VICIOUS CIRCLE

If your grandpa has nothing to do, send him to the European Parliament (Hast du einen Opa, schick ihn nach Europa!), Deutsche Welle ironised ten years ago about the poor performance of the EU's main legislative body.

All significant initiatives both then and now usually come from the European Council, the EU's highest political body made up of heads of state and government. National parties are therefore thought to send mainly veterans to the European Parliament who no longer have chance of getting significant results at home.

European voters have not demonstrated much interest in elections to the EU parliament for quite a while. Since the first election in 1979 (62%), the voter turnout has gradually decreased up until 2014, with an EU average of 42.6%.

Politicians tend to believe that the main reason for this apathy is a lack of voter awareness of what the European Parliament does and the effect of their decisions on the daily lives of voters.

This is partly true because the outcome of the European Parliament elections has no direct influence on the direction of the EU's political agenda anyway. There are many reasons for this: European Parliament does not form the EU government, powers setting the EU agenda within the Parliament are dispersed among relatively independent committees. And the EU legislative process has such a convoluted system of checks and balances that it is sometimes unclear who is responsible for what.

Thus, it turns out that the EU agenda has no discernible effect on the daily lives of the EU citizens.

In addition, EU election campaigns are led by national politicians who often take debates to national arenas rather than explaining the role of the EU and what they will do in the European Parliament.

As a result, opinion polls show that only half of the respondents think that EU membership is an advantage, while for many EU citizens the European identity is a theoretical concept only.

What do you want?

It would be wrong to claim that the EU leaders do not care about how to get voters to realise that their votes matter for the content of EU policies and that newly elected EU politicians realise that they can have a direct impact on the agenda.

There are regular attempts to do so, but they fail with equal regularity. The final decision should be taken unanimously by all member states of the union. Alas, everyone has their own interests and understanding of what powers and responsibilities should be delegated to EU central bodies.

After a long time pondering the ways of getting out of this vicious circle, European politicians have finally decided to use the reverse logic: ask the voters what they want instead of proposing them something on their own. Ask them how they would be interested in expanding their political activity beyond the national borders to pan-European scale. Especially since the last elections in 2019 showed good results - for the first time in more than 40 years, turnout in the European Parliament elections improved considerably (almost 51%, which is more than 200 million votes).

There seems to be an increased focus on pan-European affairs and this should be taken advantage of.

49 suggestions

The idea of creating a platform with broad representation to discuss reforms needed by the EU is credited to French President Emmanuel Macron. The initiative was born in 2019 as the Conference on the Future of Europe. But largely due to the pandemic, it was launched only in spring 2021.

A digital platform (website) launched to engage the European public has allegedly attracted some 5 million people in the discussions. There were also formed four groups of 800 randomly selected citizens representing the sociological and geographical diversity of the EU. A third of each group consisted of young people aged between 16 and 25. In addition, EU member states organised national citizenship groups based on the same principles.

All these wide-ranging debates resulted in 49 proposals and more than 325 measures to achieve them. These included topics such as climate change, health, a stronger economy, social justice and jobs, the EU in the world, values and rights, the rule of law, security, etc.

Among the main proposals have been giving the EU broad powers in areas such as defence and health, greater integration and faster decision-making by removing the power of veto. The conference also recommended expanding the powers of the European Parliament, including the right to propose legislation (currently only the European Commission has this power).

The European community believes that changing the names of the EU institutions could help clarify the role of each of them, there should be an opportunity to vote for European-level parties and that people should be consulted on extremely important issues through the EU-wide referendums.

On May 6, 2022, the European Parliament approved the draft proposals and on May 9, Europe Day, they were submitted to the EU Council and the European Commission for consideration.

It was promised that the public would get a response to the proposals by autumn this year.

A chance for voters

The European Parliament has also offered an initiative to revise the existing rules for European elections.

According to the proposals, voters would get two votes in pan-European elections - for national (as they do now) and pan-European candidates, respectively. Consequently, 705 MEPs elected thanks to seat quotas based on EU population could be joined by extra 28 colleagues to be elected by European citizens. These 28 can be representatives of any party or movement, provided they can collect the signatures of 0.01% of voters in seven EU states or manage to form an alliance with existing parties in them.

Thus, the pan-European electorate, according to the authors of reforms, will achieve three important and interrelated objectives. European political parties will be strengthened and empowered to elect transnational candidates who will campaign across Europe, not just in their countries of origin or residence. This will contribute to a pan-European political and electoral debate. Finally, as the pan-European lists will be headed by candidates running for the presidency of the EU Commission, voters will have a chance to appoint the head of the EU's highest executive body.

Parliament also wants to address gender inequality, since no woman has been elected in some EU states, despite an overall improvement in the last elections.

The draft also includes a number of other proposals. For example, May 9 would be declared a single pan-European election day. Currently, elections are held from Thursday to Sunday, and each country follows its own national electoral traditions. In addition, every EU citizen older than 16 years must have the right to vote and to get elected after the age of 18. This reduces the age requirement to stand for election in 13 EU member states.

According to proposals, voting through post should always be possible so that, for example, citizens living in non-EU countries can exercise their right to vote.

Also, all citizens, including people with disabilities, should have equal access to elections. According to the European Disability Forum, 14 EU states currently deny people with disabilities the right to vote, and only eight EU countries allow all citizens without exception to run for office.

Ambiguous outcome

Ideally, these changes to the EU Electoral Law should become effective before the next European elections in 2024. But before then, like the proposals made at the Conference on the Future of Europe, they should be approved by the Council of Europe and all 27 EU member states in line with their interests and constitutional requirements. But will national governments be willing to share some of their powers with the EU?

For example, the idea of voting by qualified majority rather than unanimity, as now proposed by the French president and the Italian prime minister to simplify the decision-making process, is not liked by many. Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have agreed to the initiative, but Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Sweden do not yet support it.

Everyone agrees that reforms are necessary. But they are interpreted differently. Until then if grandfather has nothing to do, there is still a place you can send him.