Why Poles are too happy to vote

The success of EU membership has bred political apathy on its eastern frontier

Europe should have a new capital, says Jan Molodecki. Forget about Brussels and Strasbourg and Luxembourg. The European Union's institutions should, by historic precedent, move to the hamlet of Mastomeczu, in Poland, a couple of kilometres inside the EU's far eastern frontier with Ukraine.

Almost two millennia ago the village was the capital of the Goths. Despite the dark reputation of their modern name-sakes, they were, according to Mr Molodecki, the mayor or wojt of the area, "a rather gentle people and the first true Europeans".

His formal, humorous speech is addressed to Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, a well-known Polish academic and television pundit, who is seeking to start a political career at the age of 61. Ms Kolarska-Bobinska, who looks like a more slender and warmer Polish version of Hillary Clinton, is the leading, regional candidate for the ruling centre-right party in this week's European elections.

Capital of Europe may be a little ambitious, she hints, but she will support a project to attract tourists from all over Europe to a "Gothland" cultural theme-park in Mastomeczu. She will also fight to ensure that Poland's far east becomes "not the end of the European Union, but its beginning".

We are on a whirlwind, European electoral tour of Lublin province, the poorest province of Poland and one of the poorest areas in the EU. It rapidly turns into a fast-forward tour of Polish, and European, history: from the Goths to the Lisbon treaty by way of the tsarist empire, Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Holocaust, Communism, Solidarity, John Paul II, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and EU enlargement.

In Poland, politics is history and history is politics. This week is the 20th anniversary of the free Polish elections of 1989, which led to the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the demise of the Soviet Union itself. This year is the 70th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland which led to the Second World War, the destruction of Polish and central European Jewry and the cleaving apart of Europe for almost half a century. It is also the fifth anniversary of the admission of Poland and other former Soviet bloc countries to the European Union.

There is much to commemorate; much to mourn; and much to celebrate. Despite the gloomy predictions of Eurosceptics and many persistent problems, EU enlargement to the east has been a great, although mostly unsung, success. This is especially true of Poland, which is riding out the recession relatively comfortably, despite the return of tens of thousands of young Polish workers from those crisis-stricken El Dorados, Britain and Ireland.

Poles can therefore be expected to flock to the polls on Sunday (not Thursday, as in the UK) with great enthusiasm and pride. Can't they? No, they can't.

The forecast is that Poland will break all records for Euro apathy in a continent-wide election which has generated an unprecedented, continent-wide lack of interest. Only 20 per cent of Poles bothered to vote in the last European elections in 2004. This time, pollsters predict, the Polish turnout could fall as low as 10 or 12 per cent, the lowest in the EU.

Why should a country which has so memorably demonstrated the power of the ballot box be so careless of its hard-won democracy?

Ms Kolarska-Bobinska is a sociology professor and ran the first democratic, Polish opinion-polling institute in the 1990s. She says that the low turnout is a Polish paradox. In Britain, voters will stay at home from hostility and apathy towards the EU and politics in general. In Poland, they will stay at home because they are broadly content with EU membership but hostile and apathetic towards politics in general.

Lena is talking as we bounce alarmingly on what passes for Polish main roads. At the wheel of the car is her husband, Krzysztof Bobinski, an English-born Pole, and for many years the Warsaw correspondent of the Financial Times. A kaleidoscope of a changing Poland flashes past the window: storks in immense nests on telegraph polls; shiny new Tesco supermarkets; wooden peasant huts; garish Californian bungalows; tiny, medieval strips of fields; large newly-laid lawns with neat flower borders.

"Last time, in 2004, the pro-European Poles did not bother to vote because we had just joined and there seemed to be nothing much at stake," the candidate continues. "It is the anti-Europeans who are less likely to vote this time. They are angry with the lack of impact of the maverick candidates that they elected in 2004."

The roly-poly Kaczynski twins, Lech, President of Poland, and Jaroslaw, ex-prime minister, are the leading figures in the once powerful, conservative, Eurosceptic Law and Justice Party, PIS, which is expected to gain only around 25 per cent of the vote on Sunday. The present Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, and Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, belong to the other more liberal, more European, centre-right party Civic Platform, which is predicted to take up to 50 per cent of the vote.

We spend 14 hours on the road, making 10 campaign visits, including to a museum, an orphanage and a half-built sports hall. We hear about local problems with timber and tobacco prices, smuggling and roads. We get back to Lublin after 11pm.

At each campaign stop, Lena is ready with a warm smile, a kiss, a short speech, or questions about local problems. "Here, at least, they kiss you and hug you," she says. "In Warsaw, if they see a politician they want to kill you."

There is one man who might want to kill Lena. He is the sitting Euro MP for her party but only No 2 on this year's list. She is No 1 on the regional party list. Under Poland's byzantine election law, the pair are colleagues but also deadly rivals. A website has just been launched which labels Lena a "parachutist" because she is not a local woman. Strange things tend to go wrong with her campaign. She suspects the hand of her rival's supporters. All the same, the latest opinion polls suggest that Lena should win easily. We are joined on the campaign trail by one of her backers who is one of the most interesting characters in a new generation of Polish politicians, Janusz Palikot, 45, is the local Civic Platform party chief, and spoken of as a future prime minister. He is celebrated, among other things, for his PR skills. He recently drew attention to a hidden scandal of the rape of illegal immigrants in Polish detention centres by turning up at a press conference with a plastic gun and a plastic penis.

For a while, The Independent switches to the back of his car. Everywhere we go, there is keen interest in the election. Why the projected low turnout? "Poland is like this," he said. "We are a country which likes drama. We like struggles between good and evil. Ordinary democracy comes harder to us. But you must not be misled, Polish membership of the EU has been a success beyond what anyone could imagine. Most people know that. They may not vote but the issues that they are interested in show that Poland is growing up, moving forward. The old ideological issues – abortion, who did what under Communism – are dying. The new issues – how we should change and grow more prosperous – show that a new generation of politics and politicians is emerging in Poland."

Maybe. But for some Poles the scars of the recent past, and the present, are still raw. Our last two campaign stops are open meetings in little towns in south-eastern Poland -- towns full of ghosts. These communities were more than 50 per cent Jewish before 1939. Our first meeting is in Bilgoraj, the town where the great Jewish writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, once lived. The audience is polite. The second meeting is in Tarnogrod where the audience is composed partly of drunken and angry, small farmers. (Polish farmers did well in the EU for the first couple of years; prices have since collapsed.)

Mr Palikot tries to pacify them. For the first time in its history, he says, Poland can be important while at peace. "This time, you don't have to bow to anyone. You don't have to fight. You just have to vote." There are shouted complaints about the price of rye and apples. A Solidarity veteran says that he is living in poverty "while many others who did not fight for Poland's freedom are rich".

The EU has transformed Poland, the candidates point out. Billions have poured in. "To you maybe, not to us," a heckler shouts. Three million young people have found work abroad... "Yes but why should our children have to leave?" shouts a man with a drooping Lech Walesa moustache.

Before EU membership, Mr Palikot ripostes, only 5 per cent of homes in this region had mains drainage. The figure is now 75 per cent. A clinching argument, surely. Another man with a Lech Walesa moustache, yells: "What was wrong with outside toilets?" Ah, the ingratitude. Who would be a politician?

Continental shift: European elections

*Some 375 million people from 27 countries will be eligible to vote for the world's only trans-national parliament.

*11,000 candidates are standing, competing for election to a total of 736 seats.

*Elections are held every five years and MEPs are elected for a five-year term.

*Those vying for a seat include Rachida Dati, the French Justice Minister; Guy Verhofstadt, the former prime minister of Belgium; Barbara Matera, a former Miss Italy contestant put forward by Silvio Berlusconi's party, and Emanuele Filiberto, who is not only the grandson of the last king of Italy but also the winner of the Italian version of Dancing With The Stars.

*British, Dutch and Irish voters will cast their votes on 4 June. Most of continental Europe goes to the polls on Sunday 7 June so results will not be known until then.

*72 MEPs will come from Britain, which has been split into 12 electoral regions. They are elected through a variety of forms of proportional representation.

*When the first direct elections to the European Parliament were held in 1979, two-thirds (63 per cent) of the electorate turned out to vote. This year turnout could fall to below 40 per cent. The lower the turnout the higher the chance of fringe, maverick and extremist candidates winning seats.