In your view, what are the points of weakness and power that the Muslim MPs historically had in the European Parliament? In other words, what should they have done, and what should they have not?
Answer
The power of religious MEPs is very limited in the European Parliament, because this Parliament has absolutely no powers to decide in religious issues.
Name
Raneem
- Egypt
Profession
Question
What is the difference between the European parliament and the parliament in every European country?
Answer
There are two main differences. First, the European Parliament can legislate ONLY in issues where it is given powers according to the European Treaties, while the National Parliaments can decide on anything they want.
So the European Parliament has almost NO powers in taking decisions in foreign policy issues. The National Parliaments have the right of the legislative intiative, while on the EU level this right is exclusive to the European Commission.
Second, the European Parliament is the place which co-decides most of EU legislation, while the role of the National Parliaments is very limited to the transposition of the European legislation into the national systems.
Name
Nadeen
- Poland
Profession
Question
Please give us a brief introduction to the European Parliamentary elections. How many members from each country are sharing in the elections? How many Muslim candidates are sharing, and particularly from which countries?
Answer
There are 736 Members of the European Parliament to be elected from 27 countries, who are members of the European Union.
The number of parliamentarians varies between states: the range is between 5 members from Malta to 99 from Germany.
There are some Muslim candidates running from different parties in a number of EU member countries, some with very good chances of being elected. Yet, as religion is NOT the most important criterion of being a successful legislator, it is not important if an MEP is Muslim or Christian or Non-believer.
Name
Salah
- Belgium
Profession
Question
Is the Muslim existence in the parliament increasing or not? What are the reactions towards such existence in terms of the Muslims’ interest in Europe? In other words, are the Muslims’ integration is deepening as a consequence to such existence or not?
Answer
The participation and importance of Muslim politicians is on the rise in a number of European Union member states. This refers also to the elections to the European Parliament. However, every country is different from the other. Those states where there is no Muslim minority do not face any increasing importance of the Muslim politicians.
Name
Laila
- Egypt
Profession
Question
Is there any female participation in the European Elections? How many and from which countries? How do you estimate their participation?
Answer
There are many female candidates. The proportion of women members of the European Parliament is higher than in most of the national parliaments.
About 30% of the current European Parliamentarians are females. The European objective is to seek a balance between sexes. In the outgoing Parliament, Estonia and Luxembourg had 50% female parliamentarians.
On the other extreme, there was no women parliamentarians from Cyprus or Malta.
Name
Anna
- Greece
Profession
Question
To what extent are the decisions of the Euro-Parliament effective and taking place? What are its limitations, how far are the Parliament’s decisions obligatory to its members?
Answer
The decisions of the European Parliament taken within the so-called Co-Decision Procedure are crucial and are effectively decisive in determining the rules adopted by the EU as a whole. The same applies to about half of the European Parliament's decisions.
The limits for the European Parliament are the European Treaties. The EP cannot rule on issues which the Treaties did not give the EP the right to do so explicitly.
This is also the main difference with the national parliaments, which in theory could decide that BLACK is WHITE and WHITE is BLACK.
The EP does not have the powers to do it.
Name
Suzan
- Italy
Profession
Question
Are you with or against the existence of Muslim MPs in the parliament? Why? How far do you see this effective or making difference in the Muslim lives in Europe?
Answer
The religion of a particular Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is his or her personal matter.
All parliamentarians are elected by their constituencies (mostly national), therefore they all have equal rights, including those MEPs, who are Muslims or have other religions.
The problem of the European Parliament in preserving living conditions of any particular group is that it has limited competences in thet matter.
However, the Parliament has a very decent history of standing up to defend the discriminated minorities, such as Romas. Therefore having strong and vocal representatives most likely could contribute to raising the awareness of problems facing Muslim communities across the EU.
As I am not a politician it is not for me to answer the question of being for or against of anything.
Name
Nina
-
Profession
Question
We as Muslim readers of IOL care to know more about the Muslim candidates running for the coming elections, so please elaborate that part.
Answer
For this you need to check each member country's profile. But I can give an example, in France there is a very prominent Muslim candidate, Madame Rachida Dati. In other member states, it depends. Tell me which country you intend to vote in and I will try to answer country-specific question with the best I can do.
Name
Richard
- Germany
Profession
Historian
Question
Do you think that Turkey, a non-European, 97%-Asian-Middle-Eastern Islamic country should join the European Union and if yes, then why? Should Israel join the EU as well?
Answer
It is not easy to answer the question on Turkey. As a non-politician I abstain from giving a definitive answer on SHOULD.
However, in my judgment it does not seem feasible today for Turkey to become an EU member country.
Should the political climate change in the years to come, that might be more positive. As for "why", Because for any enlargement there needs to be a consensus among all EU-27 countries.
So far, countries like Germany and France are openly against Turkish membership.
About the percentage: Cyprus geographically is 100% in the Middle East and is a member of the EU. French Guyana (South America) is considered part of the EU too. So this is not a convincing argument.
Israel does not seem feasible neither. Israelis would have to accommodate the EU law first, which seems difficult.
In any case, before the final resolution of the Middle East conflict, there will be no Israeli EU membership perspective.
Name
Maria
- Greece
Profession
Question
Dear Sir, i've just known that Greece's position in the comiing election is very fragile or weak, given the current political situation it passes through. please highlight this issue referring to the future of Greece in the EU elections.
Answer
The Greek position in not that weak, it is corresponding to Greece's size among the European Union member states. The fact that PASOK is expected to win in Greece may have an important impact on the composition of the European Socialists' Party privileging the Greek.
Name
Nina
-
Profession
Question
Tell us more about candidates in Italy, how many and who supports the immigrants of all candidates?
Answer
In Italy, the Left-Wing parties tend to have better understanding of the minorities and immigrants' problems than of the ruling Right-Wing party. This is even more true after the 2008 debate on Romanians in Italy and the 2009 decision of merging the extreme Right-Wing politicians with the Forza Italia.
Name
Angelica
- Sweden
Profession
Question
How do you estimate the minorities' position in most of the 27 countries in terms of getting their voices heard?
Answer
Ethnic minorities were quite well represented in the European Parliament. Furthermore, the mainstream parties were quite receptive to the minorities' issues.
So in short the EP is in most cases a better place to raise awareness for those minorities than in some of the national parliaments. Positive cases from the past include the raising the awareness about, for example, the Roma's problems or generally for the immigrants from one member state to the other (in which case those immigrants represent a minority there).
Name
Editor
-
Profession
Question
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Answer
As the session has ended, IOL, Euro-Muslims zone would like to thank our guest for his estimated contribution and for his detailed enlightening answers to all our readers' questions.
Dear readers, thank you very much for joining us during this LD session. You can view the whole dialogue by clicking Recent Sessions, or later on Archive.
