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The European Parliament: the Significance of Direct Election

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Michael Steed
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Extract

THE POSSIBILITY THAT THE PARLIAMENT OF THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN Community may, wholly or in part, be elected directly within the next few years must excite both advocates of European unification and students of that curious political phenomenon, the European Community. The event is still exceedingly problematical; no attempt is made here to assess just how much so. But the demand for direct election, and specific proposals to that end, have been actual for just over a decade and are worth analysing both as they relate to the possible future event and as they relate to other known factors – the existing state of organized political forces in Western Europe and the role of elections in the political life of member-states.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1971 , pp. 462 - 476
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1971

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References

1 The writer perhaps ought to state that he falls into both categories.

2 Thus in Coudenhove‐Kalergi, R. N., Pan‐Europa, Vienna, 1923 Google Scholar.

3 Article 138, §3: The Assembly shall draw up proposals for election by direct universal suffrage in accordance with a uniform procedure in all Member States. §4: The Council, acting by means of a unanimous vote, shall determine the provisions which it shall recommend to Member States for adoption in accordance with their respective constitutional rules.

4 The report to the European Parliament and the convention adopted was published in October 1960 by the Publications Services of the Communities as Vers l'éfection directe de l'Assemblée parlementaire européenne. An English translation of the report and the convention, together with the debate in the European Parliament, appears in The Case for Elections to the European Parliament by Direct Universal Suffrage: Selected Documents published by the Official Publications Office of the European Communities in September 1969 (pp. 22–245).

5 Strictly speaking the convention provided for a common date (a Sunday) with national discretion on geographical or traditional grounds to have an alternative polling day on the day before or the day after.

6 Pamphlet: Vers l'élection au suffrage universal direct de l'Assemblée Parlementaire Européenne, published by the Mouvement européen.

7 Op. cit., p. 7.

8 Dehousse, F., 'Des élections européennes en 1962?' in Communes d' Europe, 03, 1960 Google Scholar.

9 Pryce, R., The Political Future of the European Community, London, 1962, p. 90 Google Scholar.

10 Article 175 provides that institutions of the Community may refer a case where, in violation of the Treaty, the Council fails to act to the Court of Justice ‘to have the said violation placed on record’.

11 Thus the French members of the study group which drew up the European Movement's proposals argued that making the date of the election of the French delegation to the European Parliament coincide with another election (they suggested the municipal elections in France) was necessary in order to avoid massive abstention and to that end opposed a common date for the election.

12 See footnote 11, p. 467.

13 Birke, W., European Elections by Direct Suffrage, Leyden, 1961. Part 3.Google Scholar

14 This characteristic of the single‐member seat system is not widely recognized. The tendency to produce false identification of parties in certain regions can be very clearly seen if the results of the 1970 British general election are broken down by regions:

Because the United Kingdom is, apart from Northern Ireland, a well integrated state this gross distortion of party support in certain regions does not matter when it balances out at national level. But in a nascent federation in which an integrating party system had yet to grow up, it could prove disastrous.

15 Coombes, D., Politics and Bureaucracy in the European Community, London, 1970, PP. 317–18Google Scholar.