Running for the EU Parliament Elections Text and pictures: Elisabeth Björkman
On May 26th is the election day for the European Parliament! In late April Hankeiten met one of the candidates, Hanken student Filip Björklöf. We talked about campaigning, elections, compared Finnish and American politics, why every vote matters and how to find the right candidate for you.
What is the European Parliament? The European Parliament is together with the European Commission the decision-maker of the EU. The Parliament is made up of 751 members elected for a 5-year period. Each member state is represented by seats that are allocated based on the member state’s population. Finland is represented by 13 members. The members the European Parliament are not grouped by nationality, but by political affinity. Learn more here! When is the election? Each member state performs the elections for the seats allocated to them and chooses the procedure, and elections are held on 23rd-26th of May, and the newly elected parliament will start its work on 2nd July 2019. In Finland the election day is 26th of May, with advance voting on 15th-20th of May. Who can vote? Every EU citizen of age can vote according to national laws. How do I vote? Finnish citizens can show up at any polling stations during the advance voting with an ID (such as passport, ID-card or driver’s licence). On election day, you may only vote on the polling station assigned to you based on your home address. Other EU citizens - Check here to find country-specific information! How do I find a candidate to vote for? There are lots of resources online to read about each candidate and issues! Media houses and other organisations have election compasses that help you get started - try for example YLE's compass!
Filip is finishing up his degree at Hanken. He’s from Raasepori and has been living between there and Helsinki for the last eight years. After having been member of the city council and the city board of Raasepori he’s now running as a candidate in the upcoming EU parliamentary elections. Filip’s interest in politics stems from a broader interest in society, rather than any specific issue. “Maybe the big thing was when I was running for the city council when I was 21 and got elected - I was not expecting that! After that, it has been a lot of politics all the time.” A lot of things have changed since he ran for the city council in 2012. “It sounds like I’m a very old man now, but everything with design and how social media works… Things change pretty rapidly. The basics remain the same, but I just feel like how much more professional everything has become.” He has especially noticed how personal branding has become more significant in politics - even as elections are performed on party level, the person has become more important.
A candidate should always be super active and have a lot of energy, says Filip. He has also run in the Finnish parliamentary elections in 2015, so he has experience in campaigning both in local and national elections. The electoral districts influence the campaigning experience - in municipal and Finnish parliamentary elections only people from his electoral district can vote for him. In the European elections the entire Finland is one election district - everyone is a potential voter. “It’s an interesting challenge, in deciding how much I should travel around or focus on core areas. That’s definitely a big difference between these elections.” He also mentions that the amount of candidates is much smaller, the parties can only nominate 20 candidates each. That makes the party consider their candidates much more carefully, in comparison to national parliamentary elections where hundreds of candidates can be nominated. Filip has recently returned to Finland from his job at the US senate and has learned a lot about US history, politics and society. “That’s something I’m going to focus on in my campaign, that we have good connections with the US and keep up negotiations all the time.” Even with the current nationalistic politics in the US, he still finds that we share a lot of values with the US. HANKEITEN 2/2019
9
