Is It Allowed?
Let The People Sing What's The Big Idea? Is It Allowed? How Does It Work? Is It A Good Idea? What Will Others Say? Swedish Law permits citizens of any member state of the European Union to stand as a candidate for election as a Swedish representative to the Strasbourg Assembly. Similar laws have been passed by other European parliaments. Perhaps the most prominent foreigner in the 1999 Strasbourg elections will be the former student leader from the barricades of 1968 Paris, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a German national who has been invited back into French politics by the French Greens to lead their party list.
Elections to the Strasbourg Assembly take place every five years at the same time throughout the European Union. The previous Euroelection was in June 1994 and the next election is on Sunday 13th June 1999. Sweden had its own EU election on 17th September 1995 after joining the EU in 1995. Turn-out at the election was 42%...half the 80-90% normal in Swedish parliamentary elections.
At the 1995 election, Sweden was a single undivided constituency and elected 22 of the 626 members of the Strasbourg Assembly, four from Miljöpartiet de Gröna...Per Gahrton (55), Inger Schörling (52), Ulf Holm (29) and MaLou Lindholm (51). The four Swedish Green Party Euro MPs are affiliated to the Green Group in the European Parliament ...one of eight political groupings...which with 28 members from nine countries represents 4.4% of votes.
The statutes and directives that have emanated from Brussels would fill up several book-cases. Nobody has the faintest idea what the small print contains. The legality of this avalanche of directives and the extent to which it might be binding upon citizens of the member countries of the European Union is extremely uncertain. Even when parliaments have passed laws seeking to give these statutes and directives the status of law within their borders, the right of these parliaments to do so can be questioned.
Some legal theorists argue that the various union treaties give the European Court the ultimate right to determine the legality of any law in any European member states. However this Luxembourg court is not a court of law but a political court and it bases its judgements not on legal arguments but on whether a particular edict furthers the cause of union. The court's legitimacy has been challenged in several countries, including the UK, Germany and Denmark. And it will be challenged again.
In the United Kingdom there are further complications and these are mirrored in other countries. For a start the inhabitants of the United Kingdom are not citizens of the European Union but subjects of the Queen of England. Also common law takes precedence over all other legal codes with nothing decreed by one parliament being binding upon any future parliament. Furthermore in English Common Law a jury can dismiss a case and free a defendant if they consider a law to be unjust.
So in answer to the question: Is Job-sharing allowed for a Euro MP's job, the only reply is that nobody has the faintest idea. If a test of its legality is made, then it will be politically authorised, the campaigns for and against it will be politically motivated and any judgement will be politically determined. Any ruling will be subject to appeal. Any law can be repealed. And in many cases prosecutions will be dismissed either by judges or by juries.
Should it be desirable to determine whether or not Swedish Euro MPs should share jobs, then 'We The People' should insist that the principle of subsidiarity...which was crucial to the passage of the Maastricht Treaty in many parliaments...be applied in accordance with the spirit of the treaty and the social contracts made with 'We The People' in each member state. Currently the wording of the treaties seeks to make legal the exact reverse of the common understanding of the term subsidiarity.
On this basis it is a matter for the Swedish parliament to determine how the Swedish people are to be represented in the Strasbourg Assembly. The issue has never been raised in the Swedish Parliament and so no position has yet been taken on the question. In a sense, there is everything to play for because it is still principally a political and not a legal issue. Nonetheless there are legal precedents and analogies to be made which are of a legal nature and it is as well to set these out.
Holding property in common is not a novel idea. In marriage property is often held in common. In a limited company all assets are held in common by the shareholders. The right to cast a vote in the Strasbourg Assembly may also be regarded as common property that belongs to the constituents of the electoral district.
The voters lend it to their representatives for a period of five years and have every right to expect it back unaltered at the end of this time. In the interim, for the five year period between elections, their representatives hold a fiduciary responsibility in the same way as a board of directors of a public company or a board of trustees for a pension fund.
The more interesting question though is not that of job sharing but how a corporation ever came to be given equality before the law with real people. Thomas Jefferson wanted to see the idea thrown out and the whole legal concept of a corporation as a 'person before the law' scrapped. Still if lawyers can cobble together rules like that for corporations then they should find it easy enough to provide appropriate legal status for two job-sharing Euro MPs.
Divorce law provides another example of joint property. Joint custody is often given to the children of a divorced marriage. In practice many different arrangements are possible and they all adequately meet this criteria. Some divorced parents share custody over the course of a week...Mummy's place during the week...Daddy's at weekends. Others choose to divide custody between term-time and school holidays and so on.
In principle there is little difference between sharing custody of a child and sharing the right to cast a vote. In the former case the interests of the child are paramount and in the latter, the interests of the people dwelling in the electoral district are paramount.
In practice there are enormous difficulties with the notion that any one Euro MP can adequately represent the interests of upward of half a million people. Job sharing has the advantage of halving the problem. But the problem is a problem of democracy and not one of job sharing.
Only by sharing the job out among 300 representatives could we bring the scale of representation down below the maximum level of 30 000 permitted by the US constitution.
And besides what is the worst that could happen. The Swedish Green Party is told they cannot do it. What would be the response? To do it anyway of course...but only putting the younger half of the jobshare up on the list . It is the principle not the legalities that matter.
Let The People Sing What's The Big Idea? Is It Allowed? How Does It Work? Is It A Good Idea? What Will Others Say?