EP elections 2014

[Beezer]

Will be interesting to see if they can convince other parties to join the alliance:

* Lega Nord (Italy)
* True Finns (Finland)
* DF (Denmark)
* Ataka (Bulgaria)
* SNS (Slovakia)
* SNS (Slovenia)

Maybe the AfD in Germany ...

I can't see the AfD ever joining that group since it would be political suicide. They already were portrayed as right-wing thugs by some in the media ahead of the German elections so I can't imagine what would happen to them if they joined forces with the FN, Ataka, and other far-right outfits.

[Beezer]

AfD rules out joining the new right-wing populist EU-caucus.

"We don't want to have anything to do with people like Wilders," said AfD-spokesperson Dagmar Metzger.

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/rechtspopulisten-wilders-schmiedet-allianz-der-anti-europaeer-a-933127.html

[Beezer]

Merkel apparently objects to Juncker being named as the EPP's candidate for the commission presidency.

http://www.wort.lu/en/view/will-merkel-fight-juncker-s-international-ambitions-52bff68ce4b0dd3de1627294

[Beezer]

Only 20,000 people have taken part in the Greens' primary.

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/geringe-beteiligung-bei-gruenen-urwahl-zu-europa-spitzenkandidatur-a-945792.html

[Beezer]

How exactly is it overstepping its bounds when delivering a verdict on German electoral laws?

[Beezer]

Does the German constitution say electoral thresholds are unconstitutional? Obviously not, since that would mean every single post-WW2 election was unconstitutional. The court's job is to enforce the constitution as it is written. Doing anything else means overstepping their boundaries.

And that's exactly what it is doing. The court says that curbing the democratic rights of German voters (one man, one vote) requires a pretty good reason. For German and state elections those reasons are apparently in place because governments elected by parliament require stable majorities whose establishment is aided by keeping the number of parties in parliament low. Seeing as the EP does not have that traditional government v opposition divide (meaning that it is not propping up an elected government) the German CC has arrived at the conclusion that curtailing the principle of one man, one vote in European elections is unconstitutional.

[Beezer]

A constitution is always supposed to only set the basic guidelines and not micromanage everything. It says nothing about how elections are held, the length of parliamentary terms and so forth. What you're calling for is a document that is god knows how many pages long because everything not included in it would be legal. I can't really see that working. The CC has simply made the case that seeing as the EP is already full of dozens of parties there is no need for a threshold whatsoever at the German level and that appears to be the logical conclusion...after all why is 3% better than 5% if the basic composition of the EP supports a wide array of parties to begin with?

[Beezer]

The European Parliament can veto and sack the Commission. It's not a parliamentary government, but it's not exactly powerless either.

Of course it isn't but then again we already have around a 100 parties sitting in it so the argument that is usually made in defense of a threshold (limits the # of parties to encourage stable majorities) does not apply here.