The reasons behind the lack of public, media and political engagement with the EU and measures that could be taken to improve this
Mr Francis Jacobs, European Parliament Representation
The complementary role of national and European parliaments is important and something that has not been facilitated or encouraged as much as it should. It seems to me that national parliaments and their representatives should be visiting Brussels regularly. The representatives from the House of Lords and their European affairs committee make a point of visiting Brussels, certainly on an annual basis, but even more regularly than that. Until one is in situ and has exposure to all one’s MEPs and also what is going on in the committees, it is not possible to have a good sense of what is happening in terms of decision making in Brussels. Equally, we need to encourage MEPs to address the sectoral committees to a greater extent. It would be good also to have our MEPs address the Upper House more regularly and also other senior officials from the European institutions address the national parliaments more regularly. The linkages between national and European institutions and, in particular, the parliaments should be much stronger. I agree with Mr. Jacobs on that issue.
A point was made, again by the representative of the House of Lords committee, that it is a good idea for any aspiring Ministers or those who are appointed as Ministers to have had experience on the European affairs committee because a Minister’s role on the Council of Ministers will have a very strong European dimension. We do not always ensure that happens here. It may happen in an ad hoc way but it is something about which we should be more explicit. If an individual is keen to aspire to ministerial office eventually, having strong European credentials would make that person more eligible for such a role.
It has been suggested – I wonder what Mr. Jacobs thinks of it – that an EU office should be situated in the Houses of the Oireachtas for the purpose of providing information to parliamentarians about matters relating to European institutions and, in particular, the European Parliament. Mr. Jacobs mentioned an EU-wide list for some of the elected positions to the European Parliament. The Green Party has always supported that kind of idea. How could the public be encouraged to take a greater interest in political groupings in the European Parliament. Most of the Irish public would not be aware of the different political groupings and the difference in ideology between them. There is a tendency to focus on our own elected MEPs. How can we encourage the public to take a greater interest in and become more familiar with the various political groupings in the European Parliament?
In regard to the proposals for the citizens’ initiative included in the Lisbon treaty, how does Mr. Jacobs see that working in practice? If the Lisbon treaty were to be ratified and the citizens’ initiative became a reality, would he envisage Irish citizens liaising directly with the European institutions in terms of new legislation they wanted introduced and without any involvement of their national Parliament? Does he believe national parliaments would not have any involvement in the citizens’ initiative process or would it be an advantage to include national parliaments in terms of the process that might apply to any future use of a citizens’ initiative?
Mr. Francis Jacobs: Many questions were put and I will take one or two of them in reverse order. On the citizens’ initiative, I saw the value of a citizens’ initiative as having more weight than a conventional petition. It had a fresh hold. If one reads the text, one will see that the “No” campaign said it can be ignored but if it got a large number of signatures it is something the European Union institutions would have to take with more force, so to speak, than a conventional petition. It is a step beyond the petition process. If that is the case and the European Parliament and the other institutions have to examine that citizens’ initiative, I do not see any reason national parliaments cannot get involved in the process as they do in EU legislation. If an issue is raised, it can be debated within the national parliament and in a sense it then becomes a proposal for legislation which is being put forward by citizens rather than by the Commission. I do not see a contradiction between national parliament involvement and the fact that the European Parliament would have to examine it carefully; the Commission would have to be involved in it as well.
On the work of the political groups, there is scope to have more publicity as to how they work and what they stand for. A particular problem is the fact that some political groups are linked to European political families while others have developed in a broader way and consist of a wide variety of parties from different political families. Not all the groups, therefore, are as clear as some of the others. That is one problem.
The other problem in making people aware of the differences between the groups is what has been a great strength of the European Union, namely, the need to build consensus not only at EU level as a whole, but within the European Parliament. Broad majorities are needed to change legislation, modify Commission proposals or adopt or reject legislation within the Parliament. That has meant that sometimes the ideologically diverse groups have had to reach a compromise position and it is difficult to explain to people that they have co-operated on the same issue.
A number of academics studying the European Union say that the European Parliament will become a much more interesting body for voters when there are starker left-right differences or pro-European-anti-European differences and when it becomes less of a consensus parliament and more one where there are broad divisions. Obviously, it will never be like a national parliament because there is not a government and an opposition within the European Parliament and therefore it is already a different kind of parliament but having more visible divisions on certain issues might make the battles over ideas more prominent and make it more interesting to citizens.
The idea of a European Union office in the Oireachtas is a good one. The Danish precedent has been a good one. Interestingly, I was talking this week to the official who works in Brussels for the Danish Parliament and he told me that the biggest source of information on the European Union in Denmark is not the Government but the Danish Parliament information office. I am not sure about the size of its staff but it has five university trained specialists on the staff, in addition to the clerical staff. It is well resourced and they handle approximately 15,000 individual citizen’s inquires a year, which is a good deal. That is an interesting model.
I visited the Folketing on one occasion and saw the Danish Parliament’s information centre not only on Europe, but on the Danish parliamentary system, which tries to involve citizens in an interactive way. School groups come in and play the role of political groups. One person in the school represents a politician from the Socialist Party, another from the Green Party and another from the Conservatives. They are then filmed and subsequently see themselves debating in the Parliament. They present some proposal in committee and steer through legislation. They are in the Parliament for about an hour and a half. It is a fascinating process. Not everyone responds to that but I found it to be an impressive way of making people who came there with very little knowledge aware of how the Danish system or the European system worked and the way it held their attention. It is a very good idea if it is done well.
