Dispute looms over calls for legal fight on electoral reform

Date: 23/11/1995

THE European Parliament will be advised next week not to start a court action against EU governments for failing to agree a uniform procedure for electing MEPs.

The advice from Spanish Christian Democrat member Ana Palacio Vallelersundi is certain to be criticised by those MEPs who believe that effective pressure must be aimed at governments if a uniform system is to be in place by the next European elections in 1999.

The Parliament's decision to investigate the failure of the Council of Ministers to agree a system was prompted in March by the Dutch leader of the Liberal group, Gijs de Vries. He urged the Parliament's President Klaus Hänsch to start proceedings which could see MEPs take governments to the European Court of Justice.

Governments, he argued, had failed to meet their treaty obligations by ignoring for over two years a possible uniform system prepared by former Belgian Liberal MEP Karel De Gucht. Liberals argue that the electoral system should reflect the European nature of the elections. They are also aware that ending the UK's first-past-the-post system would increase the number of British Liberals from the present two.

But a change in the UK's electoral law would have further repercussions. If applied in 1994, it would certainly have reduced the number of British Labour MEPs, possibly making not them but German Social Democrats the dominant force in the Socialist group.

Palacio's draft working report will be presented to the Parliament's legal affairs and citizens' rights committee on 28 November - ironically, given the nature of the issue and its direct constitutional impact on citizens, behind closed doors.

Its cautious conclusion that MEPs should back off from a direct legal challenge has been criticised by the British-based think-tank, Federal Trust. In a letter to Hänsch, Federal Trust director Andrew Duff acknowledges the effective arguments Palacio deploys to suggest support for a court case.

But he rejects her conclusions that given the complex legislative nature of the subject, the Council could not be accused of not acting and that “given this context, the time which has elapsed cannot be considered excessive”.

Duff argues that the justifiable delay is not simply a question of the 32 months since De Gucht's report was adopted, but must be seen in the light of the failure to agree a system since the first direct elections in 1979.

Equally, he rejects the defence of legal complexity. The Council, he maintains, does not have to deliver a detailed single electoral procedure for the whole of the Union.

Instead, what would be required would be that diverse national procedures respect certain guidelines. These would ensure the elections would be similar with directly comparable results designed to strengthen the Parliament's representative capability.