Professor Gail McElroy:

I thank the committee for inviting me to speak on this broad topic. I intend to focus mostly on group formation in the European Parliament, the deadline for which is today. There was a great deal of media coverage of the European elections. One might think from reading the newspapers that a broad sweep of far-right parties was rising across Europe and arriving at the doors of the European Parliament. There has been an increase, to some extent, in the percentage of people voting for Eurosceptic and far-right parties, but I would like to make the point quite clearly that it has been overstated. Perhaps we were a little taken by the rise of UKIP in Britain and the success of the Front Nationale in France, but we should bear in mind that far-right parties won no seats in a majority of member states. In fact, 18 of the 28 member states do not have any far-right representation. Having said that, it is newsworthy that the Front Nationale topped the poll in France and the Danish People's Party topped the poll in Denmark. The question of whether the latter party is a far-right one is open to broad debate. The number of MEPs representing far-right parties, based on a general definition of that term, has increased from 35 to 52. This can be largely attributed to the success of the Front Nationale. Five far-right parties lost representation in the 2014 elections. It should be of interest to Ireland as a bailout country that the far-right did well in just one of the bailout countries. I refer, obviously, to the Golden Dawn party in Greece. The bottom line is that the rise of the far-right has been overstated. The two main parties in the European Parliament are still the two main parties. The EPP lost a not-inconsiderable number of seats, but it is still the largest group. In light of the austerity of the times we live in, it could be considered on some level as a not-unsuccessful election for the EPP.

The level of turnout, which increased slightly by 0.1%, seems to have levelled off at approximately 43%. There are huge variations across the different countries of Europe. We do quite well, even by comparison with the countries that have compulsory voting. It is obvious that our figures are inflated by virtue of the fact that our local elections are held on the same day. Maybe other member states could take a leaf out of our book on that front. Alternatively, we could all adopt compulsory voting in order to reach the levels of over 90% that have been attained in some countries.

I wish to say a few words about group formation in the European Parliament. Following the elections in May, the last month has been a time of great dynamism. The three main groups have been relatively stable, but there have been huge amounts of movement on the fringes. This issue has been in the news in Ireland today because the European Conservatives and Reformists, ECR, group has managed to oust the Liberals from third place. This is a big story, particularly because an Irish MEP decided at the last moment to become a member of that group. This matters in a lot of ways. The ECR's slight edge over the Liberals will mean that it does quite well in terms of report allocation, plenary speech time and chairmanship of committees. It is clear that the ECR was very keen to make a splash. There was a big battle for MEPs between the ECR and the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group, EFD. UKIP is probably most familiar to us of the members of the EFD. They battled for MEPs from parties like the True Finns and the Danish People's Party, both of which have switched groups.

The European Parliament is very different from a national parliament in the sense that there is a great deal of volatility at election time. There are always many new parties and freshmen MEPs in the European Parliament. Typically, between 70% and 75% of incumbent Deputies are re-elected at an Irish general election, although this was not the case in the 2011 election. The equivalent figure in the European Parliament is never more than 50%, for a variety of reasons. People choose to retire. Life in Brussels is exhausting in some senses. The second-order nature of the elections means there is a great deal of movement. There is always a kind of reinvention of the wheel. Some countries are better at re-electing MEPs than others. Germany has a much higher return rate than Ireland or some of the east European countries. That gives German MEPs an advantage in terms of policy expertise and knowing the ropes of such an institutionally complex legislative environment.

There has been a lot of coverage in this country of the fact that UKIP did so well in Britain. UKIP has formed a group, which will probably have 48 MEPs, and is doing reasonably well. One needs to bear in mind that this group is not ideologically very cohesive. UKIP is in the same group as the Five Star Movement, which is led by the Italian comedian Beppe Grillo. They share a kind of Euroscepticism, but very little else. One of the big stories today is that Le Pen and her colleagues have not managed to form a group. They will be in the European Parliament as Independents because even though they met the numerical criteria, they failed to meet the state membership rule, which requires a group to have MEPs from seven countries. One could argue that over the years, the main groups have made a concerted effort to ostracise some of the more fringe groups by continuing to increase the criteria for membership. As a result, parties like the Austrian Freedom Party, the Dutch Freedom Party, the Le Pen group and Vlaams Belang will not be able to form a far-right political group with rights to make speeches and take plenary time in this Parliament.

It is possible that the European Parliament will not be very different in the new term. The three main traditional groups - the Liberals, the Socialists and the Christian Democrats or EPP - tend to turn up and vote cohesively and that is unlikely to change. The other groups, with the possible exceptions of the Greens and the GUE, find it hard to whip people into line. I am thinking particularly of the fringe far-right and far-left groups. Indeed, they find it hard to get people to turn up to the same extent as the more institutionalised and bigger political groups. The two big political groups will have a majority of MEPs between them. Along with the ALDE, they will have almost two thirds of MEPs. It should be borne in mind that these groups will have a standing arrangement to vote together. It cannot be described as a grand coalition because there is no government resting on a vote of no confidence. There are issues that will divide them. The EPP and the S&D have been explicit about their intention to make their arrangements, which are already consensual, more explicit. Consensus is the hallmark of the European Parliament. For many reasons, it is difficult for those of us who are more familiar with Anglo-Saxon democracies to get our heads around that. The use of trilogues and early informal agreements has risen hugely from approximately 28% in the fifth European Parliament to over 80% in the eighth European Parliament. We should not be obsessed about what happens in Strasbourg. All the decisions are made before that. I imagine we will witness more of that in the future.

Voting cohesion is very high in the European Parliament. Indeed, the three main groups - I include the ALDE in that for the time being - almost always vote together with no division among them on a plurality of votes. There is very little division between the groups because they have sorted it all out beforehand. If everything is decided behind closed doors, for example, in trilogues with the Commission and the Council, it has implications for transparency and democracy but it makes for legislative efficiency. The time that elapses between the proposing of legislation by the Commission and its becoming law has been reduced rather impressively over the last couple of Parliaments. I could continue, but perhaps I have used the seven or eight minutes available to me.