Candidates representing all Europe

European Parliament elections are not the elections on everyone’s lips at the moment. Yet, in the European world, there have been major developments which unfortunately have yet to be covered by the local media.

On January 26, only a few days ago, the Constitutional Committee within the European Parliament approved by a large majority what is referred to as the Duff-Report. This report aims at having some transnational European lists with candidates from all over Europe for European Parliament elections. In short, in the upcoming MEP elections of 2014, citizens should have two votes. One for a national list of candidates and the other for a transnational European list with candidates from all over Europe. This federalist step has been a long running campaign for European Federalists along with the Young European Federalists of which I partake. The next step now is the vote on the report during March’s plenary session of the European Parliament.

Transnational lists will attempt to push European issues during election campaigns and to stop concentrating on solely national ones. With this system, European citizens will also be directly involved for the first time in choosing the president of the European Commission. European parliamentarians are there to represent the European citizens as a whole, and not the member state. They are elected by the whole people and are accountable to the whole people, which is why such a transnational idea makes sense.

Really and truly it is now up to the European Council. Do they want to promote citizen involved democracy? Do we not want a more transparent Union? I say, don’t be afraid of a more federal Europe. A more federal Europe means a more democratic Europe; a Europe which is closer to its citizens and where we get to participate fully in the decision-making process. A Europe which is more about us and less about them.