On Tuesday 14 May, the Chair of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European Parliament, Italian Marco Zanni, and the leader of the European party, Belgian Gerolf Annemans, asked the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, to “kindly urge“ the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to admit all political parties to the 23 May debate on the European elections.
On that day, the European Parliament, in collaboration with the EBU, will host a debate between the ‘heads of list’ of the European political parties. According to Mr Zanni and Mr Annemans, the EBU informed the ID party that it would not be allowed to take part in the debate as it did not have a ‘head of list’. “We believe that this exclusion is unacceptable”, stressed Mr Zanni and Mr Annemans in a letter to Ms Metsola, a copy of which has been sent to Agence Europe.
In their view, it would be unfair if a debate on the European elections did not give all the political groups represented in Parliament the right to express their views. In addition, the two politicians believe that the role of the ID political family, the affiliated parties of which are leading in the polls in several Member States, will very probably be one of the subjects of the debate, and that it would be “strange to be the subject of such a discussion without being able to respond to it”.
Mr Zanni and Mr Annemans also point out that two head-of-list candidates from the traditional European parties - Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen for the EPP and Luxembourg’s Nicolas Schmit for the PES - are not standing in the European elections, and that three other political parties have several ‘head-of-list’ candidates, “which, by definition, runs counter to the head-of-list principle”.
The Dane, Anders Vistisen, who took part for ID in the 29 April debate in Maastricht (see EUROPE 13402/17) is available to take part on behalf of ID, they have announced. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)