The dawn of a new day for European elections? - Part 2

On Tuesday the 3rd of May, the European Parliament (EP) plenary gathered in Strasbourg adopted a legislative resolution proposing a Council regulation on the direct election of the members of the EP, intended to overhaul the rules currently governing European elections. The draft regulation approved by the EP plenary – by 323 votes for, 262 against, and 48 abstentions – would repeal Council Decision 76/787 and the so-called “Electoral Act” annexed to that Decision. These are the pieces of EU legislation currently regulating European elections, along with Council Decision 2002/772 and Council Decision 2018/994, both amending the 1976 "Electoral Act”.

According to the special legislative procedure applying to the adoption of rules concerning the election of Members of the EP (MEPs), the Council regulation the EP’s legislative resolution proposes will now have to be taken into examination by the Council, any proposed amendment will need to be approved by the EP and then the Council will need to reach a unanimous agreement on the final text. The new provisions would then come into force only when, and if, all Member States approved them, based on their constitutional requirements. It cannot be ensured, therefore, that the reform the plenary has agreed to will turn into law, and that the rules currently governing European elections will actually be overhauled. But what kind of change would the EP’s proposal bring about, if it succeeded in getting unanimously approved by the Council?

Making European elections actually European

As the EP’s resolution effectively points out, European elections currently lack a truly European dimension. Due to the differences existing among the electoral systems adopted by each Member State (despite the common principles which they have to conform to), to the fact that elections take place on different days and, more importantly, that votes are cast for national parties, each presenting its list of national candidates, citizens tend to perceive European elections somewhat as second-order national elections. Also, since a truly transnational public sphere still hasn’t taken shape, issues dominating the public debate preceding the elections – and deciding their outcome – tend to be of national interest and to vary among Member States.

Making European elections actually European is the EP’s proposed reform’s main aim. In the resolution accompanying the proposal the EP indeed stated to be suggesting a reform of its electoral procedure “with the goal of shaping, in a concrete way, a European public sphere” and to consider it essential “to improve the transparency and democratic accountability of the Parliament, by strengthening the European dimension of the elections, notably by transforming the European elections into a single European election […] as opposed to a collection of 27 separate national elections, which is the way that European elections are organised today”. More uniformity would ensure equality among all European citizens and a well-functioning, less chaotic, electoral procedure would promote their participation (thus increasing electoral turn-out), by building trust and increasing their confidence in the possibility of making a difference by voting.

Overall, a truly European public sphere, greater democratic accountability of the Parliament and equality among citizens and an increased electoral participation can be said to be the goals informing the EP’s proposed reform. The question is how: how does the proposal intend to achieve them?

The how of it all: establishing a Union-wide constituency

The most notable reform the EP’s proposal provides for is that of the establishment of a Union-wide constituency – meaning a single constituency formed of the entire territory of the Union – electing a total of 28 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from pan-European lists. This measure is presented by the EP, in its resolution, precisely as a means to enhance the transnational dimension of European elections, to help a truly European political space take shape and to make the elections to the European Parliament truly based on European issues and not on issues of exclusively national interest.

According to the proposal, the remaining MEPs (art. 14.2 TEU establishes that the total number of MEPs shall not exceed 750, plus the President) would continue to be elected on a national basis. Just as it currently happens, each Member State would be assigned a certain number of seats, degressively proportional to their population, and each would decide whether to establish a single national constituency or to subdivide their territory differently – in Italy, for example, the electoral system designed for European elections provides for the partition of the territory into 5 constituencies. Consequently, every European citizen would have to express two votes in European elections, one to elect representatives in their national constituency and one to elect MEPs in the Union-wide constituency.

The proposal designs a uniform electoral procedure to be applied, all over the EU, for the election of the 28 MEPs assigned to the Union-wide constituency, whereas each Member State would continue to apply their desired electoral procedure for the election of the pool of MEPs they are assigned. National electoral procedures, however, would still need to conform to a set of common principles, that the EP’s draft regulation defines – largely restating the ones already in force.

There are two other innovations, introduced by the EP’s proposal, that cannot pass unnoticed. The first is the establishment of a single, official, Election day: the draft regulation provides for European elections to be celebrated in every Member State on the 9^th of May (Europe Day) of the last year of every parliamentary term. That’s because “a truly pan-European election requires a common European voting day”.

The second notable innovation concerns the age at which citizens acquire the right to vote and to stand for election in European elections. Currently, the minimum age varies across the 27 Member States from 16 to 18. In order to ensure equality and to avoid discrimination among European citizens, the EP’s proposal proceeds to establish a single harmonised age to vote (16 years old) and to stand as a candidate (18 years old).

How would elections actually work in the Union-wide constituency?

Whereas in the national constituencies Member States are free to adopt any system of proportional representation they commonly use – which means lists can be both open (citizens get to express their preference when voting for a certain party) and closed (no preference can be expressed and candidates are elected following the order in which they appear on the list), the uniform electoral procedure the draft regulation describes for the election of the 28 MEPs assigned to the Union-wide constituency calls for the application of the closed list system. Also, no minimum threshold for the allocation of seats is allowed in the Union-wide constituency, whereas at national level Member States may set minimum thresholds, though these must never exceed 5% of the valid votes cast (in constituencies comprising more than 60 seats a threshold must be set, and it should be greater than 3,5% of the valid votes cast).

The draft regulation then describes with great detail how pan-European lists should be formed and appear. First and foremost, any European electoral entity – meaning a European political party, a European association of voters, a European coalition of national political parties and/or of national associations of voters, a European electoral coalition or a political alliance – can present its Union-wide list. On it, the electoral entity must indicate a number of candidates equal to that of the seats assigned to the Union-wide constituency – 28, for the first election following the entry into force of the regulation (then, the number of seats will have to be determined by a European Council decision).

In order to ensure gender equality, the regulation provides for the use of quotas or zipped lists in the EU-wide constituency. More generally, it calls on parties to aim at a composition of the EP that reflects the diversity of the EU when selecting their candidates for election.

Concerning the order in which candidates from all over Europe appear on Union-wide lists, a peculiar mechanism has been devised by the EP to ensure geographical balance. Lists are to be divided in sections of three slots and each slot is to be filled with a candidate coming from one of the three groups among which Member States are distributed depending on their population. Group A gathers Member States whose population falls between 37,9 million and 83,1 million people (Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland), whereas Member States in Group B have a total population of 6,9 million to 19,3 million people and those in Group C can count half a million to 5,8 million inhabitants. The second annex attached to the proposal offers a practical example of how this kind of distribution would work.

Despite the draft regulation not officially requiring it, in its resolution the EP calls on European political parties – and on all other entities taking part in the electoral competition – to indicate their lead candidate for the post of President of the Commission as the first candidate on their list. This would allow EU citizens to actually vote for their preferred candidate to the Presidency of the Commission – something that would further increase the President’s accountability and legitimation, were the Spitzenkandidaten procedure to be applied.

Cover image_ Dominique Hommel, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/20160301_EP-032997A_DHO_020_RESIZED_S.jpg)