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The European Parliament’s legal experts believe that the establishment of a Union-wide constituency, which would allow all European citizens to elect MEPs from transnational lists, is compatible with the Treaty on European Union (Article 14 (2)), in an opinion issued at the end of January at the request of the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs.
In particular, the lawyers point out that MEPs elected from transnational lists would fulfil the requirement that they represent “the citizens of the Union”, as stipulated in the Treaty of Lisbon. These MEPs would be “even more representative of all Union citizens and of their interests than those elected from national constituencies”, they add in their opinion, which EUROPE has seen. In addition, “the risk that they are biased towards or influenced by national politics is considerably lower compared to candidates elected on a quota of a Member State” and their election campaigns would be “rather more likely to be steered by European topics than by national ones”, they add.
Furthermore, the European Parliament’s Legal Service considers that the creation of a Union-wide constituency is compatible with the Treaty, provided that it allows for the election of a maximum of 46 MEPs. This figure of 46 seats is the current reserve of seats, resulting from the difference between the maximum number of 751 European Parliament seats stipulated in the Treaty and the reallocation of seats that took place in view of the 2019 European elections and in anticipation of Brexit, with the current hemicycle now consisting of 705 seats.
Finally, regarding the allocation of seats, the lawyers are of the opinion that the rule of proportional degressivity would not apply to the Union-wide constituency.
The three main pro-European political groups in the European Parliament - EPP, S&D and Renew Europe - have endorsed the principle of creating a Union-wide constituency for the 2024 elections, in their joint programme document for the second part of the 2019-2024 legislation (see EUROPE 12870/2). Negotiations are currently underway on the number of seats that this constituency would contain, with any agreement to be transposed into the draft ‘Ruiz Devesa’ report on the reform of the EU’s electoral law (see EUROPE 12881/1). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)