A public relations budget of 20 million euro is being spent on devices from online television promotions to billboards and special events to exhort people to vote in the 2009 European Parliament elections, apparently for fear that the attitude towards the institution is less United in Diversity than United in Disinterest.

Among the items being issued to try to encourage people to vote is a series of 10 posters designed by a Berlin-based advertising company. Appearing in all of the European Union’s 23 official languages, the posters show questions such as "How much should we tame financial markets" and will culminate with "Use your vote in the European Parliament elections".

The process of voting in the 736 MEPs is determined by a mixture of European rules and local electoral rules. All member states are required to use a system based on proportional representation.

In all, about 375 million people will be eligible to vote in this year’s elections. Voting age is 18 in all member states. Citizens of the Union residing in a Member State of which they are not nationals now have the right (Article 19 of the EC Treaty) to vote in elections to Parliament in the Member State in which they reside, under the same conditions as nationals of that state. However, the concept of residence still varies from one national electoral system to another.

Some countries require voters either to have their domicile or customary residence on electoral territory (Finland and France), or customarily to stay there (Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy), or to be registered on the electoral roll (Austria, Denmark, United Kingdom, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden).

According to the European Parliament website, in the United Kingdom the right to vote of citizens resident abroad is confined to civil servants, members of the armed forces and citizens who left the country less than five years before, provided they submit a declaration to the appropriate authorities.

Austria, Denmark, Portugal and the Netherlands only grant the right to vote to their nationals living in an EU Member State. Sweden, Belgium, France, Spain, Greece and Italy grant their nationals the right to vote whatever their country of residence. Germany grants this right to citizens who have lived in another country for less than 10 years. In Ireland and Hungary the right to vote is confined to EU citizens domiciled on the national territory.