COMMENTARY: European, or national politics?
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By Kaius Niemi
Why couldn’t the election posters of candidates for the European Parliament display the symbols of their European political groups more conspicuously than those of the national parties? This is a question that a group of people were pondering at a nearby table at a café during the weekend.
The idea might seem strange at first. The campaign for the European Parliament is taking place in Finland, with Finnish political symbols in the forefront. Nevertheless, in Brussels and Strasbourg, the MEPs go into their European political groupings. So if I vote on the basis of the domestic political parties, it would be important to know how my candidate sees his or her role in a political group of the European Parliament.
So, MEP candidates, please tell us how you would operate in the choppy seas of the European group:
Where would a candidate of Finland’s National Coalition Party see his or her own political place in the Conservative group of the European Parliament? Sharing the benches would be the candidates of the Forza Italia of Italy’s nationalist-minded Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. How far to the right would a Finnish Social Democratic candidate feel in the Socialist group of the European Parliament.
How compatible would the thoughts of a Finnish Green MEP candidate be with those of the second chairman of the European Green group, former Maoist Red Danny”, or Daniel Cohn-Bendit? And is the Liberal group of the European Parliament really the right place for an MEP of the Finnish Centre Party, or would the Conservative group of the Christian Democratic parties be a more appropriate environment?
Finnish parties might fear that their voters would be confused if election speeches and posters were filled with foreign logos and acronyms, such as ALDE or PES. By making the European groups more conspicuously a part of the campaigning, European politics could appear clearer to the voters. Or is the European campaign merely being used as a prelude for the Finnish Parliamentary elections?
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 25.5.2009
KAIUS NIEMI / Helsingin Sanomat
kaius.niemi@hs.fi
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| 26.5.2009 - THIS WEEK |
 COMMENTARY: European, or national politics? |
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