European Parliament elections are coming in 2019 and on several occasions I have heard various public figures arguing about their importance and that it is very important to show up and vote. However, no explanation was provided as why it is so.
This article shows some data about how low the voter turnout is for some European Union countries:
the eight EU member states with the lowest turnout were from the former Communist bloc, with the lowest turnout recorded in Slovenia (24.55 %), Czech Republic (18.20 %) and Slovakia (13.05 %)
Romania is not mentioned, but it also belong to this category with a fairly modest turnover of about 30%.
I am interested in a simple explanation one might provide to a regular folk living in one of these countries about the importance of voting in 2019 EU Parliament elections. By "regular folk" I understand a person who (this is mostly based on first hand experience in Romania, but it might be relevant for other Easter Europe countries) knows about EU ecosystem something like the following lines:
Rather low political literacy - there is no clear separation between European Union, European Commission and European Parliament. Basically there is only one entity out there, namely the EU.
Financing - the EU gives us money using some convoluted mechanism, thus allowing us to have better infrastructure, develop tourism etc.
Messing with tradition - EU is against some of our tradition, such as the way we are slaughtering the animals (animal welfare)
Freedom of movement - EU allows to easily visit and/or work in a another EU member state
Since a member state virtually cannot be forced to exit EU, most take the advantage of being part of EU for granted and see no utility in voting in these elections.
Question: How to explain the importance of European Parliament elections to a regular folk living in Eastern Europe?