PES Manifesto

A couple of ideas about democracy in the European Union

Published Friday, May 30, 2008 at 16:21
by jose reis santos (426 views and 0 comments)

Citizens participation in the European Union democracy is fairly weak and it continues declining election after election (63% overall in 1979, 61% in 1984, 58.5 in 1989, 56.8 in 1994, 49.8 in 1999 and 45.6 in the last 2004 elections). Since the vote is compulsory in Belgium, Italy, Luxemburg and Greece, only Ireland, Cyprus and Malta present a positive turnout.

What can we do to change this? It is important to keep on the track of the idea expressed on the «European Democracy and Diversity» paper that suggests that the PES should present a candidate for the European Commission Presidency selected amongst all the PES national parties.

The European campaign caravan idea should also be encouraged. This campaign would be lead by the PES candidate for the European Commission Presidency and by several candidates to the EP coming from different European countries. The caravan should have a political rally in all the countries holding elections so local candidates would join it and campaign together. Another interesting idea is the one that recommends a more intense political miscegenation between PES parties.

Advantages are evident: the concept would be appealing to media and it would be much easier to present a Portuguese candidate to the Italian electorate.

We want to create an electoral European level to complement national elections. This European electoral level will eat circa 15% of the national MEPs and will present 95 MEP to be elected. This European list, closed, would have to gather candidates from all the countries. There will be a 10% threshold in order to allow the big parties to elect more candidates (as one of the aims of this suggestion is to create stronger European political parties) and mandates distributions will be proportional using the d’Hondt distribution method.

In our simulation the national countries would elect 637 MEP and the European electoral level 95, with the big countries making the more significant contributions. These modifications would have, at least, two immediate effects: (1) the European political parties would have to organize themselves and present a European list leading this event to the consolidation of a European party system and (2) people would have to pay attention to the European political debate level, as they would have a dual vote (national and European).

Of course none of these suggestions by itself would change the relation between European citizens and European institutions, but put forward they might help minimizing the gap between them both.

Tags: blogger of the week, democracy, diversity, EU, political parties