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Can I become a member?
Date2006/10/26 07:25 by: Soren Winther LundbyDear friends,
You might find our campaign "Can I become a member?" interesting. The article below is on the front page of EUObserver today.
I have applied for individual membership of PES, but is it possible to become a member? Do you think it ought to be possible?
If you are interested please take a look at the article below and check our website www.neweurope.org
All the best
Soren
25.10.2006 - 17:44 CET | By Honor Mahony
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Three Danes have written to political parties in the European Parliament asking if they can become members in a move they hope will eventually inspire a pan-European political demos.
Soren Lundby, Sophie Nielsen and Steen Gade earlier this month wrote to the socialist, liberal and green factions respectively in the Brussels assembly, enclosed a small fee and asked to be included on the groups' membership lists.
At the moment, individuals are members of the European groups in the sense that their national political parties are affiliated to their European counterparts, but they do not have a say on European decisions.
"I expect to have more rights," says Mr Lundby who argues that it is not enough that national parties are simply members of the European group and that involved citizens across the bloc should have "influence."
Ms Carsten, who believes that environment and gender issues are something that resonate with citizens across the 25-member union, says "Europe is a political union, the decisions it takes are political – we need to engage as EU citizens we want to influence which way the EU is going."
All three believe one of the best ways to get people more actively involved would be to let them have a say on who should be the next president of the European Commission.
They believe members of national parties should be sent a shortlist of names for the job so they can put their favourite candidate forward. The one with the most votes would then be the candidate of the particular European party.
At the moment, choosing a new commission president, who is arguably the face of the EU for a five-year period, is an opaque process done behind closed doors at the EU leaders level. All the public hears about afterwards is the war of words about who was rejected and why.
The centre-left activists believe their move comes at a time when a natural tendency towards pan-European issues is beginning to emerge with a recent petition on scrapping the parliament's seat in Strasbourg gaining over a million signatures.
However, their requests raise issues about national political parties and their scope if national members have direct access and influence at the European level – something alluded to by MEPs in their correspondence with the Danish activists.
Mr Lundby suggests that there should two-tier membership of national parties – one for those interested in predominant domestic issues and one for those more interested in European issues.
"National parties could make it clear for new members that they are automatically members of the European equivalent but at the same time stress that those who are very keen to deal with European and global issues can apply for an additional European (individual) membership and pay an additional membership fee," he says.
"We simply just have to offer something special to those who are very interested in these issues. Otherwise we will lose them and their expertise on the floor."
However, progress towards the ultimate goal of seeing individual citizens from Lisbon to Warsaw to Dublin unite regularly on common themes for a socialist, liberal, green or conservative cause is still some way off.
Replying to the request, head of the European Socialists Poul Nyrup Rasmussen pointed out that members of national social parties already have a chance to be more active under a recently-introduced initiative but acknowledged that "European political culture takes a long time to develop."
