Next Tuesday, November 22, the European Parliament will celebrate its 70th anniversary since the first session of the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, which marked the starting point of the current European Parliament, and it will do so in a context of record highs in female representation -more than a third of the seats- and at the gates of an electoral reform to introduce a pan-European list.
Tuesday’s plenary session will begin in Strasbourg (France) with a statement by the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, which will give way to speeches by the Prime Ministers of the three countries hosting the seats of the European Parliament: the Belgian Alexander de Croo, the French Élisabeth Borne and the Luxembourg Xavier Bettel.
The three leaders will address what is the only transnational, multilingual, multiparty and directly elected parliament in the world and which, precisely, wants to update the way in which its representatives are appointed to introduce, as a novelty, a single constituency for the entire European Union (EU) of 28 deputies that citizens can vote for along with a national list and it is still unknown whether it will arrive in time for the next European elections in 2024.
Under the slogan ’70 years of democracy in action’, the Parliament will review some of the most important milestones in its history since its first assembly was held in 1952, through its acquisition of budgetary powers in 1973, to face the Covid-19 pandemic and face a new war on the continent after Russia’s attack on Ukraine last February 24.
Just a month earlier, MEPs had appointed the third woman president of the European Parliament, the youngest in its history and the first Maltese to hold the post, Roberta Metsola, who succeeded the late David Sassoli. She did so 22 years after Nicole Fontaine and 42 years since Simone Veil became not only the first woman to preside over the European Parliament, but also the first to be elected by universal suffrage in 1979.
Since then, there has also been an evolution in the percentage of seats held by women, which has increased from 15.2% in the first legislature to an all-time high of 39.3% in the current one, according to Parliament data as of January 31, 2022.
In these seven decades, the Parliament has gone from having 78 national representatives in 1952 to the 705 directly elected today, compared to the 751 that existed before the withdrawal of the United Kingdom on January 31, 2020, the first and only country to leave the EU, despite the fact that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was the first EU leader to give part to the European Parliament in 1981.
Seven years after this event, in 1988, former South African President Nelson Mandela, winner of the first Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought awarded by the Parliament, addressed the MEPs.
PRESIDENTS AND CHAIRPERSONS Since 1979, MEPs have elected a total of 17 presidents from nine nationalities, with Germany having the largest representation to date, with up to four presidents, including Martin Schulz as the only one in the history of the European Parliament to remain in office for five years, the period of a full legislature.
Germany is followed by France, with three presidencies, the same as those held by Spaniards Enrique Barón Crespo, José María Gil Robles and Josep Borrell Fontelles, the current EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. In addition, there have been two Italian presidents, one Dutch, one English, one Irish, one Polish and the current one, Metsola, representing Malta.
According to the population figures of each Member State, the Germans also lead the way in parliamentary representation, with 96 MEPs, followed by 79 French and 76 Italians. In fourth place are the Spaniards, with 59 seats. At the other extreme, Malta, Luxembourg and Cyprus have six MEPs each. The average age of the representatives is 52 – most are between 41 and 60 years old – while the national averages range from 46 to 63.
As far as political parties are concerned, the largest bench is that of the European People’s Party, with 25.1% of representation, followed by the Socialists and Democrats (20.6%), the liberal Renew Europe (14.3%), the Greens (10.4%), Identity and Democracy (9.2%), the European Conservatives and Reformists (9.1%), the Left (5.5%) and the non-subscribers (5.8%).
A plurality that, however, has left room for the unity of the European Parliament, since 70 years after its creation, it boasts, according to its anniversary motto, of having advanced «to be stronger than ever in difficult times».
