Low turnout in European Parliament elections, especially in 1999, is a symptom of the famous ?democratic deficit? of the European Union, but also questions the quality of the representation process within member states. Competing interpretations of the European vote have been proposed since 1979, in line with or opposing the theory of ?second order elections?. After a review of the relevant literature, this article applies the innovative framework of a multilevel analysis to disentangle the individual and contextual determinants of non-voting. Data from the 1999 European Election Study do not show voting to be strongly determined by socio-demographic factors. Furthermore, it is not dependent on the respective national political arenas, nor on European attitudes per se. The idea of ?habitual voting? is backed (refined through the notion of subjective perceptions of elections),