An “European Election Day” exploratory workshop was held on Monday 25 September 2017 at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, at the initiative of Prof. Grégoire Mallard and Prof. Miguel Maduro.
Co-organised by the Global Governance Centre and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, the workshop brought together leading voices on European democratization at a time when European voters are feeling increasingly dissatisfied with their political leaders and processes.
Participants addressed such questions as: Can democracy survive at the federal level without uniting around the one-time expression of the popular will? Would it be desirable to synchronise national parliamentary elections should a new assembly of the Euro-Zone be created? Or even in its absence? And how can we otherwise incentivise political parties to Europeanise their electoral agendas?
The findings of the workshop and a subsequent public panel discussion were summarized in a conference report entitled “European Election Day: Synchronizing National Electoral Cycles and Improving Democracy in Europe.”
The report suggests that organizing in sync national elections can improve democracy in Europe by:
- Giving more political agency to European citizens at the European level.
- Helping the EU defend the integrity of its electoral process.
- Improving the efficiency of the decision-making process in EU institutions, especially policy coordination and decision-making among EU member-states within the Council of the EU.
While the synchronisation of national electoral cycles seems to be a promising venue to improve the democratic life of the Union, the report also warns that, "the organization of in sync rather than out of sync national electoral cycles is not a magic fix to all the problems affecting democratic life in the Union."
The report articulates further what needs to be done to better understand how to improve the political agency of European citizens.