ABSTRACT
European Parliament (EP) elections are more in focus than ever before in 2019, given the European Union’s (EU) multiple crises, such as the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, Brexit, the migration crisis, and the rise of populism and Euroscepticism, to name but a few. This introductory chapter poses key questions to be answered within this volume: Is the legal framework the EU has put in place, especially since the Treaty of Lisbon, enhancing stronger democratic engagement in EP elections? How have the public responded? And have the 2019 EP elections become for the first time real first-order contests? Furthermore, the chapter outlines the main aims of the volume and provides an outline for the structure of the book, including a short preview of the content contained within the individual chapters as well as some first tentative reflections on the 2019 EP elections in the context of the first-order/second-order debate.
