German parties select European Parliament candidates

Bavarian centre-right adopts platform demanding EU reform on the same day that a new Eurosceptic party chooses its candidates.

The Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, has chosen MEP Markus Ferber to lead the party list for May’s European Parliament elections. The decision was taken at a conference on Saturday (25 January) at which the party adopted a platform that is sceptical of European Union expansion and that calls for far-reaching EU reform.

The CSU wants the college of European commissioners to be shrunk and says that EU membership should never be granted to Turkey. The party also says that the accession of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007 was a mistake, and rejects any suggestion of using Eurobonds or European debt collectivisation.

Speaking at the conference, Ferber called for the number of commissioners to be cut. He said that the entire European Commission should be reduced in size, adding that if the EU executive has time to think about jugs of olive oil, it is probably too large (a reference to a controversial Commission proposal last year, swiftly withdrawn, that would have banned restaurants from using refillable olive oil containers).

The CSU currently has eight MEPs. Ferber will be followed on the list by MEPs Angelika Niebler and Monika Hohlmeier.

CSU leader Horst Seehofer told German newspaper Der Spiegel that the party’s platform is not “Eurosceptic” and said the CSU is still an “ardent supporter of the European idea”.

The CSU conference came on the same day as a meeting of Alternative for Germany (AfD), in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg.

The new party scored 4.7% in the German federal election in September last year, beating tthe German liberals, the Free Democrats. This was, however, not high enough to meet the 5% threshold to sit in the German parliament. But Germany’s threshold for sitting in the European Parliament is 3%.

The AfD convention was supposed to choose ten candidates, but the infighting that has plagued the group meant that only six were selected on Saturday. Party members chose AfD leader Bernd Lucke and Hans-Olaf Henkel to lead their list. The remaining candidates will be chosen next weekend.

The party also unveiled a new slogan – “Mut zu Deutschland” (courage to be Germany). Although it started out as a purely anti-euro currency party, the message has expanded to include conservative and nationalist themes. Speeches by party members at the convention stressed themes of national sovereignty and warned of a loss of cultural identity.

However the nationalist message of the new slogan was tempered by the ‘eu’ in Deutschland being encircled by the EU stars.

Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) chose their party list candidates on Sunday (26 January) at a meeting in Berlin. Martin Schulz was confirmed as the first on the list, followed by current MEPs Birgit Sippel, Udo Bullmann, Kerstin Westphal and Bernd Lange. Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann, who formerly sat with the left-wing Linke party and served as a Parliament vice president, was placed at number ten on the SPD list.

Germany is not broken down into geographic constituencies for votign purposes, and votes are proportioned nationally. However German political parties can then assign their MEPs to represent specific German states.

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