Today, the ECR Group voted against yet another attempt by centralist EU lawmakers to take powers away from the Member States.

The declared aim of the own-initiative report on ‘Parliamentarism, European Citizenship and Democracy’ adopted in Strasbourg today with 316 votes in favour, 137 against, and 47 abstentions, is to call for a change from unanimity to qualified majority voting, thus implementing the conclusions of the one-sided past Conference on the Future of Europe. The report also criticises the Council and calls for EU-wide referenda as well as for reforming the rotating presidency system. For MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, ECR Coordinator in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, “these ideas of centralisation are getting increasingly outdated because, firstly, they cannot realistically be implemented against the will of the Member States and, secondly, they are also very problematic from a democratic point of view.”

Commenting for his Group after the vote, Mr Saryusz-Wolski said:

“Article 10(1) of the Treaty on European Union clearly states that the Union shall function on the basis of representative democracy. We know from all historical experience that representative democracy is the best form of decision-making for the concerns of the European Union. It is a strange attitude to try to circumvent this principle enshrined in the Treaty step by step through mechanisms of participatory democracy. There is a danger that politically powerful interest groups and activists will use participatory elements to further their own agendas, as we witnessed during the conference on the Future of Europe.”