Simple and clear

Anyone planning advocacy at the European Parliament knows that the members are currently moving into election mode. The Party of European Socialists will present its manifesto in early December and other groups will follow. October’s edition of Europe Infos carried a careful analysis of the complex electoral procedures for the European Parliament, procedures which unite certain common principles with a wide variation of modalities. When mere voting procedures are so elaborate we can hardly expect the election issues themselves to be straightforward. With seven major party groupings, each obliged to respect multiple national sensibilities in its self-presentation, the responsible voter is faced with daunting challenges of understanding and decision. One group, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), has launched a web-based campaign (www.simplelanguage.eu) with the tag, “What language should the EU speak? Simple language”. That slogan embodies a delusion. Intricate matters cannot be made simple, though they should be made as clear as possible, and needless obscurities can be avoided. Where too little attempt at clarity seems to be made (as in the case of the Treaty of Lisbon), wilful distortion becomes easier: the public may even come to suspect that their governments prefer the waters to be muddy. But the fundamental question is, how can voters make an informed choice amidst the complexities? What matters is the quality of information made available to the electorate.At a recent conference in Brussels, Cardinal Erdö of Esztergom-Budapest noted that public events tend to rely more on symbols and on the projection of personalities than on careful logical argument. This observation applies particularly to national elections, such as that of the USA, where the protagonists become major public figures. Sarah Palin, for example, has appealed consistently to her ‘hockey mom’ persona: she has openly ducked specific questions, being evidently less interested in elucidating policies than in trying to convey to voters that she understands ‘ordinary people’. She thus implies that basic human sympathy (which is quite widely shared) is more relevant to govern her country than good policies and demonstrable political intelligence. Members of the European Parliament command no such public interest: which at least allows for a concentration on the issues. Most electors realise the limits of their political understanding. Voting is implicitly based on the elusive, not totally rational, factor of trust, or trustworthiness: whether of a member or of a party. But an electoral process needs at least always to test how reasonable is that trust by probing candidates’ priorities, coherence and expertise, and how far their programme would serve the common good. Over the next months, COMECE, OCIPE, and such ecumenical partners as the Conference of European Churches, aim to contribute to the reasonable conduct of the European Parliamentary elections: by identifying what we believe to be key European (and not just national) issues and clarifying, in relation to them, the party groups’ priorities and policies.