Newsletter June 2009

Welcome to the June 2009 Newsletter

"European elections marked by record low turnout", "Europe swings to the right amid voter apathy", "The lowest in history". Just some of the many headlines in European newspapers after the European Parliament elections in June ...but these sentiments seem familiar. At the last election in 2004, the media stories also highlighted the low voter participation: "Turnout reached a record low!" At the time, with five years until the next elections, some commentators had cause for optimism, “EU vote turnout a ’wake up call’”, obviously this optimism was misplaced.

Let’s take a closer look at who the 43.08% of 375 million eligible voters selected to represent them.

The Parliament will be greener compared to its last term. With its share of 7.2%, the Greens party is the only existing political group that managed to enlarge its presence. Furthermore, with the establishment of new parties and the renaming of old ones, the familiar structures have been somewhat lost in the reshuffle. The touch-and-go establishment of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (55 MEPs) led by the UK Conservatives has caused a great deal of upset for the European People’s Party (EPP), as it weakened their weight in the EP. The reduced Party of European Socialists has also undergone a transformation, and will now be known as the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats in Europe (183 MEPs).

Approximately half of the faces in the Parliament will be new and they will be more feminine. For the first time at least one third of MEPs will be women. Only 38% of the MEPs Finland will send to Strasbourg are male. Although there is some improvement, the Parliament is far from being a model for gender representation. Malta, Czech Republic and Poland are the countries that seem most reluctant to be represented by women, with a respective 100%, 82%, and 78% of their representatives in the Parliament being male.

Young and old in the Parliament: The age range in the new Parliament ranges from 25 to 82. The Parliament’s youngest MEP Emile Turunen is from Denmark (1984). The oldest MEP is Ciriaco de Mita from Italy (1928) who is just beginning his third term in the Parliament.

These elections will also trigger some changes in the European Commission. Four existing European Commissioners successfully stood for election and now need to decide whether to take their Parliamentary seats: Viviane Reding (Luxemburg), Louis Michel (Belgium), Meglena Kuneva (Bulgaria), and Danuta Hübner (Poland). Other big names in this Parliament are former heads of government from Belgium, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovenia.

The Parliament is just beginning its work and the first order of business is electing a Bureau and allocating seats in the Committees. The results of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in October 2009 could result in further changes to the Parliament. If it is ratified, the Treaty will increase the number of MEPs to 750, meaning some adjustments to the political groups.

Now that voters have made their choice, the question is how will MEPs represent their citizens through their co-decision and budgetary powers. The work of the Parliament is still poorly understood outside of the EU circles, an issue which is not helped by the lack of clear information on what MEPs actually do. Very few of the Parliament votes are recorded or published, meaning that voters have no way of scrutinising the record of an MEP, which may be a factor in the ever decreasing turnout at elections.

The public health community has great expectations for this new Parliament and will actively seek to engage with MEPs to ensure healthy public policies at European level. EPHA is liaising with political groups to support the creation of an intergroup on public health and healthcare, to encourage cross party debate on these key issues.

MEPs, it is up to you now!

Read all the online articles of our Newsletter for May 2009

EPHA members can find the following new information in the Members Only section:

 Health claims on food products discussed at EFSA Technical Meeting
 Joint stakeholder meeting discusses Pharmaceutical Package
 EMEA Annual joint meeting of the Patients and Consumers Working Party and the Healthcare Professionls Working Party
 Food labelling and obesity on the agenda of the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue
 Summary report from the EFSA Stakeholder Consultative Platform, 4-5 June 2009, Brussels
 Meeting of the Alcohol Policy Network, Stockholm 10-12 June 2009
 Sustainable consumption and production - A challenge for us all
 article 3548
 2nd International Congress of Public Health, 24-25 June 2009 (Warsaw, Poland): Public Health as a Basis of State Health Policy
 article 3541
 Future Belgian Presidency discusses the Lisbon Strategy with civil society
 Message from the Executive Committee - June 2009

Please note that if an EPHA member would like to highlight their activities in the EPHA Newsletter, the deadline to submit a news item is Friday 14 August 2009. Please send your items to the EPHA Secretariat