Pan-European Constituency and Transnational Lists: The Third Wave of the EU Politics of Electoral Reform?
Pan-European Constituency and Transnational Lists: The Third Wave of the EU Politics of Electoral Reform?

Summary/Abstract: Brexit raised a question of reapportionment of the 73 British seats in the European Parliament in the 2019 elections. This re-opened the possibility of introducing a single pan-European constituency with transnational lists as a second tier of the European Parliament electoral system. The idea of transnational (pan-European) lists has not been new at all as it was firstly suggested by the Anastassopoulos report in 1998 as a tool how to make the European elections more European. Since then, this issue has been regularly appearing in discussions on the European Parliament electoral reform. Although the transnational lists were finally rejected in the most recent bargains about the European Parliament electoral design they seem to be a relevant issue for the future reform deliberation. Thus, the paper discusses the historical background and the political context of the most recent debates taking place in the context of the EU politics of electoral reform, whereby the essence is a proposal to introduce transnational lists within a pan-European constituency for the election of part of MEPs.

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