those European intentions, the CIS says that 59% of Spaniards support the ex- istence of candidates from the political families for president of the Commission and they rate the EU and the European Parliament (the only institutions to make the grade on a scale of 1 to 10) more highly than their autonomous govern- ments, or the central government and the Congress of Deputies (all of which fail the test). Particularly interesting is the other side of the coin of these answers. While 57% think it very useful or quite useful to vote in the elec- tions to the European Parliament to defend the interests of Spain, those that say they will ab- stain or are thinking about it do not do so out of discontent with Brussels or because they think that those elections serve no purpose, but out of distrust of or weariness with politics, the parties or just going to the polls. Moreover, in the face of the cliché of disin- formation on European matters, Spaniards ap- pear to be well informed. They know that the European PP has had more influence on EU policy over the last five years (in the majority in the Council, the Parliament and the Commission, it could have been for better or for worse, for example, in the economic crisis) and primarily back it now being the turn of the Socialists and Democrats, in line with their opinion that it is Pedro Sanchez who can do more for the public out of the current Spanish politicians (scoring 18%, compared with 11% for Rivera, 9.6% for Casado, and 7.6% for Iglesias). An analysis of the European elections in Spain Once again, the European elections of 2019 will coincide in Spain with the staging of the mu- nicipal and regional votes on the same day. First of all, that means that the abstention rate will be significantly reduced, since, with few exceptions, voters will turn out in similar numbers for the three polls. The recurrent abstention above 55% will be reduced by a few tenths of a percent, which will have two consequences: it will raise the repre- sentativeness of the MEPs elected and favour the big parties over the small and medium-sized ones. Taking into account the available opinion polls (from the CIS in December 2018) and the fact that in Spain the distribution of members of