Out with the old: Gen Zers ready to take the reins

Don’t talk about us — talk to us.

That’s the message coming from the new blood, which is gunning for more influence in Brussels ahead of next week’s European election.

With MEPs averaging 54 years of age — and the oldest being 83 — young people are looking to get their voices heard in the hemicycle.

In the 2019 election just over 50 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, with turnout among young people setting a record.

For the coming mandate, participation will likely be even higher. Many EU countries will for the first time allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote for candidates for EU legislative seats.

“There are millions of conferences in Brussels on how to make young people go out and vote,” 26-year-old Croatian independent candidate Nina Skočak told POLITICO. The recipe is simple, she said: “Just include us and it’s going to happen automatically.

“It’s frustrating. They should not just talk about us — we need to talk about issues that concern us because we’re affected.”

Skočak is one of a cohort of Gen Z candidates running for office, hoping to breathe new life into Europe’s “outdated” party politicking. The Croatian MEP-hopeful is part of an independent “Gen Z list” submitted for Croatia’s European election that includes 11 other candidates under the age of 30.

In Germany, 4.8 million people aged between 16 and 22 will be eligible to vote. | Hannibal Hanschke/EPA

“Transparency is the key,” Skočak stressed, adding that the EU remains a mystery to many because it “seems super far away” from people’s daily lives. “I try to explain what’s happening here in this bubble and how it can affect Croatia,” she said. “With social media, it’s really not that hard — you can be creative.”

With 200,000 followers on TikTok and 44,000 on Instagram, the part-time influencer shares snippets of her private life, from a second-hand clothing haul to videos in which she explains the workings of the Brussels labyrinth to her followers.

French liberal candidate Shannon Seban (28), part of the pro-Macron election list Besoin d’Europe (A Need For Europe), is another Gen Zer using social media — alongside traditional campaigning — to demystify EU policymaking.

“The most efficient way is to go outside and speak with people,” Seban told POLITICO. “We need to speak about Europe, not only two months before the election — we have to speak about Europe on a daily basis.”

Still, politicians profess surprise when people avoid voting booths during European elections, she added, noting that in France, 76 per cent of eligible voters aged between 18 and 34 do not intend to vote. “But if we don’t use our right to vote, it means we are giving up.”

In Germany, 4.8 million people aged between 16 and 22 will be eligible to vote next week. A look at the voting behavior of 18- to 29-year-olds in 2019 shows that the Greens received more votes than the Christian Democrats and Socialists combined.

The Greens’ youngest candidate, Can Diego Aru, told POLITICO that “young people in particular have a feeling of being left behind and not being taken seriously.”

The 23-year-old law student entered local politics at 18 and worries about the prospects awaiting young people in future. “When my grandparents and my parents came to Germany from Turkey, they didn’t have much,” he said. “Just a promise that the next generation would be better off at some point.

“We now can’t fulfill that promise.”

Aru added that “more incentives and more opportunities” are needed, and that while the average standard of living in Germany is high, massive gaps between social classes persist.

“Some parts of Europe don’t even have a minimum wage, [while] Eastern Europe struggles with high youth unemployment rates,” Aru continued — issues that concern many people, regardless of age.

In the 2019 election, young people set a record in turnout. | Heikki Saukkomaa/Getty Images

In Slovakia, 27-year-old conservative candidate Slavomír Gregorík is also worried about living standards.

“The average Slovak is worried about rising food prices, housing availability and governmental support for young families,” he said, adding that he is promoting traditional values to offer an “alternative to [the] progressive mainstream” so that moderate voters don’t “turn to euroskeptic and pro-Russian forces.”

After the country’s prime minister, Robert Fico, was shot and critically injured May 15, his Smer party briefly suspended its election campaign. “What we need most right now is to de-escalate tensions and prevent this from happening again, because people will be afraid to go out and become politically active,” he told POLITICO a day after the attack.

Gregorík, a candidate for Slovakia’s Christian Democrat party, sees his age as largely an advantage.

“Some people don’t take us that seriously — but that also means that we can express our views more freely because we’re perceived as idealists,” he said.

“Fresh ideas and skills, new forms of communication, and at the same time no scandals — I think that is what sets us apart.”