Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES) and Sven SIMON (EPP, DE), Rapporteurs, hold a press conference on the European Elections 2024 report. The draft text adopted by the Committee on Constitutional Affairs calls for a binding agreement between Parliament and the European Council on the so-called lead candidate process for the election of the Commission President. MEPs say that lead candidates, jointly with the presidents of the European political parties and of their respective parliamentary groups, should engage in negotiations immediately after the elections to put forward a common candidate, before the European Council can make a proposal. This transcription is a result of an automatic process. Please check against delivery.

Strasbourg

press conference

RUIZ DEVESA, Domènec (S&D, ES)

SIMON, Sven (EPP, DE)

2024 European elections (T)

Delivery EE2024 (T)

Press conference by Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES) and Sven SIMON (EPP, DE), Rapporteurs, on the European Elections 2024 report

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/73789551/1702044554229_I250607Chapters%5BSD-EN%5D.srt

SOUNDBITE (English), Sven SIMON (EPP, DE), Rapporteur, Yes. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Well, after the last elections, many European citizens have been disappointed, political parties had named lead candidates, yet the link, direct link between candidates and the selection of the Commission President was broken in the end.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sven SIMON (EPP, DE), Rapporteur, While that was definitely in line with the treaties, it was anyway hard to understand for citizens and voters. And with this report we want to initiate. We cannot do more but initiate a credible consensus amongst ourselves to prevent that from happening again. The report firstly provides a basis for an interinstitutional agreement with the Council.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sven SIMON (EPP, DE), Rapporteur, Secondly, we expect all parties to go into the election with the lead candidate. And finally, after the election, the negotiating mandate must lie with a candidate who can unite the largest parliamentary group behind him or her. Should this candidate not find a majority? The candidate of the second largest parliamentary group is tasked with forming a majority.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sven SIMON (EPP, DE), Rapporteur, In the report, We state that we believe that I quote a clear and credible link between the choice of voters and the election of the Commission President is needed. End of quote. Well, I would say that in the Lisbon Treaty, the element of accountability is weak. Since the outcome of the European elections has no influence on the composition of the Commission. Commission President, yes, but not the composition of the Commission.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sven SIMON (EPP, DE), Rapporteur, And as long as we do not change the treaties, we can only strengthen accountability through an evolution of our political culture. We cannot write down in any regulation or directive or not even in the treaty, the lead candidate principle. But we can develop and this is the attention of the report, a political culture. This time we want to avoid a situation in which some heads of government make backroom deals and we want to avoid disappointing voters again and strengthen our European parliamentary democracy. Thank you.

SOUNDBITE (English), Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES), Rapporteur, Thank you very much. First of all, to the Parliament services for the opportunity to hold this meeting with with the journalists, thanks to Sven Simon, a very good colleague and friend that we have worked very well together in the past with the electoral law, but also in this case with the report on the elections.

SOUNDBITE (English), Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES), Rapporteur, I think we are sending, as it has been said, some important concrete messages from this large majority of the European Parliament to, in particular, the European political parties and the national political parties that are going to context the next European elections. And I think those are, as he said, very actionable, very practical ideas that we are suggesting to make these elections more European and less national, in the sense that they are still too much seen as elections sometimes of secondary importance, which is not the case if we think of the transnational public goods that we are managing at the European level.

SOUNDBITE (English), Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES), Rapporteur, I think of, of course, the pandemic, the war, climate change and so on. But also they are very often used to test the popularity of a certain government or the strength of the opposition. Of course, those are probably natural dynamics in politics, but we believe we really need to go over and above these dynamic with a more pan-European debate and campaign at the time of the elections.

SOUNDBITE (English), Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES), Rapporteur, And for that, as I said, we have some, I think, ideas of the support not only of these 350 plus MEPs, but five political groups out of the seven in this House for encouraging the national political parties, for instance, to use to report the logos and the names of their affiliates at the European level in the ballot whenever is possible. But, certainly in the political advertising, in the posters, of course, on social media as well.

SOUNDBITE (English), Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES), Rapporteur, This, by the way, maybe we were not so specific in the report, but this implies by default that the physical image of the candidates for President of the Commission should also be part of the political advertisement, which is not typically the case, unfortunately, at the national level. We encourage the European political parties to enter into agreements among themselves to commit to these things, to this idea, for instance, but also to commit on how to develop, which is crucial.

SOUNDBITE (English), Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES), Rapporteur, The post electoral process, as it has been mentioned by Sven, regarding Spitzenkandidaten, because we really want this time to work as it worked in 2014 and like in 2018. And for that we are also very concrete. We propose following a bit in a way the tradition in some Member States, namely Germany, that the candidate coming from the group that has the largest number of seats the day after the election takes the lead in negotiating with the other groups, the formation of a majority.

SOUNDBITE (English), Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES), Rapporteur, Also, the agreement of a government programme or Commission programme for the five years, and if this person, which we consider coming from the largest group, has the legitimacy to start the process, he or she don't manage to form immediately a majority, then the next candidate with the largest number of seats has another shot. And we continue successively, because what we want to ensure is that this time around the Parliament has a common candidate. These didn't happen in 2019 and we saw the result of that, that the European Council was free to make any proposal. But in 2014, it worked.

SOUNDBITE (English), Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES), Rapporteur, So, if we have a common candidate, we are not, in my view, limiting the powers of the European Council, but giving the European Council a critical informational input because no Head of State at the national level in a parliamentary democracy wants to propose someone that doesn't have the guarantee to have a majority in the House. So, this is a crucial input that we're giving to the European Council before their proposal.

SOUNDBITE (English), Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES), Rapporteur, So, we think that with these ideas and others, we are also reminding the importance of the institutional campaigns of European Parliament. This is in the report I added at the plenary level or the importance for the OSCE also to conduct electoral observation of our European elections. We have also provisions to enhance the rights of people with disabilities in these elections.

SOUNDBITE (English), Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES), Rapporteur, So, I think it's very rich. It's very consensual. It's really, I think, a good proposal for Europe, for the European democracy, for strengthening it. And it doesn't require, by and large modifying the treaty or the current electoral framework. So it's really political decisions that we from the Parliament encourage. As I said, the European political parties to follow and implement.

Q&A, Question about if there's been any meeting with the council or if it will take place in the future.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sven SIMON (EPP, DE), Rapporteur, -

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Domènec RUIZ DEVESA (S&D, ES), Rapporteur, -

Q&A, Questions on what would Sven Simon do if his candidate is not chosen by the Council, and if he has a message for Macron.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dom&egrave;nec RUIZ DEVESA (S&amp;D, ES), Rapporteur, - 