A European Democracy without Democratic Infrastructure: the Regulation of Elections for the European Parliament
Elections are at the heart of every democracy. At the European level, the elections for the European Parliament have traditionally been characterized as “second-order national elections”: these elections mainly revolve around national political issues instead of European issues, and political parties at the European level – also called Europarties – hardly play a role. However, the European treaties attribute an important democratic role to these European parties. This mismatch between the “constitutional mission” of these Europarties and their inability to properly fulfill their democratic role is the core of this project. More specifically, the project will look into the democratic infrastructure surrounding the European elections, and argue that it does not provide sufficient conditions for European political parties to conduct their constitutional mission and contribute to EU democracy. The project will (1) examine the differences regarding the regulation of electoral campaigns for the European elections in the EU member states; (2) identify the main obstacles that European political parties face in this respect when conducting transnational campaigns; and (3) propose a set of recommendations for the harmonization of campaign (finance) rules in the EU.
