27 March 2014

Making the European elections more democratic and boosting participation – Ground is prepared, say two Commission reports

Two months ahead of the EP elections, two new reports published by the Commission provide an overview of the decisive steps taken to make these elections even more democratic and to bring European politics closer to citizens.

One report analyses how the Commission's recommendations for increasing the transparency and democratic legitimacy of the European elections, made last year (IP/13/215), have been taken up by Member States and political parties. A crucial recommendation was notably to ask European political parties to nominate lead candidates for the post of President of the Commission. A second report looks at the new communication tool of Citizens' Dialogues developed by the Commission over the last 18 months as an instrument to inform people, restore trust in European and national institutions and make citizens aware that their voice does count in the EU. 

"European elections need to be truly European. Citizens need to know how their choice fits into the bigger European picture. For the first time in the history of European integration, a debate has started around clearly designated candidates for the presidency of the Commission. This is the birth of a truly European democracy", said Vice-President Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship. "But democracy isn't just about Election Day. It's about debating Europe's future with people at local level, all year round. We held over 50 Citizens' Dialogues in every EU Member State and found that citizens have a real thirst for discussing European issues face-to-face with politicians. In Europe we need to speak to each other, rather than about each other."

Doing it differently this time around

On 12 March 2013, the Commission adopted a Recommendation calling on European political parties to nominate their candidates for President of the Commission and recommending they display their European political party affiliation. A year on, six European political parties have made their candidates known and are planning to raise awareness about their candidates' programmes. Politicising the elections with top candidates has received widespread support amongst citizens too - the latest "Future of Europe" Eurobarometer survey published this week shows that seven out of ten Europeans would even go further and say that the Commission president should be directly elected by EU citizens.

Thanks to Commission action, Member States also swiftly transposed the EU rules (Directive 2013/1/EU) which are going to make it easier for candidates to stand in their Member States of residence (IP/14/87). All Member States adopted the transposition laws and all but one (the Czech Republic) have already notified such laws to the Commission.

Some challenges remain: The Commission's calls for a single voting day across Europe and for political parties to display their European political party affiliations on the ballots are not yet widely taken up. In the latter case, this is due to the fact that electoral legislation in several Member States does not allow ballot papers to display names of logos of European political parties (see Annex 1).

The Commission will produce a full report including the implementation of its recommendations after the European elections.

Press release with annexes/graphs

© European Commission