2024 is an important election year around the world, including in Europe. The European elections that will be held in June are crucial to defining the course in the Old Continent; The future of the European Union (EU) is being decided and it will be seen if an extreme right that is currently on the rise in several countries gains positions and reaches, hand in hand with the popular ones, the government of the European Commission.
In community elections it is common for the internal dynamics of the member states to weigh on the citizens' vote and for there to be lower participation than in national elections. For this reason, in the last plenary session of the year in the European Parliament, which was held in December in Strasbourg, a non-binding report was approved at the request of a Spanish MEP, the social democrat Domènec Ruiz, and a German Christian democrat, Sven Simon, who It aims to “Europeanize” and “democratize” these elections and try to encourage greater participation.
Ruiz was the rapporteur of the electoral law that the European Parliament approved in 2022 with the same purposes as this report, but the European Council has not yet given its approval to the new regulations and has not opened a negotiation with Parliament, for which will not apply yet this year.
The initiative includes measures that do not require regulatory changes and that can be applied if there is political will, such as giving greater visibility to spitzenkandidaten – a German term used to designate candidates to preside over the Commission – on ballots and posters, the logos of the European parties and that it be the European Parliament that takes the initiative to designate the candidate to preside over the Commission, starting with the group with the most votes and if it does not obtain the necessary support, continuing with the others, as in a parliamentary system such as it would be. for example Spanish. “In the general elections, Pedro Sánchez does not appear in all the provinces, but the voters know that he is the candidate; "It would be doing something similar," says Ruiz. The European Council is the one who proposes the candidate for president and Parliament must give it its endorsement.
The approved report highlights that “a clear and credible link is necessary between what voters choose and the election of the President of the Commission” and asks the European Council to “secure” the spitzenkandidaten system and to “put an end to it”. to closed-door agreements.” “Let it be a more democratic system and strengthen the power of the voter,” summarizes Ruiz. “It is about avoiding a repeat of 2019 and ensuring that there is no candidate who has not presented himself, like Ursula von der Leyen, who came out with only nine votes to spare,” he concludes.
Since 2014, when Jean Claude Juncker was elected, attempts have been made for the European Parliament to have the initiative. The former Luxembourg president did not initially have the sympathy of one of the EU's heavyweights at the time, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Nor of former British Prime Minister David Cameron, today Minister of Foreign Affairs. But their doubts did not increase when Juncker had the support of the European Parliament, recalls Ruiz, who considers that the measures they propose give a "critical contribution" to the European Council and help to designate the candidate rather than taking power away from the body of the European Parliament. leaders of the Member States, knowing that if a proposal reaches them it will already have the support of the European Parliament from the outset.
