THE PRESS FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 1979. Europe's new Parliament

Press, 15 June 1979, Page 12

THE PRESS FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 1979. Europe's new Parliament

The first directly elected European Parliament has yet to establish its importance to the people of Western Europe. The average turn-out of 60 per cent of voters is not impressive, especially considering that voting is compulsory in three of the nine member countries of the European Economic Community; but it was sufficient to show that most voters can at least be interested in the institution and what it may mean. Although the voting generally endorses the idea, it was hardly sufficient to endow the European Parliament with popular authority. Perhaps this was not to be expected when it is obvious that the institution’s powers are strictly limited. Within the limits the powers are not negligible. The European Parliament can reject the whole of the E.E.C. Budget and dismiss the entire staff of the European Commission. Use of the second power would be an extreme act, but the commission’s members cannot entirely ignore the possibility; in effect, the power simply shows who is boss. This may also clarify the structure of the institutions of the E.E.C.; they do not fit readily into known categories.

The movements to European unity, which by no means are bound to lead to European political integration, are experiments. One day the commission might become a collection of more conventional civil servants, and the Council of Ministers the equivalent of an Upper House.

The British, the French, and the Danes, all jealous of national sovereignty, may be expected to treat the European Parliament less seriously than some of the other countries. At

the moment the main decisions taken by the Community are those in the Council of Ministers, who represent their national Governments, not a European constituency as do the elected members of the European Parliament.

Several international concerns are likely to increase European co-opera-tion. One is energy, in which cooperation will be necessary. Another is defence. The apparatus for political co-operation already exists and one of the least publicised aspects of the E.E.C. is co-ordination of foreign policy. The European Parliament, rather than the Council of Ministers, might become the powerful body in these developments; but it will do so only if national Governments are prepared to yield power to representatives of the European constituency. • Whatever the European Parliament may become, Europeans have decided that the first time they elect it the composition will be mainly from the Right and the Centre. That appears to confirm a swing away from socialism in the West at the moment. The swing was accentuated in Britain partly because of the electoral boundaries and the first-past-the-post voting system, and partly because of the Left’s disaffection with the E.E.C. The result may mean that socialists on the Continent will put more pressure on British socialists to take a different attitude towards the E.E.C. The British Labour Party will also observe with interest how much weight the European Parliament will have. The Labour Party may conclude that it cannot afford to take too negative an attitude to a going concern.