The European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs responded to questions from the Council of the European Union at the end of January on the reform of EU electoral law as advocated by MEPs (see EUROPE 12944/1).
In particular, in order to make the vote more European, the committee has detailed the functioning of the European constituency, which would allow 28 candidates to be elected on transnational lists, in addition to the usual elections of MEPs taking place at national level.
The envisaged mechanism aims to ensure a geographical balance so as not to favour personalities coming from the most populous countries. Member States would be divided into three groups depending on their population. Up to the first fourteen candidates, inclusion on the transnational list would be by means of trio of candidates, with one personality from each of the three groups. From one trio of candidates to another, there would therefore not be any exclusion relating to the possibility of registering candidates from the same country, say MEPs.
Last autumn, several countries (Latvia, Denmark, Portugal, Ireland, Hungary, Finland, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Sweden) all expressed their reluctance to create a European constituency (see EUROPE 13045/13).
However, time is of the essence. In order to enter into force by the European elections to be held in May 2024, the reform must be unanimously approved by Member States in the spring of 2023 in order to allow time for the rules to be transposed into national law.
The Europe ensemble delegation, the bridgehead in the European Parliament of the French presidential majority, makes the nomination of head of list candidates (‘Spitzenkandidaten’) conditional upon the creation of such a constituency.
See the European Parliament’s replies to the EU Council questionnaire: https://aeur.eu/f/5es (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)