• Our analysis is based on a three-country youth research, in the framework of which the Republikon Institute, in cooperation with its Polish and Italian partners, investigated - among other things - the participation of young people in the 2024 European Parliament elections and in the election campaign, as well as in the the problems considered most significant by the young generations of three countries from the point of view of their own countries.
• The Eurobarometer survey conducted after the 2024 European Parliament elections confirms that young people participate in the elections in a smaller proportion compared to the entire population; the youngest voters produced the lowest turnout in all three countries examined.
• A comparison of the results of Polish, Hungarian and Italian research shows that there are very significant differences between the young people of each country in terms of the extent to which they participated in the election campaign. Only 12% of young Hungarians claimed to have taken an active role, while in the case of Polish young people it was 58%. Although getting to know the reasons behind this phenomenon requires more thorough investigations, a partial explanation could be that while the youngest voters in Hungary no longer have personal experiences of what it's like when an election results in a political change at the national level, Polish young people may have very recent experiences from last year. about this, and this can increase the desire for political/public participation.
• Although there are differences in how exactly the young people of each country rank the problems they consider the most important for their country, there is a significant overlap between the issues ranked in the top five. Overall, in the first five places, problems related to democracy and the rule of law arose most often, which, on the one hand, is worrying for the future of liberal democracies, but on the other hand, it can give cause for optimism that for young voters, democracy and the rule of law are values that should be highly valued and protected.
The full analysis can be read here.