Only 40% of Europeans voted in the 2009 European elections. Participation rates fell yet again, by two percentage points compared to 2004, and once again, abstainers constitute the largest European party. Abstention cannot be analyzed as either a linear phenomenon or as homogeneous behavior. Factors that are simultaneously sociological, institutional, and political all play a part. In addition, abstention is part of a transformation of the act of voting. However, its extent reveals above all the Europeanization of a critical challenge for the creation of a political Europe: information and education for European citizenship.