EU parliament groupings

Our man in Havana

As I understand it when MEPs are elected here they must join a grouping in the parliament. Where do the independent MEPs go? I assume that 1 MEP cannot be out on their own and that they must join some group?

PopeBuckfastXVI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Inscrits

Our man in Havana

Thanks for that.

PopeBuckfastXVI

You're welcome

WooPeeA

Some (at least one) of the liberals are registered as independent candidates in Ireland but they are willing to join ALDE later.

And the reason why they are independent is because there's no liberal party in Ireland.

View

Bond-007 wrote: »

As I understand it when MEPs are elected here they must join a grouping in the parliament. Where do the independent MEPs go? I assume that 1 MEP cannot be out on their own and that they must join some group?

I am not sure if you are referring to the current Irish "independent" MEPs or not but both of the Irish "independents" MEPs - Marian Harkin and Kathy Sinnot - are members of European Political Parties.

Marian Harkin is a member of the European Democratic Party which is regarded as centrist and pro-EU. The EDP is the junior part of the ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) Group in the EP. The other part of the ALDE is the ELDR (European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party) - (Free-Market) Liberals - which FF has decided to join recently.

Kathy Sinnot, on the other hand, is a member of the EUDemocrats which is the main Euro-sceptic party in the EP. Its European Political Foundation - the Foundation for EU Democracy - supplied Libertas with EUR 700K (according to SIPO) worth of Jens-Peter Bonde's "Reader Friendly" version of the Lisbon Treaty that Declan Ganley et al distributed during the Lisbon campaign. Most (but not all) members of the EUDemocrats form part of the Ind/Dem (Independence/Democracy) Group, together with the British UKIP, in the EP.

Personally, I reckon that MEPs should have to list their membership of European Political Parties on the ballot (rather than national parties) and that a referendum commission style body should make an effort to explain the various European Political Parties and their policies during the Euro-elections. Since MEPs vote with their groups in almost 90% of cases, it is the policies that an MEP will support in the EP that counts, not whether he/she is a nice personality.

sink

View wrote: »

Personally, I reckon that MEPs should have to list their membership of European Political Parties on the ballot (rather than national parties) and that a referendum commission style body should make an effort to explain the various European Political Parties and their policies during the Euro-elections. Since MEPs vote with their groups in almost 90% of cases, it is the policies that an MEP will support in the EP that counts, not whether he/she is a nice personality.

I don't think it's necessary to have a referendum style commission explaining parliamentary groups positions (it could be very messy if the grouping doesn't agree with the commissions description) but I definitely think EP candidates parliamentary affiliation deserves a lot more emphasis. What may be more effective is public funding given to the parliamentary groups for self promotion across Europe with emphasis on the group and not their members (this may require adopting figure heads).

At the moment European parliamentary groups spend next to nothing on promoting their own agendas but rather leave it up to their individual members and constituent parties. This leads to people voting more along national political lines with little consideration given to how that affects the make-up of the European parliament. When it's the balance of power between these groupings in the European Parliament which upon the future direction of the EU pivots (along with he council of course). So it really should be foremost in peoples minds when they go to the ballot box. National politics in general take a back seat in the European parliament excepting for the Eurosceptic groups.