Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Diğer, ss.1-6, 2020
The 2019 European elections drew huge attention for many reasons. On the one hand, over 50 percent of the eligible voters cast their votes. This rendered these turnout rates the highest since the 1994 elections, alongside marking the first time increase in the voter turnout rates since the first direct elections to the European Parliament (EP) in 1979 (European Parliament, 2019). Seeing this rise in the turnout rates, many senior officials of the European Union (EU) even prematurely welcomed it as a boost to the legitimacy of the Union (Euronews, 2019). On the other hand, the final election results revealed that in response to the heavy losses suffered by the mainstream centre-right and centre-left groups in the EP, the right-wing nationalist and populist groups made the biggest gains (BBC, 2019). Since then, this unexpected surge of the Eurosceptic and anti-European forces in the 2019 European elections has provoked new debates on the legitimacy and the future of the Union. In such a political climate, it thus seems more than necessary to readdress the European (Union) Identity, a construct which has a solid link with European integration due to developing within its confines.