The First European Elections
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About the Book and Author
The First European Elections: Neo-Functionalism and the European Parliament
Jane P. Sweeney
The first direct election of the European Parliament in 1979 was hailed as an event that would bring new momentum to the process of building a united Europe. That the first election did not have the expected outcome, argues the author of this book, can be attributed to flaws in the "Community method," which reflects the EEC's reliance on neo-functionalism. Dr. Sweeney investigates her hypothesis through a study of the 1979 electoral campaigns of the West German SPD, French Parti Socialiste, and British Labour Party, emphasizing the question of transnational cooperation among these members of the Confederation of Socialist Parties of the European Community. Her discussion of the Confederation's attempt to organize a united campaign among its nine constituent parties is based on extensive research on the workings of Parliament's political groups and on interviews and field work conducted before and after the June 1979 elections.
With the second direct election due to take place in 1984, the European Parliament's powers have not expanded, and once again there is concern about how to interest the public and the parties in the elected Parliament. Dr. Sweeney concludes that the present structure of the EEC is an impediment to political integration and suggests that national parties and European citizens will become concerned only when the Parliament has the power to make decisions that affect them.
Dr. Sweeney is an assistant professor of political science at St. John's University, New York.
Published in cooperation with the Commission of the European Communities
The First European Elections
Neo-Functionalism and the European Parliament
Jane P. Sweeney
First published 1984 by Westview Press, Inc.
Published 2019 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 83-51101
ISBN 13: 978-0-367-29215-7 (hbk)
To my parents, Robert and Doris Sweeney, whose concern about the role of politics in securing the rights of ordinary people has become mine
"The voice of the spirit of Europe" is the European Commission's description of the Community's 434 member Parliament. Four years after the European Parliament's historic first direct election by the citizens of nine countries, that voice is barely audible and one must pause to wonder whether the spirit is equally weak. The European Parliament is potentially one of the most interesting legislative bodies in the world because of the circumstances which created it, its unique transnational composition, and the power it may some day wield. However, the gap between the real and the possible is very large indeed.
This study, begun as my doctoral dissertation, is essentially two things at once: an investigation of neo-functionalist integration theory on which the European Community was premised, and an account of the roles of three political parties in the first European elections of June 1979. The direct election of the Parliament, an important event for the Community in itself, is used here as a vehicle for examining the dynamics of political integration. Specifically, I am interested in the role of the electoral process in strengthening transnational bonds within the European Community.
explores neo-functionalist theory in some depth. While this theory is now pass and its chief proponents have gone off to other intellectual endeavors, it is important to recall that it is the method of integration set into motion by the Treaty of Rome which created the European Community on January 1, 1958. That is, while scholars today are not advocating a neo-functionalist approach to integrating a region, this continues to be the "Community method." Hence, it is necessary to return to the theory and to try to establish where its flaws lie, to attempt to discover if the method itself is responsible for the stagnation of political integration among the member states.
The second direct election will take place in June 1984, and as of now it seems that it will be a less exciting re-run of the first. The Parliament has not, on the strength of the prestige it was hoped would flow from democratic legitimacy, been able to expand its legal competence. True, the directly elected Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been more conscious of their prerogatives and more willing to challenge Council and Commission than were the former appointed MEPs, but their skirmishes have led to little in the way of concrete results. An example: as of summer 1983 it was expected that in the next few months Parliament would exercise its power to dismiss the entire fourteen member Commission of the European Communities. Why? Not to protest any particular action on the Commission's part, but to raise Parliament's profile as a hedge against expected voter apathy in the 1984 election.
