30 January 2014

European elections: Still no EPP front-runner; primary 'debacle' for Greens

Commission President candidates

PES

As already reported, at the PES Election Congress in Rome on 1 March, the party will ratify the votes on the nominated candidate Martin Schulz and adopt the election manifesto. Subsequently, Schulz will be officially declared "Common Candidate" and the PES will launch its European election campaign. PES timeline

EPP

The Lithuania Tribune confirmed that Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaitė is mentioned in Brussels among the candidates for presidency of the European Commission, but her chances of taking the post are undermined by the timing of the Lithuanian presidential elections that coincide with the negotiations for Europe’s top positions. Grybauskaitė’s position is consolidated by her current post and her experience in the EC where she was in charge of the EU budget in 2004-2009. 

As reported by European Voice (subscription required), Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship, has announced that she no longer plans to stand for president of the European Commission and that she is backing Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's former prime minister. Reding is expected to lead the Luxembourg Christian Democrats in elections to the European Parliament in May, but she is unlikely to be re-nominated as commissioner.

The centre-right European People’s Party is set to nominate a candidate in March. Lithuanian Conservative MP Audronius Ažubalis told the Baltic News Service (BNS) that the European People’s Party has shortlisted four candidates, namely, Luxemburg’s former PM Jean Claude Juncker, EU’s internal market commissioner Michel Barnier (France), Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Finland’s Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen. 

Greens

Ska Keller (Germany) and José Bové (France) have been selected to lead the Greens in their upcoming European campaign. The two are the winners of the "historic Green Primary", the first ever Europe-wide open online process to select leading candidates for the European elections. Both the Zeit and Spiegel Online, however, report on the debacle of the primary election. The Spiegel calls it an alarm signal for the European elections: it's the first time a party has wanted to determine their top candidate in an open primary election (not even party membership was required), but the participation was meagre - under 0.005 per cent of the European population above the age of 16 participated, only around 20 000 votes were cast. The Zeit speculates that possible reasons for this outcome could have been the fact that a pan-European public such as the Greens envisaged doesn't actually exist, the symbolic nature of the vote as the chances to become Commission president for the winning candidates remain very slim, and possibly data protection concerns and technical issues during the registration process. 

More on the (potential) candidates can be found on Europedecides.

In a recent Tepsa Policy Paper, "Towards a new procedure for appointing the president of the European Commission", Gianni Bonvicini argues that by appointing their own candidate for the post of Commission President, the European political groups see a major stake in the next elections. This new procedure should bring citizens and European institutions closer together and create a new balance within the institutions. The study defines the advantages and disadvantages of this procedure.

Euroscepticism

A new IFOP/Journal du Dimanche poll in France ahead of May’s European Parliament elections puts Marine Le Pen’s Front National in the lead on 23 per cent, the centre-right UMP second on 21 per cent, and President François Hollande’s Socialist Party third on 18 per cent. 

With sharp criticism of the Federal Government and the EU, Germany's Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has launched it's own European election campaign, reports Spiegel Online. A recent Emnid poll for Bild sees the AfD getting around seven per cent of the votes in the European elections in May.

In a blogpost for the Telegraph, Jamie Bartlett, Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the thinktank Demos, observes that eurosceptics of Left and Right are moving closer together. Projections and polls for this year’s election in May are of one opinion: there will be sharp gains for the eurosceptics. Although everyone obsesses over the rise of populist or extreme Right-wing parties, there is a creeping challenge from radical Left-wing parties too. John Wyles, a journalist at European Voice, believes there is "an insurgency from Left and Right against current and further European integration".

In the LSE blog, Ingeborg Tömmel argued that the European Parliament elections are no longer second-order national contests but in fact are essential in shaping European integration. Particularly in times of deep crisis and widespread euroscepticism, the playing field should not be left to those who aim at dismantling the European Union or who perceive it as a superfluous political monstrosity.

In a recent article, European Voice (subscription) called on the EU to motivate the public to go to the polls. With the European Parliament elections just four months away, it is hard to see why any European would bother to go to the polls, except perhaps to cast a protest vote, writes Karel Lannoo, chief executive officer of CEPS. To motivate European Union citizens to vote in a constructive spirit, the functioning of the European Union institutions needs to be openly discussed, and proposals need to be aired for improving the decision-making process to render it more transparent and democratic. 

The European Commission has issued a press release stating that citizens should be able to stand as candidates in another EU country more easily. Under EU rules which should be in place in all Member States as of 29 January 2014, it will be easier for EU citizens living in another Member State to stand as candidates in the 2014 European Parliament elections. The new law was agreed at the end of 2012 (MEMO/12/1020) and is an update of previous rules (Directive 2013/1/EU). 

More on EU elections in Germany