HAMBURG, Germany — The European parliamentary elections, long seen as merely a test run for “real” — that is, national — elections later in the year, have been getting an unusual amount of attention this spring. Explicitly anti-European Union forces across the continent could win up to a third of the seats, a possibility that has pro-Europeans officials frantic that the far right, long thought of as the barbarians outside the union’s gates, could now be in a place to demolish it from within.

Notwithstanding this danger, the European Parliament has always been a disappointing institution. It is composed of 751 members from all 28 member countries, but the members represent transnational parties, the idea being that they stand for the interests of the European people as a whole.

Sadly, the European Parliament has never fulfilled its promise to bolster the European Union’s legitimacy as a democratic institution. Rather than a beacon of European democracy, it has turned into a rather dissuasive example of citizen representation gone awry. It should be disbanded, and replaced with a different body, one made up of national representatives who could better balance the interests of each member state with the needs of the European Union. Call it the European Senate.

The Parliament has been around in some form since almost the dawn of the European Union, but it was only in 1979 that European voters were given the right to elect its members. The idea, to bring citizens closer to the lawmaking process, was well intended. But, the European Parliament has not fulfilled that potential. Turnout at European elections has steadily declined, from 62 percent in 1979 to 43 percent in 2014. In Poland, to pick just one example, only 22.7 percent of the citizens thought it worthwhile to cast their votes in the 2014 elections.