Interview: National politics to dictate 2009 EU elections

Politicians standing in the EU elections next year will have more to gain from keeping their national parties happy than campaigning on common European themes, says Sebastian Kurpas, an analyst at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels.

“The lists are determined by national or regional parties. So, for those who want to have a good place on the list, there is an incentive to be on good terms with the national parties and that’s natural,” Kurpas said in an interview with EURACTIV. 

The problem is that elected MEPs have little incentive to do well once they are in the job, Kurpas says. “You can be a very successful MEP who works very hard at European level but it might not in the end be determinant to having a top position on the list. In the end, it will be more important to be in good terms with the national parties that draw up the list.”

The absence of a true “European public sphere” with a common identity, culture and media has often been singled out as a reason for the lack of a European spirit in EU election campaigns. According to Professor Cees Van der Eijk of the University of Nottingham, this has transformed European elections into “second-order national elections” (EURACTIV 14/04/08).

As a result, the outcome of European elections is always hard to predict. “You have 27 national public opinions which can turn, and people tend to make choices more on national than European issues,” Kurpas explains. “So it is very difficult to predict […] You really have to look at the 27 national debates.”

According to Kurpas, a possible way out of the impasse would be to introduce a system whereby a certain number of MEPs are elected directly, without having to go through the lists drawn up by parties at national level. Such a system, he argues, would “give an incentive to campaign on your achievements and on your plans at the European level”.

“It would not be the European parties determining the mandate but the candidate himself with a certain share of votes in a given constituency,” Kurpas explains.  

However, he recognises that this is “not realistic in the short term” and recommends only opening a limited number of seats to such contests.

To read the interview in full, please click here. 

Read more with Euractiv

National parliaments prepare for bigger role in the EU

Members of parliament from across the EU, meeting in Brdo (Slovenia) on 7-8 May, have begun developing an embryonic strategy to deal with new provisions contained in the EU's Lisbon Treaty that would significantly increase their powers within the EU.