In this paper, the voter turnout at European Parliament elections is analysed. The question is addressed whether the individual act of voting in the established and new EU member states - or rather established and new democracies - can be explained by the same variables or whether different determinants are at work. The analyses are based on the European Parliament Elections of June 2009: This election did not only show low turnout rates, but also significant differences in the level of the turnout rates between the individual member states. To be able to explain these differences, a theoretical model was developed which refers to the following five dimensions: the political system of the EU, the European political community, the voter mobilisation during the election campaigns, habitual voting and the individual perception of the country’s economic situation and one’s own situation. It is assumed that different levels of deficits in these five dimensions explain the differences between the two groups of countries. Here, Germany and Poland function as exemplary cases. The empirical analyses are based on the comprehensive dataset of the European Election Study 2009 (ESS), the data of the Voter Study was used here. Not all of the hypotheses could be confirmed in the paper, only some of the independent variables still had a significant influence on the voter turnout at European elections in the multivariate model. For Germany, the results show that the voting norm and the voter mobilisation have a stronger effect on voting than the utility-driven side (effectiveness) of the election. In the second model, which was calculated for the Polish people, only two of the independent variables have proven to be significant. Only the individual assessment of the effectiveness of the election as well as the internalised voting norm have an influence on casting a vote, whereas the latter has a weaker effect. Hence, the utility-driven side of the election dominates in this model. It can be shown that the differences in the level of the turnout rates in the two countries results from different levels of deficits in the two dimensions of the political system and habitual voting. The deficits are more pronounced in Poland and thus account for the lower turnout rates. Moreover, it can be concluded that the assessment of the effectiveness of the European election has a stronger influence on voting in Poland than in Germany.