Changing the Political Framework

Abstract

This book also makes a second and rather more ambitious proposal whereby a constitutional reform would be passed in one or more member states of the European Union for national parliamentary elections to take place on the same day as the elections for the European Parliament and for this to be the case irrespectively of when previous national parliamentary elections took place. In doing so, this reform would significantly contribute to two momentous developments.On the one hand, the conditions would be in place for concomitant public discourses to take place on the same topics and at the same time across national public spheres. While the different natures of national public spheres across Europe will by definition always allow for variation in how similar political issues are addressed, the fact that these could be debated at exactly the same time across multiple countries with an enhanced focus on them provided by upcoming synchronized elections would create a state of affairs whereby Europeans could much more easily nurture transnational dialogues. As things stand, national public discourses regularly supersede European ones. While not enough to ensure that a pan-European conversation might emerge on a certain topic, the synchronization of electoral campaigns across member states would at least provide transnational civil society and political entrepreneurs with a radically different political framework within which they would stand a much better chance to nurture shared political narratives to complement existing national political discourses with more European ones.On the other hand, this reform could also synchronize policy-making opportunities across EU member states. While the European Parliament and the European Commission might provide some sort of continuity across time when it comes to policy-making, it is a fact that variation between the timeframes of the legislative periods of national parliaments across Europe still has an enormous impact on the extent to which major reforms proposals can be moved forward. Put it bluntly, if national parliamentary elections are coming up in key member states such as France