Enrique Viguera
Ambassador of Spain
Between 6 and 9 June many Europeans are called to vote in the European Parliament elections. After the elections in the Basque Country and Catalonia there may be a certain electoral weariness in Spain, but these are important elections, where a large part of what we are and what we will be is at stake, and that is why we should not let the occasion pass without exercising our right to vote.
The European Parliament has faced a series of scandals that have not helped to improve its well-deserved prestige, but on the contrary. Recently, the so-called Qatargate’ affair, involving alleged corruption, money laundering and involvement in a criminal organisation by MEPs, former MEPs and European Parliament staff, has come to light, requiring police intervention, and has shown the appalling failure of internal monitoring and warning mechanisms. No matter how much we try to prevent such situations in the future, which I have no doubt we will, the damage has already been done and the consequent cost in terms of image has already been incurred.
A recent transnational investigation involving some 20 media outlets from 22 EU Member States (‘MEP Misconduct Investigation’) revealed that 163 MEPs had a history of scandals, just over a fifth of the current 704 MEPs. The increase in the number of independent MEPs from the beginning to the end of the parliamentary term, from 28 to 50, is mostly due to problems they have had and have therefore been expelled from their respective political groups without finding another one to take them in (such as the Hungarian Fidesz or Junts per Catalunya). It is precisely these MEPs who are not registered in any political group that bring in the most income apart from what they receive from the European Parliament. But there are also individual incidents involving MEPs who have made bad news in the media, such as the one accused of spying for Putin, another who described members of the LGBT movement as perverts, another convicted of domestic violence, another accused of assault and rape and finally, among the most pathetic cases, that homophobic Hungarian MEP caught in a gay orgy in the middle of a COVID confinement.
Anecdotally or not, the internal pressures to get on party lists must be considerable because many activists aspire to a seat in the European Parliament given that they are guaranteed an income of more than double what they would earn in their national parliaments, with income received from other sources being compatible.
Because of the distorted image and the (incorrect) belief that the European Parliament serves little purpose, many voters do not properly gauge the negative effect of voting for extremist parties or candidates, whether on the right or left, or even for populist candidates in isolation or at the head of parties. Berlusconi, Orban, Salvini, Farage, Le Pen (father and daughter), Wilders, Duda, Kaczyński, have in common their experience as MEPs, like Ruiz Mateos or Puigdemont in the case of Spain. But in reality, it is the same as at the national level and this tendency towards radicalism has only grown in the European elections as well, so the risk of reaching a European Parliament mortgaged by extremists is also real, as it is at the national level.
The well-known TV series ‘Parliament’ – a political satire co-produced by Belgium, France and Germany – contains all the clichés surrounding parliament: ignorance and inefficiency of parliamentarians, excessive power of lobbies, bureaucratisation, corruption etc. In short, a series of criticisms referring to a minority, but which extend to the majority, and from which no democratically elected parliament, not even the most important or representative parliaments in the world (such as the House of Commons or the US Congress, to give just two examples), can escape.
But the importance of this Community institution is unquestionable and it has only grown in recent years to become a co-legislative body of the European Union, practically on a par with the Council, the representative body of the States, which seemed impossible just a few years ago. Indeed, the co-decision procedure, in which the Council and the European Parliament act on an equal footing, is by far the most widely used procedure for Community legislation at the present time. And it should not be forgotten that Community legislation accounts for 80% of the legal regulations applied in the Member States.
Moreover, the next European legislature will be a momentous one for the future of Europe. To begin with security issues, for we are surrounded by conflicts that directly concern us: we have a military conflict of major proportions in the European neighbourhood following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia that may threaten the very existence of the European Union; another one on the rise, not so far away, in the Middle East and a growing destabilisation in the Sahel; energy and digital transitions are pending; strategic autonomy needs to be deepened; the Internal Market is far from complete and requires new and important deepenings in different fields, such as transport, energy, telecommunications, finance, etc. It is necessary to respond adequately to the forthcoming enlargement of the European Union without jeopardising integration; it is necessary to deepen the income and social differences between regions and Member States by modernising agriculture; it is necessary to keep public finances in good shape and to defend the single currency. In short, our European model of economic and social development is at stake. All this, including more recently support for the development of a European military industry, will require a lot of funding in the coming years. And in all this, the European Parliament has a fundamental role to play, in defence of European values and interests.
Fundamental action that cannot be left in the hands of Eurosceptics, extremists or populists, who pursue other values and are sometimes more inclined to favour solutions that can sometimes benefit third countries more than the European Union itself. Let us therefore vote freely but responsibly in the forthcoming European elections, accepting the importance of our vote. Let us not allow ourselves to be impressed by those whose discourse is full of denunciations of the ineffectiveness or inefficiency of the institutions, exclusionary radicalism, criticisms of European integration or calls for the renationalization of policies.
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