MEPs legalise EU symbols through the backdoor

The Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee yesterday (11 September) took the lead in attempting to legalise the use of the 12-star flag and Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ as official Union symbols, a step that the 27 member states failed to agree upon while negotiating the Lisbon Treaty.

When the committee’s draft is adopted in plenary on 1 October, ‘Ode to Joy’, the unofficial anthem of the Union, would have to be performed at the opening ceremony of each new Parliament following European elections and at formal sittings. But the new procedure will only apply to the Parliament and not the other institutions.

The European flag will also be displayed in all Parliament meeting rooms, rather than just in the plenary chamber and outside the building, as it is the case now. In addition, MEPs asked for the motto ‘United in Diversity’ to be reproduced in all official parliamentary documents and for 9 May to be formally recognised as ‘Europe Day’. 

“Symbols are vital elements of any communication process [and] convey an emotional image of the underlying values of the organisations they represent,” reads the draft recommendation adopted by the committee by a majority of a 20 votes to four. 

The text also regrets that the symbols have become a “collateral victim” of efforts made to reach an agreement on the Lisbon Treaty among all 27 member states. 

The Parliament likes to claim a pioneering role for itself in choosing and displaying symbols representing the Union’s unity. Indeed, after the first elections in 1979 it started campaigning for the Council of Europe’s flag to be officially recognised as that of the European Communities. 

The flag, anthem and Europe Day were adopted at the EU summit in Milan in 1985, while the ‘United in Diversity’ slogan became the EU’s official motto in 2000. However, the use of these symbols was never made legally binding. They were included in the ill-fated European Constitution, but following its rejection in France and the Netherlands, EU leaders could not agree to make them part of the Lisbon Treaty, whose entry into force is still up in the air due to the Irish ‘no’ vote in June (EURACTIV 13/06/08)) 

16 EU states, including founding members Germany and Italy but not France, nevertheless succeeded in pushing through a declaration in the treaty’s annex, reaffirming that the flag and anthem “will continue as symbols to express the sense of community of the people in the European Union and their allegiance to it”. 

These symbols would give Europe “a soul” and would help citizens to better identify with the Union, Jo Leinen, the German chairman of the Constitutional Affairs Committee, told EURACTIV. 

He was certain that the plenary would confirm the committee’s vote, and also expressed his hope that the Commission and member states will follow Parliament’s lead. But the Commission said it had not yet decided whether it would take similar measures. 

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