Call it one of life’s ironies: anti-government protesters in Ukraine may be clamouring to join the European Union (EU), but support for the EU is declining steadily among many of its 500 million citizens.

Lack of public backing for the “European project” has long worried policymakers. With elections to the European Parliament — the EU’s only democratically-elected institution — set to take place in May 2014, the fretting has reached crisis proportions.

The EU bigwigs are right to be concerned. Voter turn-out in the parliamentary polls is expected to be low — and those who do decide to cast their ballots are likely to do so in favour of anti-European and populist parties.

Nobody is sure if the trend can be reversed. Recent opinion polls show that the number of Europeans who distrust the EU has doubled over the past six years to a record high, with debt-racked Greeks and Cypriots having the least faith in the bloc.

Sixty per cent of Europeans “tended not to trust the EU”, according to the Euro barometer survey, compared to the 32 per cent level of distrust reported in early 2007 before the onset of the 2008/2009 global financial meltdown and the ensuing euro zone debt crisis.

Reasons for Europeans’ disenchantment with an organisation that was awarded the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize for its contribution to democracy are not hard to come by.

An economic crisis, record unemployment and five Eurozone bailouts have taken their toll on the EU’s standing. The policies of austerity adopted by Eurozone governments have resulted in record levels of unemployment, especially among young people. This, not surprisingly, is aggravating Europe’s mood of pessimism.

Eurosceptic fervour may be highest in Britain (Prime Minister David Cameron has proposed Britain hold a vote by 2017 on whether to leave) but support for the EU is also falling in traditionally pro-European states such as Spain and Portugal.

In fact, almost half of all Europeans are believed to pessimistic about the future of the 28-nation bloc.

Many fear that this grim mood will encourage voters to slam mainstream political parties and elect the more extreme EU-phobic and anti-immigrant groups whose popularity has been on the rise for several years, prompting European Commission President José Manuel Barroso to warn of “political extremes and populism tearing apart the political support and the social fabric”.

But it will take more than nice speeches to get Europeans to the ballot boxes in May. Turnout for the EU election has been declining since the Parliament was first elected in 1979, and hit its lowest point in 2009, when only 43 per cent of Europeans went to cast their ballot.

There is hope that new rules under which European political parties have the power to nominate a candidate for European Commission president — a post that was in the past filled by a person hand-picked by EU leaders — will generate some voter excitement.

The general sentiment is, however, that the elections will see an increase in the number of radical nationalist and anti-EU protest parties elected to the parliament.Some analysts say there could be a protest vote of up to 30 per cent, meaning up to 250 of the 751 seats in parliament being taken by candidates from non-mainstream parties on the far-left or far-right.

Such a large protest vote could lead to serious disruptions in parliament, making it much harder to forge a majority on critical legislation, even if the protest candidates were of widely divergent views and not united.

Others argue that the anti-European vote, while substantial, will be more contained, and fears of a vast surge in support for the far-right across the 28 countries may be overstated.

The conservatives (European Peoples Party) are expected to remain the leading party, although they could lose around 40-50 seats. The Socialists may gain a fair number of seats and solidify their position as the second-largest presence across Europe.

The key question is where that leaves the ‘non-mainstream’ groups — the far-right and far-left parties that are not part of the traditional five or so largest parliamentary blocs.

Recent polls suggest that there may be a raw ‘protest’ element across the political spectrum of up to 150 seats — potentially the third-largest presence in parliament but not a coordinated one or one that agrees on many policies.

As a result, the three biggest blocs — the conservatives, socialists and liberals, will have to overcome their traditional differences and coordinate more closely on legislation.

While the upcoming elections are on everybody’s mind at the moment, the EU will, in fact, undergo a more far-reaching “leadership change” with the current heads of the European Commission, European Council and the “high representative” for foreign and security policy set to be replaced.

For most of 2014, therefore, the EU will seek to juggle a hectic domestic agenda with demands for an expanded international role.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Brussels.