class= nosel > members of the european parliament. who will shape the eu, as it faces defining challenges. so what are the issues driving this election? and what s foremost in people s minds as they head to the ballot boxes? welcome to europe votes 202a. hello and welcome from sunny lisbon, where we are coming to you from today. i m mark lowen, one of the bbc s europe correspondents. and over the course of this programme, we will bring new reports from across the continent as the election gets under way. but first, what s it all about? elections to the european parliament take place every five years. it s the only directly elected institution of the european union. shaping the bloc s policies, legislation and budgets. voting happens by proportional representation. each country gets a number of members of the european parliament, or meps, relative to its size. the meps sit in transnational groups according to their ideology. so, for example, there s left and right, eurosceptics
prime minister donald tusk is making russia a big issue at the european elections. reinforcing poland s border, he said, was about telling the enemy to stay away. and in polish schools, there are new security drills getting prepared in case of an emergency. first lesson, evacuation. the training is run by soldiers with the territorial defence. it s partly about building confidence in the armed forces, partly learning skills to cope in a crisis. the teenagers we met here had no doubts why they were doing this. we are in danger. i m worried about that the war come to poland. russia is near to us and they could attack us, i think. but fearing moscow doesn t always mean help for kyiv not to those who spoiled this grain
and the schools have been incredible. the polish organizations and government, and the ngos there, including the ones that the u.s. government have involved in. alice, the questions, will they get the scale of response that they need, for the 50 kids in the school that i saw, with the other 20,000 ukrainian kids in other polish schools, and probably another 75 or 80,000 but we don t know where exactly they are in terms of education. yeah you know, among the things you are talking, about these issues, i mean basically, needs medical attention, food, they also have the issue of language, right? these teens you talk to, they don t speak the language there. polish is a slavic lend bridge, so it doesn t really look at the slow look the same for them, and consequently, i believe we have some tapes of you interacting with them. let s play the. for coming from another country but it s everyone s