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Under the new plan, the 73 British seats in the European Parliament that will fall vacant after Brexit will be transformed into new seats representing a “a single European constituency”, according to a document submitted to EU’s General Affairs Council in Strasbourg.
The proposal over how to re-allocate the seats, which was tabled by the Italian foreign minister and has been seen by The Daily Telegraph, would enable all the “the European political families to contend them on a trans-national basis”.
In the past, efforts by federalists to create EU-wide MEPs have been shot down as unrealistic by EU member states, but the Italian paper says that Brexit now provides the perfect opportunity to revive the scheme.
In recent weeks there has been high-level backing for the idea, including from Emmanuel Macron, the man who polls suggest is odds-on favouriteto become the next French president in ten days time.
Launching his En Marche! Party last October, Mr Macron said the super-EU seats were “an essential step to bring European democracy to life, to give it a strong foundation and vitality.”
The paper argues that it is “perfectly conceivable, and consistent” with the European Union treaties, that the election of the new MEPs would be “disjointed from national constituencies”. [...]
The alternative would be to cut the seats altogether and shrink the European Parliament or to redistribute them - two options which, the Italian paper notes, will require redrafting of EU rules and spark bitter divisions between Europe’s political groupings as they fight over the new allocations.
Instead, creating a “European Constituency” would be less controversial, and “set the scene for a closer knit European political discourse”, the paper says, as well as enriching “the very notion of EU citizenship and “strengthening the sense of ‘togetherness’ of our nationals”.
It concludes: “It would be a strong political response to Brexit. It would demonstrate that the European project is alive and kicking, and is still backed up by institutional inventiveness and political will.”
As well as Mr Macron, the idea of EU-wide MPs has also been supported by Martin Schulz, the former European Parliament president who is running for the German chancellorship this autumn and leading figures in the parliament. [...]
Gianni Pittella, the president of the Socialist bloc in Parliament, said recently he backed the idea which would facilitate the “creation of a European democratic space.”
And on Thursday, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s pointman on Brexit, gave approval, while calling simultaneously for the 750-seat chamber to be reduced in size. [...]