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Last chance to sign written
declarations, last day to submit written parliamentary questions -
the European Parliament election campaign will soon be fully
underway. The final days of the European Parliament session is a
time of mixed emotions, with many MEPs retiring, and others facing
electoral challenge. Some MEP candidates still do not know their
position on their party list - for instance, the Greek and the
Bulgarian Socialists will not know about the composition of their
list before 12 May. Turnout counts!
However, it is certainly time to
stick up for our much maligned European Union! We probably should
not be surprised to discover that the elections are unlikely to
turn on the European issues that impact on day to day life. Instead
in most countries the elections will be fought on the standing of
national or sub-national governments instead of the relationship
with the EU.
The European Parliament has been
criticised as impotent and irrelevant - "of course the European
Parliament does not make the laws that now control practically
every aspect of our lives" wrote one letter-writer to a Scottish
broadsheet, The
Scotsman. This is simply untrue. Every revision of the
Treaties has seen an increase in the power of the European
Parliament in relation to the other institutions. Today the
European Parliament is firmly established as a co-legislator. The
codecision procedure gives the same weight to the European
Parliament and the Council of the European Union on a wide range of
areas (for example, transport, the environment and consumer
protection). Two thirds of European laws are adopted jointly by the
European Parliament and the Council.
Commission
President Barroso acknowledged this week that a
great deal of legislation adopted in the last five years "bears the
European Parliament's stamp", listing areas such as climate change,
energy security, security and freedom, and the internal
market.
The use of new media, the
introduction of a Parliament TV channel and web streaming can all
help make the Parliament more accessible to citizens. But we have
to persuade people that the EU is relevant to their daily lives and
not something removed and distant from them. There is work to be
done here and in the new parliament session we must also return to
the issue of having one seat for the European Parliament based in
Brussels. Within a few weeks on 4 June 2009, voters will
have a unique opportunity to go to polls along with 375 million
fellow European voters to elect both the world’s only directly
elected transnational and multilingual parliament, and the EU’s
only directly elected institution. I hope they will do so. Turnout
counts!
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Editorial - May 2009
