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02918: Breaking News: More Democracy in Europe

From: <WDDM webmaster>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:45:49 -0700
Subject: Breaking News: More Democracy in Europe

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Breaking News: More Democracy in Europe
Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:35:51 +0100
From: Gerald Häfner, Member of the European Parliament
<haefner(at)democracy-international.org>
To: <wbm@world-wide-democracy.net>

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

the fight on the electoral reform is getting more severe every day. The European People’s
Party (EPP) group (which is the biggest group in parliament) decided to vote uniformly
against the transnational lists. The transnational list is the very core of our electoral reform.
Without the transnational lists the so-called "Duff report" makes no sense. It would be a
report without a clear content.

Until yesterday, within the EPP the vote was open as it will be in the Progressive Alliance of
Socialists & Democrats group (S&D). In the S&D group, this would mean that about two thirds
of its members would vote pro and one third would vote against the transnational lists. In the EPP,
it was the other way around: a bit more than two thirds wanted to vote against and about one third
would vote for the electoral reform (as far as it is possible to predict that in advance).

In this situation, we would have a slight chance to win the vote in plenary by the support of the green
group and huge parts of ALDE and a couple of members from other groups.

But the new decision of EPP to go for a uniform vote against it would mean that the reform will have
no chance to pass the Parliament.
If EPP will stick to that decision we will probably withdraw the report from the agenda, because I would
rather prefer it pending than killed for the present period of Parliament. For the time being, this would mean
to put as much pressure as possible on EPP members to vote for the key element of the report, which
are the transnational lists!

Greetings and best wishes,

Gerald Häfner
Member of the European Parliament
http://www.more-democracy-in-europe.org/
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