David Farrell

David Farrell summarizes for EUDO Café the core argument of his recent book: Russell J. Dalton, David M. Farrell and Ian McAllister, Political Parties and Democratic Linkage: How Parties Organize Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2011)
In the academic literature on political parties (including important contributions by the late Peter Mair), which argues that political [...]

Marcus Hahn-Lorber

On 9 November 2011, the German Constitutional Court delivered a far-reaching judgment on European electoral law as it has been concretised by German legislation. The Constitutional Court declared the so called “five percent threshold”, which is provided by s. 2(7) Europawahlgesetz unconstitutional and therefore void. In order not to interfere with EU electoral [...]

Shirley Williams

When George Papandreou, former Prime Minister of Greece, proposed a referendum on the Greek austerity programme, the chanceries of Europe quailed, and the European Union’s leaders collectively denounced the idea. But George Papandreou’s proposal was not absurd. It was rooted in the belief that the Greek people needed to own the painful austerity [...]

Paolo Ponzano
The Lisbon Treaty has placed a new emphasis on transparency. Transparency is ancillary both to representative and participatory democracy (articles 10(3) and 11(2) TEU) and is, as such, at the democratic foundations of the Union. This has consequences both for the EU legislator and, indeed, for EU administration. By Treaty provisions, the European Parliament [...]

Elaine Fahey

The rising significance of the European Parliament to the post-Lisbon structural landscape of EU-US relations has self-evidently resulted in a new constitutional equilibrium. The European Parliament is now involved increasingly in global affairs and international agreements now require the consent of the European Parliament, pursuant to Article 218 TFEU, as outlined above. Thus [...]

Marie Vincent

How can the trend of “Euro-estrangement” that seems to be affecting most citizens today be reversed? For all the progress achieved with the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, European decision-making has appeared ever more obscure, with a confusion of roles between the Presidents of the European Council and Commission, a chaotic start [...]

Yuksel Alper Ecevit

‘Who has the right to vote?’ is an essential question for democracy. The history of democratic regimes provides a complexity. Gender, class, age and citizenship status have been the primary barriers for voting qualification over time across regions. Suffragist movements seem to have partially succeeded in abolishing these barriers. However, increasing mobility [...]

Paolo Ponzano
The Treaty of Lisbon has introduced into the primary law of the European Union for the first time a mechanism of participatory democracy : the right of any one million European citizens, providing they represent at least seven of EU Member States, to ask the European Commission to submit a proposal for European legislation [...]

Martin Westlake

It is worthwhile recalling where ‘Lisbon’ began; not in Portugal, but in Laeken, in December 2001. Following the ill-tempered Nice Inter-Governmental Conference, a collective cry of ‘never again!’ went up. It was decided that Europe had to decide its future differently. Hence, in their Laeken Declaration of December 2001, the Heads of State or [...]

Graham Watson

Little has been written about political parties and ideology at EU level. Why?
Because the formation of EU-wide political parties, in any real sense, is so recent. Though transnational federations of parties in Europe’s (and indeed latterly, the democratic world’s) main political families existed for most of the twentieth century, these parties had little real [...]