From (Soviet) Russia… with love?

06 Jun 2009

Peadar o Broin

At first glance, the European Parliament is an exceptionally diverse place, perhaps to a greater degree than the parliaments of South Africa or India: composed of 736 members, based in three cities (Strasbourg, Brussels and Luxembourg), speaking 23 official languages and bringing together over one hundred national political parties from 27 countries, the European Parliament symbolises how far the European Union has come in terms of striving for “unity in diversity”.

Since it began its existence as a consultative assembly for the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, its powers have increased from being essentially a forum in which delegations from national parliaments would meet to give an opinion on EU affairs, to being a real legislature with powers to adopt, amend or reject a wide range of EU laws.

It seems odd, therefore, that the European Parliament should be accused of being akin to a Soviet-style dictatorship. The Soviet Union prior to perestroika was, after all, a one-party State, in which its elected parliament, the Supreme Soviet, functioned as little more than a rubber stamp for rules originating from the Politburo.

This seems to be the complete opposite of the European Parliament, which includes representatives from over one hundred political organisations. In order to create a level of coherency among the one hundred or so national parties elected into the European Parliament, national parties coordinate in umbrella organisations referred to as ‘European political parties’.

Prior to the 2009 European elections, there were nine parties that fulfilled the criteria set out in EU law to call themselves a European political party. These include the European People’s Party (Christian democrats and conservatives), the Party of European Socialists (social democrats and labour parties), the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (liberals), the European Green Party (ecologists and green parties), the Party of the European Left (communists and democratic socialists), the Alliance for European of the Nations (nationalists) the European Democratic Party (centrists), the European Free Alliance (pro-devolution and separatists) and the EU Democrats (eurosceptics and nationalists).

All of these European political parties were represented in the European Parliament during the 2004-2009 legislature. With such a diverse range of political ideologies present in the European Parliament, can the institution justifiably be compared to a weak “fig-leaf” legislature, such as the Supreme Soviet?

Central to the theory behind those advocating such a comparison is the alleged complicity between the European Parliament’s largest political groupings: the conservatives (EPP) and the socialists (PES). Following the 2004 European elections, the EPP and the PES negotiated an agreement whereby both of them would ‘share’ the influential position of President of the European Parliament. Graham Watson, leader of the liberal group in the Parliament, heavily criticised the agreement as an “unnatural alliance” between the centre-right and the centre-left.

A study produced by VoteWatch.eu shows that the two dominant groups, the conservatives and the socialists, tend to vote in a broadly similar fashion compared to other groups in the European Parliament. French eurosceptic website L’Observatoire de l’Europe described this voting pattern as “Soviet majorities”.

Such a criticism of ‘complicity’ between Right and Left has arisen again in relation to the future election of the President of the European Commission, perhaps one of the European Parliament’s strongest powers. The current incumbent, José Manuel Durão Barroso, is a member of the European People’s Party (EPP), the largest group in the European Parliament. However, it is forecast that the EPP will not have an overall majority in the European Parliament. This means that the conservatives will not be able to assume that their candidate, Mr. Barroso, will necessarily be re-elected.

Based on predictions of the possible composition of the European Parliament following the 2009 elections, it seems possible that the socialists, liberals and greens will be able to form a ‘traffic-light’ coalition to suggest an alternative candidate for President of the European Commission. This hypothesis has already been suggested by the European Greens.

The socialists, however, seem unable or unwilling to nominate an alternative candidate for the President of the European Commission, effectively granting Mr. Barroso a further term in office. This may be due to four current socialist leaders – British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates and Spanish President of Government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero – have all publically declared their support for a further term for Mr. Barroso. While the Party of European Socialists has consequently not been able to agree on whether to field a candidate, eight former socialist leaders have launched a public call for the party to do so.

Proinsias de Rossa stated in an interview with the IIEA that European politics must be based on consensus. With such high levels of diversity in the European Parliament, traditional adversarial politics would achieve very little.

The real question, perhaps, is whether such consensus makes the EU a more inclusive and more efficient Parliament, or whether the European Parliament can, on occasions, eschew consensus in order to uphold distinct political ideologies (which is a major part of the rationale behind the existence of diverse political parties). Perhaps consensus is too beloved by the main political parties in the European Parliament?

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