Brussels: A generation glued to social media is vying for politicians’ support, but Belgium’s youngest voters feel “lost” during next weekend’s EU elections.
16- and 17-year-olds of our country will take a new stand on June 9: Not only Belgium is allowed to vote, but the Supreme Court has made it as binding as it is for adults.
With 830,000 teenagers and young adults coming for the first time, universities and unions held workshops to take the political tone.
On a Saturday morning in May, around 20 young people took part in “Just Vote” in an auditorium in Brussels.
The video, featuring potential nominees from across the spectrum, opens with a catchy warning: “bad show for one hour, bad government for five years.”
Using a handheld device, they answer a series of questions on the screen and have the opportunity to ask about the campaign program and watch the “candidates” debate each other before making a decision.
In this case, the oldest and most radical candidate for the proposed center received the most votes. Opponents of the call for Belgium to leave the European Union have voted.
For 17-year-old Aitana, who took part, it was a “useful” exercise that encouraged her to “look at candidate applications online and talk to friends”.
He said he doesn’t know who he will vote for: “Maybe I won’t find a party that represents me 100%.”
Another teenager, 16-year-old Balkis, said he was looking forward to voting, even though he didn’t know the real-life candidates or the current top EU positions.
The key issue for him is gender equality, the environment and the role of youth in society.
He said he was concerned that polls representing Europe’s far right would win elections and attract young voters.
Right-wing parties have won young people in many parts of Europe, from France and Portugal to the Netherlands and Germany.
In the Flemish-speaking north of Belgium, the right-wing Wlaams Belang is leading the polls, especially among young people.
Alice Willocks, a member of the Brussels Laique Association, which organized the youth event, said there was a lot of interest among young people in the upcoming elections and politics.
“That’s what we want to fight,” said Willocks, political action coordinator for the Association for the Advancement of Secularism.
But participants discussed issues of gender, migration and the environment.
Willocks said candidates with radical feminist and anti-patriarchal views created heated debates between girls and boys, some of whom backed out.
Another association, the Youth Forum, which represents Belgian citizens between the ages of 16 and 30, tells how to vote, covering the work and key issues of Belgian and EU institutions.
For one participant, Cantin, 18, said the school is not doing enough to get young voters up to speed.
“This is a problem. We have lost a little of ourselves,” said the Liège communication with journalism students. “We’re not focused, really, when people talk about the election for us, it’s a long shot.”
He said he follows all the candidates on social media platforms.
“Young people don’t care – often it’s not their fault, it’s the fault of politicians who don’t care about them,” he said.
“It’s hard to choose, even though you can hear good arguments for one side or the other.”
Although Belgium is home to many of the EU’s most important institutions, young Belgians say they don’t need to know what the EU does every day.
Nateo, 16, said: “Sometimes you can see a label saying that this or that road is funded by the EU. But they just don’t understand the EU, which has introduced standards for all phones”.
One thing the panelists agreed on is that the presence of social media is crucial for politicians to attract the attention of young voters.
According to a new study by the French Ifop Institute, TikTok is second only to television among all communication points that young people rely on for EU election data.
