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  3. Elections often tell you more about what people are against than what they are for. So it is with the European ones that took pl

Elections often tell you more about what people are against than what they are for. So it is with the European ones that took pl

admin2013-05-08  15
问题     Elections often tell you more about what people are against than what they are for. So it is with the European ones that took place last week in all 25 European Union member countries. These elections, widely trumpeted as the world’s biggest-ever multinational democratic vote, were fought for the most part as 25 separate national contests, which makes it tricky to pick out many common themes. But the strongest are undoubtedly negative. Europe’s voters are angry and disillusioned—and they have demonstrated their anger and disillusion in three main ways.
    The most obvious was by abstaining. The average overall turnout was just over 45%, by some margin the lowest ever recorded for elections to the European Parliament. And that average disguises some big variations: Italy, for example, notched up over 70% , but Sweden managed only 37%. Most depressing of all, at least to believers in the European project, was the extremely low vote in many of the new member countries from central Europe, which accounted for the whole of the fall in turnout since 1999. In the biggest, Poland, only just over a fifth of the electorate turned out to vote. Only a year ago, central Europeans voted in large numbers to join the EU, which they did on May 1st. That they abstained in such large numbers in the European elections points to early disillusion with the European Union—as well as to a widespread feeling, shared in the old member countries as well, that the European Parliament does not matter.
    Disillusion with Europe was also a big factor in the second way in which voters protested, which was by supporting a ragbag of populist, nationalist and explicitly anti-EU parties. These ranged from the 16% who backed the UK Independence Party, whose declared policy is to withdraw from the EU and whose leaders see their mission as "wrecking" the European Parliament, to the 14% who voted for Sweden’s Junelist, and the 27% of Poles who backed one of two anti-EU parties, the League of Catholic Families and Self-defense. These results have returned many more Eurosceptics and trouble-makers to the parliament: on some measures, over a quarter of the new MEPS will belong to the "awkward squad". That is not a bad thing, however, for it will make the parliament more representative of European public opinion.
    But it is the third target of European voters’ ire that is perhaps the most immediately significant: the fact that, in many EU countries, old and new, they chose to vote heavily against their own governments. This anti-incumbent vote was strong almost everywhere, but it was most pronounced in Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Sweden. The leaders of all the four biggest European Union countries, Tony Blair in Britain, Jacques Chirac in France, Gerhard Schroder in Germany and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, were each given a bloody nose by their voters.
    The big question now is how Europe’s leaders should respond to this. By a sublime (or terrible) coincidence, soon after the elections, and just as The Economist was going to press, they were gathering in Brussels for a crucial summit, at which they are due to agree a new constitutional treaty for the EU and to select a new president for the European Commission. Going into the meeting, most EU heads of government seemed determined to press ahead with this agenda regardless of the European elections—even though the atmosphere after the results may make it harder for them to strike deals.
It is implied in the text that the departure of Eurosceptics.and trouble-makers from the European Parliament______.
选项 A、benefits the old member countries for the time being
B、fortifies the support of populist and nationalists
C、might oblige anti-EU parties to adopt a compromise resisted by the public
D、would hinder the full expression of European public feeling
答案D
解析 这是一道细节推导题，测试考生识别原文相关信息并且进行适当逻辑推导的 能力。本题的答案信息来源于第三段的倒数一、二句，这两句话的大意是：“这些结果选举更多的欧洲怀疑论者和麻烦制造者成为国会成员……。然而，这并不是一件坏事，因为这将使国会更代表欧洲公众的意见”。由此可以反推：欧洲怀疑论和麻烦制造者离开国会将有碍于欧洲公众情感的充分表达。故本题的正确选项应该是D“would hinder the full expression of European public feeling”(将阻碍欧洲公众情感的充分表达)。考生在阅读时要充分运用逆向思维的能力。
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