In June the European Parliament is to vote on a major package of proposals to reform its composition and electoral procedure. Here the Parliament’s rapporteur, UK Liberal Democrat MEP Andrew Duff (ALDE) argues the case for change.
The following commentary was sent exclusively to EURACTIV by Andrew Duff MEP (ALDE; UK), rapporteur for the European Parliament on electoral reform and president of the Union of European Federalists (UEF).
"European unity is at risk. While the Lisbon Treaty greatly increased the competences of the European Union and the powers of its institutions, especially those of the Parliament, nothing much has been done to improve its popular legitimacy.
Turnout in European parliamentary elections continues to decline, from 63% in 1979 to 43% in 2009. Solidarity has been in short supply. Protectionism is too often the first reaction to crises of the euro zone, and to Arab refugees. Taking its lead from fractious governments, popular opinion is all too susceptible to militant nationalism.
When times get tough, the relative democratic weakness of Europe's system of governance is exposed. The European Union is run by elites. Most people freely admit to knowing next to nothing about it. The popular media remains narrowly national.
In tackling EU affairs, national parliaments are frustrated by ignorance tinged with jealousy. They and their political parties have stopped acting as a reliable conduit between public opinion and Europe, resulting in a serious dislocation between the EU's governments and electorates.
At the very time when the EU has become more powerful and more necessary than ever, so it disappears from the daily political lives of most of its citizens.
Limping democracy
The European Union is a unique experiment in building a post-national democracy. There has never been another democratic federal union of international states and citizens. The EU continues to evolve, not least in the field of fundamental rights, yet its political development is lopsided: the democratic leg limps.
It is essential that the reach of Europe's parliamentary democracy should match the scope of its government, which has surely transcended the nation state, of its economy, which is well integrated across national boundaries, and of its courts, which have long since recognised the primacy of EU law.
Unless politics catches up with the European reality, democracy is in peril. Urgent action at EU level is needed to repair a generalised absence of trust between the people and government. As the scale of European integration is now extending into new areas, such as fiscal policy and internal and external security, it is vital that the European citizen is able to locate who does what and why at the federal level.
Voters are often wiser than those who serve them. No intelligent European elector can believe the pretensions of national politicians, who claim to be able to tackle on their own the global challenges of finance, poverty, security or climate. European integration is the common-sense regional reaction to globalisation.
The EU brings values, structure and direction to European integration. Yet the EU is necessarily complex and, because of its size, distant: it is not a simple extrapolation of its member states. Familiar ways and means of doing things within states do not simply transcribe themselves onto the larger trans-national canvas.
New agencies and methods need to be found to ensure that Europe's federal experiment remains profoundly democratic and that those who govern the EU have, in equal measure, the capability to lead and the capacity to be held to account.
Rescuing the political party
Oiling the wheels of democracy is what electoral procedures and political parties are for. At present, both are failing in the EU. The electoral system results in 27 disjointed national election campaigns and renders MEPs distant figures.
Europe's political party system is failing to sustain the project of European unification in a democratic and efficient way. Even if they were willing to concentrate on EU affairs (which they are not), national parliaments, either singly or collectively, are incapable of exercising proper democratic control at the European level.
Europe's single political market needs strong political parties that can work effectively across the internal frontiers of the Union. In politics as in economics, the EU needs now to take action to correct market failure.
Political parties are an essential sinew of democracy, and at the European level that sinew is missing. Genuine European political parties are needed if the anxieties and aspirations of the people are to be well articulated and moderated at the federal level, and if the lively party politics within the European Parliament are to find a larger resonance in the public arena.
To be sure, the European political families have already created formal party organisations which broadly mirror the political groups inside the European Parliament: Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Liberals, Greens, Right and Left.
But these parties are pale forerunners of what they need to become. A major objective of the European Parliament's current package of proposals, therefore, is to galvanise the rapid development of truly European political parties.
The key reform is to introduce a pan-EU constituency in which 25 additional MEPs will be elected. The job of finding and selecting 25 candidates and ordering them on gender-balanced, trans-national lists will fall to these nascent European political parties. At least nine nationalities must be represented on each list. Each voter will have two votes: one for the current national or regional list, the other for the pan-EU constituency.
Campaigns transformed
The changes, if adopted, will transform the next European election campaign. The European dimension will become much more prominent as political parties address topical issues of EU politics and offer the electorate realistic choices about the shape and direction of EU government.
The public will get a more accurate view of how the Parliament works and what it does. Even the media may get engaged in reporting the story that political parties and personalities across Europe are competing with each other for ideas, votes and seats. Some of the champions on the trans-national lists will become well known across national borders. And from those lists might well emerge Mr Barroso's successor as president of the European Commission.
The Duff Report includes at least three other important matters. It seeks to update the EU's system of parliamentary privileges and immunities to better reflect the supranational reality.
It also triggers the negotiations with the Council which are necessary in order to re-distribute the existing 751 seats in the Parliament before 2014 to take account of migratory and demographic changes as well as the need to respect the treaty-based principle of regressive proportionality.
Lastly, it calls on the European Commission to initiate new legislation to make it easier for citizens living in an EU state other than their own to participate in European elections.
Taking the initiative
The Duff Report is the first use by MEPs of their new powers under Lisbon to initiate a revision of the treaties. The package will be sent by Parliament to the European Council, which will have to decide, by simple majority, whether to open an intergovernmental conference to install trans-national lists.
All the proposals, including the extra 25 MEPs (Article 14(2) Treaty on European Union), the revision of the 1965 Protocol on Privileges and Immunities and other changes to primary law (the 1976 Electoral Act), as well as the decision on the apportionment of seats, will require a consensus to be reached among governments and the final agreement of the European Parliament, followed by ratification in each national parliament.
There will be resistance, especially from Eurosceptic national leaders. But it ill-behoves those leaders, be they ever so powerful, to blame the EU for not working well (and holding the Parliament in particular contempt) while, at the same time, refusing to do anything to rectify the problems. Few heads of government can relish the prospect of a constitutional clash with the European Parliament.
Electoral reform is timely, cost-efficient and necessary. Those who care for the future of Europe should support it."
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Leading MEP Andrew Duff has tabled "federalist" proposals to enable future EU treaty revisions to be made with a four-fifths majority of member states, in a bid to bypass the UK's 'referendum lock' on any further treaty amendments.
Duff gave a group of Brussels journalists a copy of a letter he sent yesterday (3 March) to European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, in which he calls for a revision of Article 48 of the Lisbon Treaty.
If Duff's proposal was to succeed, future EU treaty amendments could enter into force if a four-fifths majority of member countries ratify the treaty change, instead of all member countries as is currently the case. Before any treaty change, unanimity at an Intergovernmental conference (IGC) still remains essential.
Duff, a UK Liberal Democrat MEP who sits in the Parliament's ALDE group, made it plain that his intention was to solve "the British problem," as he called it, and to counter the "referendum lock" that Britain put on any future EU treaty changes involving transfers of power to Brussels (see 'Background').
The leading MEP, who is a member of the Parliament's constitutional affairs committee and a well-known federalist, made no secret of the fact that his initiative was inspired by 'the Spinelli draft' – a draft treaty establishing a European Union written in 1984 by Altiero Spinelli, who is consided today as a "father of Europe" and a founder of the federalist movement.
Duff said he was well aware that many countries were alarmed that the UK 'referendum lock' could halt the incremental process which helps to build the European Union.
Asked if it were realistic to expect the UK to back treaty change of this kind, Duff said such a "miracle" was not impossible. "[UK Prime Minister David] Cameron is an intelligent man, who may say 'let's do this'," he said.
Asked by EURACTIV what role Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg might play, Duff said: "Nick Clegg understands my thinking of the matter very well."
Buzek is now expected to refer Duff's letter to the Parliament's constitutional affairs committee, which will produce a report. Duff said that as usual, he expected the EU assembly to be divided between federalists and anti-federalists. The proposal would then be sent to national governments, which may decide to hold an intergovernmental conference and change the treaty.
Duff said he would expect his proposal to be inserted in a package with other treaty amendments that would appear in the meantime.
EU heads of state and government will meet on 24-25 March to agree on 'limited' treaty change in order to enshrine into law a bailout mechanism that has already been used for Greece and Ireland.
In her book-project Florina-Laura Neculai, PhD student at the Catholic University of Leuven, explains European federalism in easily comprehensible terms. The project was supported by the Union of European Federalists (UEF) and is available in 14 languages.
Preface by Dr. Friedhelm Frischenschlager, Secretary-General of the Union of European Federalists:
The literature on federalism has now a short, simple and explicit text. A young author is trying to give an answer to the question: “What Would a Federal Europe Look Like?” to the young audience.
Conducting three fictional interviews with characters that are more or less taken from the European political reality, the author gives a note of originality and dynamism to the literature on European federalism. The author explains what federalism is all about with a very practical approach: the fictional interviews, conducted by a young team of a reporter and a cameraman working for the European Television for Youth, reveal that European federalism has deep roots in history and describe its evolution in time. The book gives precise examples of European policies such as education, employment, health and consumer protection, and tries to explain what would change if Europe were a federal state; and it also shows the strengths a federal European Union would have on the international scene. Furthermore, it gives good arguments for the many advantages of a federal European Union and still leaves it up to the young public whether or not they personally approve of this model or not.
Such initiatives coming from the young generation are more than welcome! Young people should be encouraged to get involved more actively in explaining the complex European issues and particularly the benefits of a federal European Union to the citizens. The federalist vision of a European Union needs to be explained in such a manner that the “man on the street” understands it. This is the main aim of this book and it fulfils this aim. But such an initiative should definitely go hand in hand with more political action.The European Union is currently in a crisis as quite a number of European citizens have lost faith in the capability of the EU to solve the most pressing problems they face today, such as unemployment for example. European citizens need to be better informed about European politics and they should be involved to a greater extent. The constitutional debate should continue and actively involve all citizens. All pro-Europeans and all that have voted in favour of a European Constitution – and the majority of the member states and of the EU’s population have done so – should jointly fight for a European Constitution.
The “reflection period” does not require silence, but more action. For the European project to go on, a synergy of action is necessary. The initiative of the European Commission to improve its communication with the citizens, the socalled “Plan D” (D for democracy, dialogue and debate) can only be a success if the citizens of Europe support it. On the other hand, it is difficult to involve citizens in such a complex process as European affairs.
However, through a greater transfer of power to regions and local authorities, citizens might get a better grasp of Europe and participate more actively in articulating the federal vision for Europe. The process towards a federal future of the European Union must involve the young generation. We have to make sure that they understand the many advantages a united Europe offers. As mentioned in its subtitle, the book “What Would a Federal Europe Look Like?” is a visionary exercise for the young generation, but it can be a very useful source of information and inspiration for all that would like to read a short and dynamic and yet informative document on how a federal Europe could look like.
The book-project is available on the website of the Union of European Federalists (UEF) in