The purpose of this publication is to attempt to answer the question of the possibilities of forming a European political community through the mechanism of the European Parliament elections. On the question of the European demos we will focus at present on where it should have manifested itself most blatantly- during the recent election campaign to the European Parliament.
In seeking an answer to this question of a European demos we will analyse, in detail, the EP campaign in Poland, a new member state whose position and significance in the EU is steadily increasing.
Polish Society strongly supports EU membership and, since Polish accession to the EU, the vast majority of Poles are of the opinion that membership has been clearly beneficial, both on a personal and at a national level. At the same time, barely one quarter of the Polish electorate exercised its franchise in June 2009 in the EP election. Through our analysis of the election campaign in Poland we will endeavour to understand how such a pro-European society is so unwilling to exercise its co-decision possibilities on the shape of a common Europe. What conclusions from this can be drawn for the development of a European demos?

The following chapters introduce various aspects of the election to the European Parliament and the preceding campaign: the legal framework for the election, the themes of the political debates with a special focus on the elements of political populism, the method in which the election was reported and portrayed in the media and the role played the non-governmental organizations in the election campaign.
The clear focus of the authors’ attention is centred on Poland and they devote the majority of the various chapters to the events and situation in this country. At the same time however, each chapter also summarises the situation in other member states and compares and contrasts the particular characteristics of the Polish EP campaign in relation to patterns observed throughout the whole Union.

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