Uniform electoral rules for the European elections in the 27 EU countries e right to vote anywhere from the age of 16: the Centers for European Policy Network (Cep)coinciding with Europe Day on 9 May, just over a year from the European 2024. Instead, the European Movement Italy advocates a German initiative for effectively abolish the veto right on foreign and security policy.
There is a ferment of pro-integration initiatives on the anniversary of the 1950 declaration with which the French foreign minister Robert Schuman he set out the idea of a new form of political and economic collaboration between the European nations, which would have made war between them unthinkable. Schuman’s proposal is the birth certificate of the European integration process. In short order, he led to the birth in 1954 of the European Coal and Steel Community, the Czech.
Schuman launched his initiative on May 9, because May 8 marks the end of the Second World War in central Europe, with the defeat of Nazi Germany – due to a matter of time zones in Russia, the anniversary is celebrated on May 9.
May 9 in Italy
A date in Italy little felt, due to a tragic coincidence and an inopportune decision.
At the 1985 Milan Summit – Italian rotating presidency, Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti – the heads of state and government of what had just become the Twelve decided to celebrate May 9 as the Day of Europe. In Italiathe anniversary is less felt than elsewhere also because, 22 years later, when Europe Day was by now taking root, an Italian law, 56 of 2007, chose the same date as Remembrance day dedicated to the victims of domestic and international terrorism.
This as on 9 May 1978 the Red Brigades found the body of Aldo Moro in Rome lying in the trunk of a red Renault parked in via Caetani, a street that crosses via delle Botteghe Oscure, where the PCI headquarters were, and not far from piazza del Gesù, where the DC headquarters were: a grin mockery, to accompany a gesture of terror, the pinnacle of the attack on the State of the terrorist organization. Making 9 May the day of remembrance for the victims of terrorism appears to be a self-referential political choice, because it would have been – in my opinion – more correct to choose the date of 16 March, when the Red Brigades kidnapped the DC leader, killing the five men in his buffer stock.
A few years ago, then, the Strasbourg Parliament declared 11 March the ‘European Day of Victims of Terrorism’, acknowledging that remembering their sacrifice “is a commitment to civilization and is also a safeguard for the future”. March 11 is the anniversary of the train bombings in Madrid which in 2004 caused 192 deaths and over 1500 injuries.
In respect of Moro’s Europeanism, and in the moving memory of all the victims of terrorism, whatever their origins, Italy could emerge from the ambiguity of its May 9 by adopting March 11 as Victims of Terrorism Day and leaving May 9 as Europe Day.
A compromise solution that, perhaps, Moro would have liked too, a master in weaving agreements and president of the Council in 1975, when the leaders of the then Nine, meeting in Rambouillet in France, decided theelection by universal suffrage of the European Parliamentwhich was a second-level assembly – that is, each national Parliament designated its own delegation – without great power.
The decision of the leaders of the Nine to give the EEC an elected Parliament strengthened the process of European integration: Moro was aware that a democratically elected Parliament would progressively strengthen its powers, as is happening in reality, even if times are probably slower than the cautious Apulian statesman could predict.
European elections: uniform rules and voting from 16 years old
The first elections by universal suffrage to the European Parliament took place in early June 1979. The tithes will take place in a year – the date is yet to be set. In view of them, the CEP invites us to reflect on how uniform voting methods, themes and campaigns in the 27 and the lowering of the voting age to 16 throughout the EU – Germany has already decided this – can increase the turnout, never high in recent times, and strengthen the role of Parliament.
The authors of the Cep report are instead skeptical about the promotion of european vote onlinebecause there is a lack of common technical and legal standards to guarantee free, equal and secret elections throughout the EU: “It is necessary to assess whether the risk of fraud does not outweigh the desired benefits”.
For CEP experts, European issues and supranational parties should take precedence over purely national interests and issues: transnational lists would therefore be important, in a mix of transnational party lists and single electoral district. May 9 should become a fixed date for the European elections every five years and be a public holiday in all 27 EU states.
However, it is unlikely that something like this can mature within a year, by the 2024 vote, despite the great desire for new common rules that has emerged from the majority of Parliament and from EU citizens within the framework of the Conference on the Future of Europe: the construction site of the major European institutional reforms is essentially at a standstill, between war anxieties and the urgency of relaunching the economy after the pandemic.
Towards a federal Europe, with the abolition of the veto right
In this context, the German initiative to create an informal group of countries “friends of qualified majority voting in foreign and security policy”, with the aim of facilitating the application of the so-called “walkway clause” which allows the European Council – unanimously – to authorize the Council to adopt decisions by qualified majority where the Treaty provides that decisions are instead adopted unanimously.
One of the areas in which governments have decided, at the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007to make the confederal method and the powers of national diplomacy prevail is precisely that of foreign and security policy, including common defence.
The European Committee for Italy observes that there are those who believe that the lack of evolution of the EU’s role in the world and the difficulties of being an influential actor in the war triggered by Russia against Ukraine is precisely the permanence of the unanimous vote and therefore of veto power. This has also been seen in the tortuous procedures for applying the sanctions decided against Putin’s autocracy.
Even in this case, however, it is by no means certain that the German initiative will proceed quickly. There is the risk that the next European elections and next May 9th will still find the EU trapped in its current shackles.
Cover photo EPA/Quique Garcia