On invitation of the European Liberal Forum (ELF), the President of the European Liberal Youth (LYMEC) Alexander Plahr discussed in the National Liberal Club in London with Professor Simon Hix (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Andrew Duff MEP (Liberal Democrats/UK), who is known as one of the fathers of the Treaty of Lisbon.

The ELF event that was supported by the ELDR Party and LYMEC and funded by the European Parliament was focused on the theme of "Making European elections European" by the possible introduction of EU-wide lists.

Mr Duff presented his proposal to elect part of the MEPs on a common EU-wide list as well as the state of play in the European parliament regarding this idea. In the following panel debate, LYMEC President Alexander Plahr pointed out that LYMEC very much supports the idea, but that attention has to be put to the details.

“Transeuropean lists are the way to go, but we have to ensure that they actually increase the level of democratic participation. So a prerequisite for this would be true EU parties where individual citizens from member states can become a member and then actually can influence the decision making process through resolutions and votes. Furthermore, we as liberals reject any kind of quotas for the composition of these lists, both on grounds of gender as well as on geographic terms. Any proposal for EU-lists must not contain these. Lastly, it must be possible to create European parties without already having Members of the European Parliament”, Plahr closes.

Image: The Palace of Westminster at night as seen from the opposite side of the River Thames by DAVID ILIFF, licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.5), see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en