EU leaders must address alienation of Muslim voters, report warns

Political parties urged to foster a more diverse membership and call out xenophobia

A protester is escorted by French gendarmes in Paris as they break up a pro-Gaza sit-in. AFP

The recent European Parliament election and the fallout from the war in Gaza has exposed the under-representation of some groups on the continent, including non-whites and Muslims, a report has found.

Public opinion of the EU is overwhelmingly positive but leaders must address blind spots that could undermine the long-term health of democracy in the bloc, said the report published by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the European Cultural Foundation.

Titled Welcome to Barbieland: European sentiment in the year of wars and elections, the report advises political parties to cultivate a more ethnoculturally diverse membership and voting base, to call out xenophobia even if it means clashing with voters, and for countries to reduce minimum voting age to 16 when applicable.

The reference to the 2023 hit film Barbie stems from the main character realising that Barbieland is not the utopia she thought it was. Similarly, the report's author Pawel Zerka writes, pro-Europeans may have in the past year been shocked by the visible lack of enthusiasm for the European project harboured by some parts of the population.

The three groups examined in the report – non-whites, central and eastern Europeans, and youth – are concerned by the bloc's drift towards an “ethnic” rather than “civic” understanding of what it is to be European, it says.

The existing coalition in the European Parliament between the left-wing socialists, the centre-right European People's Party and the centrist Renew group remained in place after the election in June.

But it also featured the rise of far-right political parties and a broader embrace of their anti-immigration positions by traditional parties across the continent. This took place in parallel with a rise in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim violence following the Hamas-led attacks against Israel last October. During the election campaign, political parties used anti-Muslim tropes, such as Italy's Lega featuring a veiled woman on a poster that read: “Let's change Europe before it changes us.”

“The EU’s 'whiteness' – which some observers have critiqued for some time – was on full display,” said the report. “Seeing most (though not all) European governments support Israel, many Muslims living in Europe may have felt that Europe’s solidarity was chiefly with the Jewish rather than the Palestinian victims of the war in the Middle East; and that no criticism of Israel was permitted.”

A survey of French Muslims published in December by polling firm IFOP found 58 per cent of respondents thought the French government was pro-Israel, a figure that dropped to 20 per cent for the entire French population.

Overall, the report found diversity in EU institutions remains unrepresentative. According to ECFR's assessment, no more than 20 non-white MEPs were elected this year, which is less than 3 per cent of the total and way below the 10 per cent share that racial and ethnic minorities are estimated to account for among the EU population. Reasons for this may include non-whites and Muslims being less politically active, or being excluded altogether due to laws such as Italy's strict citizenship criteria.

This lack of representation in politics comes in contrast to multicultural role models in the arts and in sport. “Cultural life often better reflects underlying changes in society; but it should also spur politicians to catch up,” the report said.