Everything about European Parliament Election 1979 totally explained
The
1979 European elections were parliamentary
elections held across all then-9
European Community member states. They were the first
European elections to be held, allowing citizens to elect 410
MEPs to the
European Parliament, and also the first international election in history.
Seats in the Parliament had been allocated to the states according to population, and in some cases were divided into
constituencies, but members sat according to political groups.
Background
The
Treaty of Rome which established the Communities specified that the
European Parliament must be elected by
universal suffrage using a common
voting system. The
Council of the European Union was responsible for setting up the elections but it had procrastinated. As a stop-gap measure, members were appointed to the Parliament by the member states from their own national parliaments, as they'd done since the Common Assembly. The Parliament was unhappy with this and threatened to take the Council to the
European Court of Justice. The Council eventually agreed to elections and the first European Parliament elections were held in 1979 after proposals were put forward in the mid 1970s. The issue of a common voting method was left undecided, and even to this day the voting methods vary from member state to member state, although all have used some form of proportional representation since 1999.
The campaigns
The campaigns varied. The former
Social Democrat German Chancellor Willy Brandt took an international campaign to France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to boost the Socialist group. On the other hand, the former
Prime Minister of France Jacques Chirac used the election to gauge his popularity against the then-
President of France Valery Giscard d'Estaing, in anticipation of a presidential bid in 1981.
Election
In July, the 410
members were elected by universal suffrage. At the time there were no rules on the system of election to be used. The United Kingdom used a
plurality voting system for multiple small constituencies in England, Wales and Scotland but the other member states used
proportional representation for fewer larger constituencies (usually the member state itself as a single constituency), albeit with different methods of seat allocation.
The electorate took little interest
Final results
Socialist parties working together under the Europe-wide
Confederation of Socialist Parties won the most seats: the resultant Socialist group had 113 MEPs. Christian Democrat parties united within the pan-European
European People's Party came second, with the resultant group having 107 MEPs. The largest third force was the Conservative
European Democrats with 64, followed by
Communists with 44. The
Liberal Democrats had 40 seats, although their candidate was elected as President.
The groups formed were loose coalitions based on the groups founded in previous years, but they soon became the basis for modern European political parties.
Statistics
Post election
Louise Weiss, who was 86 at the time, was found to be Parliament's oldest member and hence presided over the chamber while the election of the
President took place (July 1979). Before that could happen however, she immediately had to deal with a protest from
Ian Paisley MEP, who claimed that the Union Jack outside the building was flying upside down. Seen as a publicity stunt she dealt with the interruption swiftly. The confrontation was seen as one of her finest hours and she later confied that, as a grandmother, she was used to dealing with "recalcitrant youngsters".
There were five candidates for
President of the European Parliament:
Giorgio Amendola,
Italian Communist,
Emma Bonino, Italian
Technical Independent, Christian de La Malène,
French Progressive Democrat,
Simone Veil, French
Liberal, and Mario Zagari, Italian
Socialist.
In the first ballot, Veil secured 183 of the 380 votes cast - eight short of the absolute majority needed. The next closest contender was Zagari with 118 votes, then Amendola with 44, de la Malène with 26 and Bonino with 9. Bonino and de la Malène dropped out and Veil secured an absolute majority in the second ballot with 192 of the 377 votes cast (Zagari gained 128 and Amendola 47). Veil was elected as the first President of the elected Parliament, and first female President of the Parliament since it was founded in 1952.
The following were elected as Vice-Presidents: Danielle De March,
Basil de Ferranti, Bruno Friedrich, Guido Gonella, Gérard Jacquet, Hans Katzer, Poul Møller,
Pierre Pflimlin,
Bríd Rodgers, Marcel Albert Vandewiele,
Anne Vondeling and Mario Zagari.
Previously the Parliament was a weak consultative assembly, the members of which were part time. With the elections the new body of
MEPs were full time, energetic and more diverse. As soon as the Parliament was established the "old guard" MEPs of the larger parties sought to raise the bar at which a
European Parliament political group could be formed (the status gave financial support and representation in committees). This move was quickly blocked by smaller groups working together and
filibustering the proposal. The ties formed at this time laid the foundations of the group: an alliance of
left-wing and
green parties
which later became the
European Greens–European Free Alliance group.
Further Information
Get more info on 'European Parliament Election 1979'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://european_parliament_election__1979.totallyexplained.com">European Parliament election, 1979 Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
