From Euractiv:
The voting age for next year’s European elections should be lowered to 16 as part of a suite of reforms to revitalise the European project. The proposal is part of the “Renew Europe” initiative which will be launched on 24 January at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The paper, which was drafted by the WEF following consultations with more than 100 youth, business and political leaders and academics, argues that 17-year-olds are more likely to vote than 18–24-year-olds, and that “those who begin voting early are more likely to carry on doing so”.
Austria is the only EU country to give 16-year-olds the right to vote in national elections, although Scotland did the same for its independence referendum in 2014 and parliamentary elections.Seriously, who benefits?
Lowering the voting age across the 27 EU countries that will hold the 2019 European elections has the support of the European Parliament but would require a majority of EU governments to approve a change to electoral law.
The EU will be heavily represented at the Davos forum. Jean-Claude Juncker will attend for the first time as European Commission president while France’s Emmanuel Macron is also scheduled to speak on the final day.
While the Eurozone economy grew by more than 2% in 2017, and unemployment across the bloc fell to a nine-year low of 8.7% in January, the onset of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the possible job losses that could result from automation, is expected to dominate many of the fringe meetings in Davos.....MORE
To repurpose Paul Krugman's famous locution: "A first pass answer is..." those who control the levers of agitprop.
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