International

No, the elections for the European Parliament have not been brought forward and are still planned for 2014. Nevertheless they’re already being spoken of in the EP in an excited manner. There is now a proposal to have two lists: one, as now, a national list with national parties. But in addition there would be, were the proposal adopted, 25 seats (from the existing total of 754) reserved for European candidates. As if anyone wanted such a thing. In the EP it’s still not understood that ‘Europe’ for most people is a somewhat abstract concept, just as would be ‘European’ parties. So we shouldn’t be acting as if the public was indeed interested in European candidates instead of national candidates.

The European Parliament has deficiencies, the most important of which is perhaps indeed that it hardly keeps people informed about its activities, let alone making them feel involved. Perhaps therefore there are quite a few Euro-MPs who live in a Brussels ivory tower and think that most people in Europe have long seen the EU as their ‘fatherland’ or, if not, that they should be informed as soon as possible about the blessings of 'Europe '.

What these same federalists, because that’s what they are, actually want is to get rid, as quickly as they can, of the emphasis on national parties in the EP. So the SP’s European Parliament team is officially known as the SP official ‘delegation’, whereas the international political group to which the SP belongs, the United European Left-Nordic Green Left (GUE-NGL) is our ‘group’. You’re often put under pressure by the Parliament to deal with matters via your own political group, though fortunately the GUE-NGL is a confederation, a loosely cooperative relationship, and not a real political party.

The federalists now want to go a step further. What they’d really like would be to transform the European Parliamentary elections into a contest between the ‘European People’s Party’ (i.e., the centre-right), the Socialists and Democrats (centre-left), and so on. National parties would then play no further role and everyone would have to vote for whoever was on the list, an Italian, perhaps, or a Czech, wherever you were. The current proposal to make 25 seats ‘European’, completely separate to any national parties, is a first step on the road to such a system. In my view this would only lead to confusion and, moreover, it proceeds from a false assumption of European unity. Not for nothing is the EU’s slogan ‘unity in diversity’. We should be preserving this diversity, and therefore laying the emphasis in the EP as now on national parties, even if these are known as delegations within groups. In any case I’ll be voting against this proposal and if I understand correctly then happily so will many others. Even if it’s adopted by the EP, the member states will still have to agree to it, and I don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future. I hope therefore that pretty soon we won’t hear any more of this proposal for 25 ‘European’ MEPs.