EU Parliament’s group ‘Renew Europe’ welcomes acceptancereport by Pascal Durand (Renaissance, France) in the Constitutional Affairs Committee. This report takes stock of the European

elections of May 2019 and makes several recommendations that the Conference on the Future of Europe will be able to take up.

The report notes with satisfaction a rise in voter turnout to 50.95% in 2019. This halts a steady decline in voter turnout in European elections since 1994.

Although gender balance is improving, 41% of MEPs are now women, it is still insufficient.

MEP Pascal Durand stressed:

"The health, economic and social crises we are experiencing clearly demonstrate the need and expectation for a stronger and more united European Union. The report voted today in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs on the assessment of the European elections and the perspectives they open up highlights the expectations of citizens for tools that allow the Union to face the emergencies of the moment, without sacrificing medium and long-term objectives. In this report, we propose to open up ways to clearly improve the institutional functioning of the Union on transnational lists, the involvement of all citizens, particularly young people and those with difficult access to voting such as disabled people and the homeless, the strengthening of the Spitzenkandidaten, the affirmation of parity... This is how the European Union will build a resilient future and respond to the challenges of the 21st century by emerging from a narrow nationalist vision."

Photo by Xavier Cantat, Wikimedia commons.