The First Eurovote
MOLLISON, ANDREW
NEW LEGITIMACY The First Eurovote byandrewmollison EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT IN STRASBOURG Last month, 110 million people from the nine Common Market countries chose 410 representatives to the world's...
...The effectiveness of the younger MPs in working together on such matters could determine as well the prospects for a unified Europe...
...The previous European Parliament sat in six transnational political groupings...
...Socialists, 32.8...
...In Belgium, long the battlefield for other countries' wars, a Europe non ticket attracted less than 1 per cent of the vote, mostly among nationalist Flemish and Wallonian factions...
...Barbara Castle of England...
...and, most important, will have veto power over the discretionary 17 per cent of the $12-billion budget for the Common Market, Euratom and other European Community entities...
...Christian Democrats, 26.8...
...There remains, though, the question of how the popularly elected Parliament will go about achieving European unity...
...Unaffiliated members would hold 5.4 per cent of the seats (up 3.4...
...Ecologists running on "green tickets" in several countries received as much as 11 per cent of the vote in scattered areas (frequently near nuclear power plants...
...Because of this strong showing, major parties are already moving to co-opt the environmentalists by advocating more cautious nuclear and more ambitious clean air and water policies...
...Even some of the most jaded among the 500-plus reporters covering the event were moved...
...Reverend Ian Paisley of Northern Ireland (who believes that the European Economic Community is a Catholic plot...
...But—like national parliaments that have extracted ever greater concessions from monarchs—the European body could seize new powers...
...Congress...
...Veil, Thorn and Tindemans are front-runners for the presidency...
...Some independents might join one of the groups having 5 per cent or more of the Parliament's seats, since this would entitle them to a paid staff...
...Another 2 per cent were nonaffiliated...
...Progressive Democrats, 5.6 (down 3.5) and Liberals, 9.7 per cent (down 1.9...
...Conservatives, 9.1...
...The old Parliament—whose members were appointed by their governments—was little more than a debating society...
...Significantly, only 88 of the 410 list themselves as attorneys or civil servants...
...Similarly, regionalists in Scotland, Greenland and Northern Ireland captured only scattered seats...
...Although they nowhere received the 5 per cent nationwide needed under the proportional voting to win election, they threw a scare into the governing parties—especially in West Germany, where Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's Social Democrats dropped an embarrassing 1.8 per cent to 40.8...
...The first tests will come within the narrow range of issues that preoccupy the European Economic Community today—industrial policy, trade, farm and foreign aid...
...No doubt it will also continue the weekly "question hour," introduced a few years ago at the suggestion of the British delegates to make individual ministers accountable...
...Christian Democrats, 26.1 (down 0.7...
...Si-mone Veil, Francois Mitterrand and Georges Marchais of France...
...Progressive Democrats, 9.1...
...In all other respects, however, the elections are probably poor indicators of national political trends...
...will have to rely on persuasion to achieve cooperation among its sovereign member states...
...If the delegations again combine according to platform, the percentages for two groups would be larger: Communists, 10.7 per cent (up 2.1) and Conservatives, 15.4 per cent (up 6.3...
...And the transnational platforms adopted prior to the June balloting by the Communist, Socialist, Christian Democratic, and Liberal coalitions mention a whole array of new concerns: the status of women, vocational training for immigrants and youth, and regulating big corporations to clean up the Continent's most used and polluted waterway, the Rhine...
...tion as independent economic units and too large to inspire fervent patriotism...
...Roughly from Left to Right, they were: Communists, 8.6 per cent...
...For most of the participants endorsed European unification...
...As the tallies came trickling in via computers to election central in Brussels, they took time to tuck away a few souvenirs—window stickers, posters, pamphlets and printouts—muttering that these were just "for the children...
...The governing parties dropped to second place only in West Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg...
...In France, ambitious Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac ?impossible but irreplaceable," one Gaullist colleague called him—had to beat down an internal party rebellion after his anti-Europe tactics laid an egg...
...Gaston Thorn of Luxembourg...
...For the election results closely followed recent national voting patterns in the nine countries...
...And that democratic precedent—rather than the ups and downs of the international and national factions competing in the campaign—is what history will remember about the June 7-10 vote...
...During that time, too, their ranks may be swelled by the entry into the Common Market of Greece, Spain, Portugal, and perhaps Turkey...
...NEW LEGITIMACY The First Eurovote byandrewmollison EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT IN STRASBOURG Last month, 110 million people from the nine Common Market countries chose 410 representatives to the world's first popularly-elected international legislature —the European Parliament...
...Of the parties that took a strong "anti-Europe" stand—the British Labor Party, the French Gaullists and Communists, and rebels from the main Danish parties—only the Danes did well, picking up one-third of their country's vote...
...Apparently, many who oppose a united Europe decided not to take part in the parliamentary election altogether...
...Not surprisingly, the individuals voted into office include many familiar faces, and in the Parliament's first year attention will undoubtedly center on these celebrities...
...With fixed five-year terms, salaries equal to those of their national legislators, expense accounts, and staffs, the Euro-MPs will have both the means and the motivation for expanding their roles...
...and Liberals, 11.6 per cent...
...The new Parliament starts out, though, with the same charter as its appointed predecessor...
...In Britain, pro-Europe Conservatives won 60 of 81 seats, while six of Labor's 17 places were taken by Laborites who ran on the Socialist Internationalist pro-Europe platform...
...In other words, it will have limited taxing powers...
...But the widespread confidence registered in intra-Euro-pean cooperation reflects the loosening loyalties to existing nation states, many of which are too small to funcAndrew Mollison, chief political writer lor the Cox Newspapers, covered the recent European elections...
...Regular churchgoers, inspired by a get-out-the-vote appeal made by Catholic bishops on election eve, formed a larger than normal portion of the electorate...
...They would especially like to see American-style committee hearings to bring issues into public consciousness, to audit the performance of the European Community's executive agencies, and to press for fiscal policy reforms...
...The organization's most ardent advocates hope that it will function like the U.S...
...the others—including 43 journalists, 22 farmers and 27 blue-collar workers—may see themselves as less bound by precedent...
...In fact, despite some slippage in percentages, the party that won the most recent national election led the June Euro vote in Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, and Great Britain...
...The numbers would dip for the other four: Socialists, 27.1 per cent (down 5.7...
...There were disproportionately few low-income and blue-collar voters—with the Left-leaning segments of these groups particularly underrepresented...
...Leo Tin-demans of Belgium...
...A partial list includes: Former Prime Minister Willy Brandt, Franz-Joseph Strauss and Otto von Habsburg of Germany...
...and Italy's Enrico Ber-linguer and Emilio Columbo...
...Many enthusiasts also believe Parliament should take its cue from Congress and build coalitions rather than depend on strong party control to reconcile regional, ideological and class differences...
...Yet it is the young, untried members who make up the majority and will decide the direction of the Parliament in the five years before the next election...
...When the new one meets on July 17 in Strasbourg, France, it will have greater legitimacy and a mandate for flexing its muscles in an unprecedented way (even though the 61 per cent turnout disappointed Eurocrats who had hoped that 75 per cent of the 180 million eligible voters would cast ballots...
...Still, it is unlikely that the next few years will see any radical departures...
...by a two thirds vote, will be able to fire the European Commission —its executive branch—en bloc...
Vol. 62 • July 1979 • No. 14
