The GUE/NGL Group’s candidate for the European Parliament presidency, Eleonora Forenza from Italy, believes that the difficult socio-economic situation in Europe requires an in-depth reform of how the European Union works.
“We advocate a radical change in European policies and in how the European Union works. There can be no real democratisation of the EU without the redistribution of income and work”, Forenza told EUROPE on Tuesday 10 January.
She described her candidature, which is promoted unanimously by the radical Left group, as a little crazy, “in the ironic and positive sense of the term”, “because my experience comes more from social movements than from politics”.
By choosing a young woman from Puglia, who was born in Bari in 1976, the GUE/NGL Group wants to highlight the increasing divide between the North and South of Europe due to policies of economic austerity, and it wants to make the Mediterranean question a key issue. “Five thousand people died in the Mediterranean in 2016. Either Europe is able to become a land of welcome that recognises the rights of migrants, or the European project is doomed to failure”, Forenza warned.
The radical Left candidate wants the Parliament to have a real power of initiative and decision-making within the European institutional architecture. She said the way the Parliament works internally needs to be changed, mentioning its rules of procedure, as amended by the Corbett report at the end of 2016 (see EUROPE 11688). In her view, rights should be guaranteed for all MEPs and not only the biggest political groups. Furthermore, the Parliament needs to be more open to European citizens, rather than to economic lobby groups.
When asked about the unsuccessful attempt to transfer Five Star Movement (M5S) MEPs from the eurosceptic EFDD Group to the ALDE Group (see EUROPE 11699), Forenza stated ironically that the M5S slogan was no longer ‘we are all equal’ ('uno vale uno') but ‘one group is worth another’ (‘uno vale l’altro')! In her view, the rejection of the M5S MEPs by a majority of Liberal MEPs “results in a loss of much credibility both for the M5S and for Guy Verhofstadt” – the leader of the European Parliament’s ALDE Group, who is himself a candidate for the European Parliament’s presidency. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)