Graham's blog Friday 12 June 2009

Published on Fri 12th Jun 2009

Last week's elections to the European Parliament saw a notable swing to the right. The big gainers were the European Peoples Party and the big losers the Party of European Socialists. The Greens made gains, as did the Far Right. My Alliance of Liberal Democrats was returned at around the same strength as in the last Parliament, though this time around our hold on the balance of power has been weakened by the rout of the left.

Gordon Brown's headache was mirrored in results in France and Italy; while in Germany, Spain and Poland the left also lost ground. And since the six largest EU member states provide over half the members of the EP the left is much reduced. Indeed, even if Liberal Democrats were to support a combination of Greens, Socialists and the Far Left we would still be short of an absolute majority.

Due to the vagaries of 27 different systems of proportional representation, final results and the names of all those elected will not be known until 19 June, two weeks after the poll. Nonetheless, within the Liberal Group we have lost representation from Poland and Hungary but considerably improved our strength in Germany. In the UK we have seen a net gain (on paper, at least) of one seat. I am personally disappointed that we failed to elect Kay Barnard, our No.2 in the SW England and Gibraltar constituency; I believe that had the UK news media not been transfixed with Westminster MPs' expenses we could have elected her.

The main problem with elections to the European Parliament is that despite the best efforts of Liberal Democrats the elections are rarely fought on European issues. Rather than one Europe-wide election campaign we have 27 different national campaigns. And though voter turnout declined EU-wide from 45% to 43%, in some countries it rose considerably while in others it dipped. There is no clear pattern.

My solution would be three-fold: first, give Euronews the status of public service broadcaster in every EU country so that we can all access common, comprehensive TV news coverage of EU affairs; second, elected a proportion of MEPs (perhaps 20% of the total) from pan-European lists of candidates, thereby obliging parties to fight truly pan-European election campaigns; and third, choose the European Commissioners from the ranks of the MEPs elected to give the voter a direct link between the person they vote for and those who subsequently wield executive power.

I have spent this week and will spend the next two re-forming the Liberal Group. Having served seven and a half years as its Leader I do not seek re-election, so the first act of the new Group will be to elect my successor on 30 June. Meantime I will host one of our meetings in Bristol, where we will contribute at least a quarter of a million pounds to the City's economy and will be welcomed by the new LibDem-run city administration. But I will report from next week's EU summit before then.