French politicians – like their counterparts elsewhere – are usually keen to get television airtime. But things are different for the European parliamentary elections. The only television debate is an unusually last-minute affair on Thursday – three days before voters go to the polls.

The reluctance of the parties to debate during the campaign reflects how French enthusiasm for Europe has soured into cynicism and indifference in the past decade.

“I’m going to vote because it’s my children’s future,” said Moufid Mansour, a market stall holder in Lille, a city in northern France with flourishing commercial and cultural ties with Britain and Belgium. “But the truth is it doesn’t interest people. By bringing in more competition, Europe has left people disillusioned.”

Whereas European integration was once seen as a multiplier of French influence across the continent and the world, many now blame it for depressing wages and lowering social standards.

France’s switch-off is born out in Eurobarometer polls.

The number of people who consider French membership of the EU a good thing has fallen from a peak of 74 per cent in 1987 to 47 per cent last year.

“Many of our fellow citizens seem to use Europe as a blank screen on which to project their social, economic and identity concerns,” says Pascal Perrineau, a professor at Sciences Po university in Paris.

Turnout in France, as elsewhere, looks likely to continue its steady decline after dropping to 43 per cent in 2004. The latest opinion polls put the ruling UMP on 26 per cent, six points ahead of the socialists.

French indifference may be partly explained by the recession. With people worried about their jobs, the European parliament may feel especially remote.

The campaign has been reduced to an exercise in persuading core supporters to vote. The UMP has made crime its central theme.

The upside for the president of these low-key elections is that despite his unpopularity, the anti-Sarkozy vote has failed to materialise – even, it seems, in Lille, a socialist stronghold.

“I’m a bit disappointed in Sarkozy and I should be using my vote to protest,” said resident Julie Robin. “But I’m not interested in these elections at all.”

Pro-Europeans blame the French political elite for this reluctance to vote on Sunday.

Sylvie Goulard, a candidate for the centrist Democratic Movement, says euroscepticism has abated since its peak in 2005 when the French rejected the EU’s constitutional treaty in a referendum, plunging the block into disarray.

Enlargement to eastern Europe has not proved the disaster for France that critics had suggested, while the economic crisis has shown the benefits of monetary union.

France’s parties are all campaigning for a Europe that better protects its citizens from the excesses of globalisation.

“(The mood) is less negative,” Ms Goulard said. “But people are puzzled because they see that the European elections are not being taken seriously by the elites.”

According to a recent study by the Fondation Robert Schuman, a thinktank, France has less influence in the European parliament than Germany or Britain because of the high turnover of its MEPs, many of whom split their time with being a mayor back home in France.

French politicians continue to see the European parliament as a launching pad for higher office at home. French MEPs proportionately have fewer chairmanships of committees, produce fewer reports and table fewer questions.

The election campaign itself has said little about the European parliament. The UMP is celebrating Mr Sarkozy’s handling of France’s EU presidency last year. Its slogan is “When Europe wants to, Europe can.” Translation: the EU can make itself count when led by someone with the energy and determination of the French president.

As election day nears, Mr Sarkozy’s party has sounded unusually rightwing as it raises themes designed to motivate the core vote: the spread of weapons in schools, illegal immigration, and obligations on the workshy.

It has also trumpeted its opposition to Turkish membership of the EU. “Turkey is an issue that truly unites us,” said a UMP activist.

Meanwhile, the opposition socialists began by focusing on Mr Sarkozy’s domestic record before half-heartedly switching to European themes with the same message: that need for a bigger stimulus package and better social protection to combat the recession.

The highlight of the centre-left campaign was a joint rally featuring Martine Aubry, the new leader, and Ségolene Royal, her rival – an attempt to paper over the party’s disunity.