essays Europe’s parliament: Reform or perish? By Denis MacShane What are we going to do with the European Parliament (EP)? Such a question is normally the beginning of an anti-European diatribe. Not for me. I have spent every year since the first direct elections in 1979 to the Strasbourg Assembly defending its role and purpose. I have knocked on doors in campaigns and defended members of the European Parliament (MEPs) against the gravy-train accusations. As a parliamentary private secretary and a minister at the Foreign Office I worked to integrate MEPs into Britain’s political networking in Europe. I regularly visited the giant EP buildings in Brussels and Strasbourg which contrast to the more homespun modesty of the US Congress or the intimacy of the UK’s House of Commons. But the size of a parliament building does not equate to power or legitimacy. Has the time come for proEuropean defenders of the EP to say that it needs reform? All democracies, mature and new, re-examine periodically the way their parliaments are formatted, their size, their mode of election, the composition of their members, their powers in relation to other legislatures and whether they have the confidence of their electorate. Britain has just begun a process of reducing the number of MPs, altering constituencies, and holding a referendum on its voting system. Why should Strasbourg be exempt from such a re-examination? The EU is democratic. But is it a democracy? It cannot join the UN or the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe because it is not a state. But if it is not a state why does it need a legislature? Perhaps the time has come to invite the EP to accept its sui generis nature and ask MEPs to consider if they might seek a new relationship with the citizens of Europe? The worrying and inescapable fact is that participation in elections to the EP has gone down even as membership of the EU has gone up. Indeed, participation has decreased in almost exact ratio to the powers the EP has demanded and obtained in successive EU treaties. Today six out of ten European voters stay at home on the day they should elect MEPs. On present trends, after three or four more Strasbourg elections – say by 2029 – voter participation will be a little above 20 per cent and the Parliament will have lost all legitimacy. In addition, serious questions have now been asked about the composition of the Parliament. This may be unfair on the majority of MEPs who serve diligently and work hard on committees trying to make sure EU legislation and the policy statements of Strasbourg are coherent. Nick Clegg, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the country’s Liberal Democrat Party, has described the Conservative Party’s new allies in the EP as “nutters, anti-Semites, and homophobes” and Michal Kaminski, the Polish leader of the new group, chosen personally by David Cameron, resigned early in 2011 because of “extremism” amongst his colleagues. Even allowing for the hyperbole of an election campaign, Clegg has a point. The EP has become home to some very odd politicians, often at the far fringe of politics, who would have no traction at home but can use Strasbourg to gain legitimacy. Who can forget Ian Paisley, in the days of his extreme politics, hurling bigoted abuse at the Pope, or Jean-Marie Le Pen using his EP immunity to advance his extreme far-right views? The UK’s racist party, the British National Party (BNP), has little purchase in national politics and, according to BNP observers, is in meltdown as the even more obnoxiously racist English Defence League organises street protests against British Muslims. But the BNP’s leader and its chief ideologue are both MEPs.
Centre for European Reform 14 Great College Street London SW1P 3RX UK
T: 00 44 20 7233 1199 F: 00 44 20 7233 1117 info@cer.org.uk / www.cer.org.uk