190 million Europeans without liberal representatives

2013 is the European Year of citizens. The purpose of this initiative is to highlight the concept of EU citizenship and to promote the knowledge about the rights of our fellow citizens. It would even be fair to rename the year European Year of Liberalism, because there is no greater value for liberals than the rights of an individual citizen. But, ironically, liberals themselves are not doing great in 2013, and with less than a year to European Parliament election, the perspective for liberals seems pretty cloudy.

I took a moment and compared the positions of ALDE member parties in national parliaments, and even though the outcome wasn’t a great surprise, it was still far from amusing. Firstly, the positions in national legislative bodies reflect the starting positions for EP 2014 campaigns, and when we do not have any parliamentary representatives in ten EU member states (these are not small or new member states of EU, rather the opposite), it is difficult to hope for any improvements compared to EP elections in 2009.

Secondly, the table below presents that ALDE’s position in European Parliament is positively correlated with the average values of the ALDE member parties’ positions in local parliaments. What is really disturbing is that ALDE does not have a single member party in France, Portugal, Hungary, Greece, Latvia and Malta. If leaders of ALDE dream about the commission presidency or other higher positions in EU structure, they have to find new tactics to approach these countries and their voters. Over 190 million European citizens are without an ALDE representative in their home parliaments and that is definitely 190 million too many.

We can hope that we are able to change those more liberal countries through European Parliament and attract voters with general EU politics, but probably no one in Latvia will start to vote for liberals if at the domestic level there are no liberally minded and seriously taken political parties.

Most liberal countries in the EU considering the local political situation are Estonia and Denmark, but my heart sinks knowing that in real politics being a member of ALDE does not make you a liberal. We know that the current status of ALDE is not very promising regarding the upcoming elections, but the situation with classical liberalism in 2013 is much worse. The number of Europeans who are without a parliamentary representative who favour not only civic freedoms, but also liberal economic policies is tremendously larger than 190 million, and I’m afraid that in the majority of the EU member states classical liberals would fall under the election thresholds.

I am not able to say what to do with the French, but with the rest of the liberally unrepresented fellow citizens, we have to do more local scouting and regional cooperation.   Liberals also have to find solutions to the most worrying issues for European citizens. According to Eurobarometer survey, unemployment, economic situation and rising prices are three most troubling clouds over the heads of Europeans.  Most probably whoever discovers the right formula for solving previously mentioned problems deserves to receive the Nobel Prize, but liberals in Europe for their own sake have to give their best for that.

Positions of the ALDE member parties in EU national parliaments

1. Alde does not have a member party in the country
2. Vote percentage on the last legislative election could not be clarified
3. Seats in unicameral parliaments or in lower houses of parliaments
4. ALDE vote share and seats in European Parliament