'Free scooter rides and EU power ballads, big firms pump up voters for EU polls' 20 May 2019

From Volkswagen to Spotify to Iberdrola, Europe’s biggest firms are urging people to vote in key European Parliament elections this weekend...

Nearly 430 million Europeans are eligible to vote in the May 23-26 election but turnout has been in decline, hitting just 43 percent in 2014...

The stakes are higher this time, though, with the rise of populists, eurosceptics and far-right parties posing a threat to the EU’s democratic values...

Germany’s Volkswagen... has appealed in 16 languages to its 490,000 European employees to cast their vote, saying that a united Europe is in everybody’s interests...

German carrier Lufthansa has painted its new global brand campaign “SayYesToEurope” on the fuselage of an Airbus A320...

The corporate activity is not restricted to Germany, where the pre-EU heritage of war is particularly keenly felt and whose manufacturers are notable beneficiaries of open markets...

New corporate interest could be a byproduct of Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the EU, said Fabian Zuleeg, who heads... the European Policy Centre.

[also refers to ThyssenKrupp, Spotify, Iberdrola, 3M, Microsoft, Lime]