European Parliament elections - Essay Example

European Integration is one of the most important spring motives of modern stage of historical development. Internationalisation of economics, growthof international economic, scientific and cultural cooperation, creation of information network systems, necessity of joint efforts in solving global problems of mankind, formation of universal human values – all these is favourable to overcoming barriers in international cooperation. In political circles of majority of states now one may observe the understanding of fallibility of ideology of national seclusion and self-sustainability within the state borders, artificial separation of any state from international intercourse. Integration processes get their legal implementation through variety of agreements between states on creation of various unions and organisations. European Union belongs to such organisations. One of the basic structures of this organization is the European Parliament. According to the EU legislation it represents people of European Union member-states, “the European Parliament represents the people of the states brought together within the European Community” (Fouloy, 1994, p. 77). The agreement, which assumed the creation of joint Parliament of the signatory states, was a part of the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community, which begun the European Union. The first European parliament consisted of 68 deputies delegated by national parliaments of the signatory states of the agreement. The first meeting, in which 142 deputies have taken part, has passed in March, 1958 in Strasburg, during which parliament has got the name “The European Parliamentary Assembly”, which in March, 1968 has turned in the European Parliament. For today the European Parliament consists of representative of 25 member-states of the European Union, which choose their deputies by universal, equal, and secret voting (this principle has started to work since September, 1976). The quantity of deputies in European Parliament is caused by population of every concrete state of the European Union. The particular feature of elections in the European parliament is preservation of specific features of national electoral systems: each state itself defines the formula of elections, strict terms of their carrying out (the general instruction specifies 4 days in June each 5 years), etc. The electoral legislation, which regulates elections in European Parliament, in many respects, is based on the national electoral systems, which have developed in the states of the European Union. At the same time the aspiration to develop uniform principles of elections for all countries delegating the representatives in the European parliament was repeatedly declared. According to Maier & Tenscher (2006, p. 15), “at least this is true as long as turnout lies within the normal range. However, in recent years it has been stated quite often that turnout in European Parliament Elections (EPE) is no longer in the normal range. This is especially the case in some member countries of the EU like the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, or Germany, where turnout is very low compared to that in national parliament elections (NPE)”. Karlheinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt have distinguished two interrelated classes, or types, of elections. One of them is “generally perceived to be important, sometimes even very important (like, when the pre-electoral support of government and opposition is or seems to be almost equally strong, or when stark contrasts about major policy decisions are characterising the appeals of the contenders, or both); these are first-order elections. First-order elections decide who is in power and what policies are pursued. Every electoral system disposes of a first-order election. But everywhere there are other elections in addition. This other and broader class we have called second-order elections. They are perceived to be less important, because there is less at stake. Examples are not only the sub-national or partial elections some of which have been mentioned before, but also the supra-national election of the members of the European Parliament. For all member-countries of the European Union, the supra-national European Parliament election is an additional second-order national election” (Reif & Schmitt 1980). Now let us consider features of second-order elections. In his work ‘Democracy, social resources and political power in the European Union’ Kauppi distinguishes four characteristics: 1. Politically there is less at stake in these elections than in other national elections. 2. Second-order elections are protest elections, which explain the high level of abstentions. 3. Small and new parties are more successful in second-order elections than in first-order elections. 4. Second-order elections result in a decreased popularity of parties in power (Kauppi, 2005, p. 147). Since May, 1st, 2004 10 more Member states has entered the European Union and the general number of Member-states has reached twenty five (Albi, 2005). The European Union is becoming the leading economic world centre, has sharply strengthening its political influence on a world scene, having united the states, which population is made nearby half milliard people. And all these people have right, which must be efficiently protected. Results of last elections in European Parliament in 2004 testify first of all that political systems of European countries have not developed yet in political system of the European Union, and there is still a strong national component, that probably is an expression of balance between national and supranational. Against the background of elections in European Parliament our hopes for fast moving towards the European federalism and creation of a super-state seem to be utopian. At the same time one can not claim that these results cross out achievements existing today. We observe new dynamics in political system of several countries. For example, results specify that there is certain crisis of the British two-party system, to which we have already got used; in fact at least four parties compete for votes of electors. That is we are witnesses of how the political physiognomy of Europe gradually changes, and it should not be connected directly with enlargement. However, the relative success of euro-sceptics shows that to Europeans it is not so easy to refuse from traditional values, first of all from the certain degree of national identity. Therefore when appeals for deeper integration sound, we see that public opinion basically does not perceive them. We should also take into consideration that the concept of ‘second-order elections has, however, a double meaning. “One meaning relates to importance: elections are rated ‘second order because they are not (regarded as being) as important as others and, in the case of European elections, not as important as national elections. The other meaning relates to the relationship between the two sets of elections: in this interpretation, behaviour at the ‘second-order level of elections is conditioned by what electors want to do at the ‘first-order level: they may for instance want to do at the ‘first-order level: they may for instance want to punish the national government by voting for the opposition at the ‘second-order level, which may indeed be European or local” (Blondel, Sinnott & Svensson, 1998, p.14). If to investigate the reasons why European Parliament elections are often referred to as ‘second-order’ we should admit that it does not testify at all to unavailability of this or that society to membership in the European Union. As to the new member-states, their citizens are simply tired from the European theme. We remember how difficultly passed referenda in some candidate states when in Slovakia and in Poland there were problems to provide 50 percent of turnout. The fact of low turnout on elections in European Parliament unequivocally shows that people up to the end do not understand what European Parliament exists for and what functions carries out this institute. Besides, citizens observe that the European Parliament is not an influential body and plays first of all functions of the all-European dialogue, and its powers are very limited by powers, on the one hand, of European Commission and the European Council and, on the other hand, by powers of national governments of the states. “The primary parliamentary function – improving legislation – can only be undertaken by the European Parliament. We do not want a European Parliament with exclusive decision-making powers, shaped according to the competences of our national parliaments. Rather, we need a Union which takes decisions with a double legitimacy - with the backing of a qualified majority of Member States, represented by their governments, and a majority of the directly-elected European Parliament. There is no battle pitching the European Parliament against national parliaments. There is scope for an objective alliance between parliamentarians, national and European: national parliaments should be responsible for all the basic decisions about the future direction of the Union and should make their respective governments accountable, while the European Parliament should concentrate on its duty to improve Union legislation, and, more broadly, make Brussels accountable” (Academy of European Law, 1999). That is the European Parliament is on a crossroads between national and the all-European bureaucracy. And though it also plays a role of representative body and represents all the nations existing in the Europe, but citizens do not see that this body is influential and greatly influences their life. Changes can appear later when in the Constitution of EU will be claimed precise functions of European Parliament. Then this body would probably influence activity of EU more. But for today we see that positions of the European Parliament and the European Commission can not coincide, and actually actions of the Commission depend on a consensus of the governments of the member-states, instead of on a position in European Parliament. The problem is that the European Parliament has no concrete functions. Nobody knows what laws pass in European Parliament or who and how votes for them, how activities of European Parliament influence our daily life. The reason is that fact that the European Parliament, unlike national parliament, has no opposition that is why it is impossible to personalize a policy of European Parliament. Parties should understand their task of personification and have, so to say, their face in the Europe. To achieve this purpose we need efforts of mass-media. European Parliament elections “have not established a connection between EU citizens and the EU policy-making process. However, if politics inside the European Parliament is already democratic, then allowing more to be at stake in European elections would further increase the accountability of the European Union (Hix, Noury, & Roland, 2007, p. 29). The thing is that we can agree with Thomassen, who claims that “the increased focus on issue voting in recent decades must be linked to three important changes in modern societies”: weakening bond between social background and party preference. process of cognitive mobilization in advanced industrial societies (due to a rise in educational level and political interest, and change in occupation, we can expect that citizens have become more capable to engage in issue voting) the increasing impact of the mass media, and in particular the medias influence on the political agenda during election campaigns (Thomassen, 2005, p. 198). We may conclude with the words of Steunenberg & Thomassen (2002, p. 10), who claim, “yet, as much progress as has been made with regard to each of these three functions, it is clear that neither one of them is fully developed. The European Parliament therefore remains a parliament in search of a role and in search of greater authority and power to control the executive and to shape and determine the legislative agenda of the Union. In this process, the major challenge for the European Parliament is an increase not of its power but of its legitimacy”. Works cited: Academy of European Law. (1999). Collected courses of the Academy of European Law = Recueil des cours de lAcademie de droit européen : 1996. vol. 7, book 1, European Community law. Hague: M. Nijhoff. Albi, A. (2005). EU enlargement and the constitutions of Central and Eastern Europe. Cambridge studies in European law and policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blondel, J., Sinnott, R., & Svensson, P. (1998). People and Parliament in the European Union: participation, democracy, and legitimacy. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press. Fouloy, C. d. (1994). The European Strasbourg register 1994. Dordrecht: M. Nijhoff. Hix, S., Noury, A., & Roland, G. (2007). Democratic politics in the European Parliament. Themes in European governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kauppi, N. (2005). Democracy, social resources and political power in the European Union. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Campaigning for Europe: Media, Parties, and the European Parliamentary Elections 2004, Maier, M., & Tenscher, J. (2006). Campaigning in Europe - campaigning for Europe: political parties, campaigns, mass media and the European parliament elections 2004. Berlin: Lit. Reif, K. and H. Schmitt. 1980. “Nine Second-Order National Elections. A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election results.” European Journal of Political Research 8: 3-44. Steunenberg, B., & Thomassen, J. J. A. (2002). The European Parliament: moving toward democracy in the EU. Governance in Europe. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. Thomassen, J. J. A. (2005). The European voter: a comparative study of modern democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read More