Why European Lists are a must

and why it is so difficult to get them adopted – an introduction

The reason the Euro crisis is so persistent is, leading economists argue, the growing mismatch between the European Union’s economic and political weight. Economically the EU may be a world power; politically it still is a dwarf.

Several proposals have been circulating to overcome the problem. One is, to abolish the Euro and reintroduce the Mark, the Drachma and the Franc. The operation would not come cheaply, however. And without the Euro, the crisis might have hit quite a few member states harder. Another option is enhanced political cooperation, at least within the Euro zone, as EU president Herman van Rompuy has been pleading for since he started his term in 2010. Within the European Council, he said in December to the Dutch daily NRC, agreements about a uniform retirement age and a bank tax already are being prepared. The difficulties the Council had in agreeing on a rescue package for Greece, however, prove that progress on this level still is slow. And whatever has been achieved in finances is being outweighed by divergences on issues like migration and energy.

Electoral reform

A third way to restore the balance is, to start at the bottom and reinforce the Union’s electoral foundation. 54 year after its birth as the European Economic Community, and 33 years after the first parliament was elected directly, European elections still take place in a national context, which is why parties basically address national issues instead of common challenges, and more often than not use them to put their own governments to the electoral test. Because the result doesn’t have direct consequences on national policies, an increasing number of voters don’t show up.

If parties were obliged to propose lists with candidates from many member states to the entire EU electorate, advocates of a stronger EU believe, things would be different. Parties would be obliged to address European issues during European elction campagins. And the voters would stop to see those as enlarged opinion polls and start to understand what Europe is about.

Pan-European constituency

The idea of Pan-European lists is not new. And a first step already has been made: the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 gives EU citizens the right to stand in all member states. So political parties can make their lists as international as they like. But they still operate in national settings. They have very little to gain by putting non-national Europeans on their lists, unless those are very well known, so the option has hardly been used. Green parties did so three times: former Italian MEP Monica Frassoni once won a seat in Walloon, and once in Italy; Czech-born Milan Horacek won a seat in Germany, and German MEP Dany Cohn-Bendit, chair of the Greens/EFA, group, has been elected both in Germany (once) and in France (twice).

Adding a pan-European constitutency in which all EU citizens vote for the same sets of candidates, would change that, because parties would be obliged to address an international audience.

Complications

The problem with such a reform is, that it is difficult to get it accepted. For a start, many member states – the UK, France, and Spain are examples – don’t even have national lists and would have difficulties imagining candidates that are not linked to a specific region. Another problem is, that you need a pro-European attitude to see the value, exactly the attitude pan-European lists are supposed to produce. MEP’s are more likely to have it than the national parties to whom they owe their seats, who almost certainly would lose ground to the European political families. Or of government leaders, without whose consent the reform never will pass, because they have been elected to defend their country’s interests.

So it is no coincidence that all formal attempts to get pan-European list introduced, come from MEP’s. The first to do so, was the Greek Christian-Democrat Anastassopoulos, who proposed to have 10 percent of the seats elected through a pan-European constituency. The European Parliament voted in favour, the Council of government leaders didn’t. The second was the English liberal democrat Andrew Duff, whose preport will be voted by the Parliament in October. His bid is more modest: it consists of only 25 seats, which are added to the current 751 so they don’t affect the current division of seats between member states. The candidates are proposed by the European political families, and have to come from at least one third of the member states.

But with nationalism on the rise everywhere, the EU is a lot less popular than 13 years ago. And indeed, by sending Duff’s report back to the drawing board for revision in July, the Parliament gave proof of considerably more scepticism than back in 1998.

Chances of a YES

If Duff and his supporters manage to eliminate enough concerns to convince a majority of their colleagues, however, they now have more chances of getting the principle accepted. In 1998 a veto from one single member state was enough to block an initiative, but since the Lisbon Treaty (2007) a ‘qualified majority’ in the Council is sufficient to get it accepted. And after having been struggling with the Euro crisis for so many months, they might be more willing to think about a way to give the Union amore solid political foundation.

If the Council doesn’t agree, Duff has pointed out, the Parliament has yet another option: if it wants to improve its own functioning, it can also call a ‘convention’, a constitutional assembly, which decides by consensus.

Read also:

• GreenYourope’s interview with Gerald Häfner (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), the Greens/EFA specialist on constitutional affairs and strongly in favour
• Duff and Häfner’s reactions after the report was sent back to the drawing board.
• The debate/workshop on the issue the Supporters’ Network organises during the European Green Summer University in Frankfurt am Oder/Slubice.