Voters in the European Parliament elections throughout the EU should endorse pro-EU candidates, European Commission President Mr Romano Prodi said today.
European Commission President Romano Prodi. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
In an interview with Reuters, the former Italian Prime Minister said the election should be used to counter the influence of Eurosceptics in the next Parliament. He also called for a new "pro-European" political grouping to form.
"What is important is that in the European Parliament you need a driving force, and not [to] be paralysed by the Eurosceptics which, inside the parties, oblige the parties not to take positions," Mr Prodi said.
Mr Prodi is probably the most vocal of senior EU figures advocating a federal Europe has been involved in efforts to create an enlarged centrist force in the parliament.
European federalists and liberals could draw some traditional Christian Democrats away from parliament's main right-of-centre grouping out of frustration at the influence of Britain's deeply Eurosceptic Conservative party.
"This [new] parliament needs a group that is deeply, deeply, deeply pro-European, and I should like to have this group."
While the overall proportion of Eurosceptics was not growing, he argued, they were increasingly paralysing the main political blocs in the EU legislature - the Party of European Socialists and the conservative European People's Party.
"The stock of Eurosceptics is always around the same - sometimes an increase, in other countries a decrease. It's natural that you always have a 20 - 25 per cent stock of Eurosceptics," he said.
He also played down suggestions that a projected low turnout in the European elections reflected public indifference to the EU. Turnout was falling in national elections, too, and was also a problem in the United States, he said.
But he voiced concern at higher abstention rates among young people, saying they should realise that the European Union would increasingly shape their future, alongside national governments.
In many countries, voters were tempted to use the European ballot to vent their feelings about national governments rather than on European issues, Mr Prodi acknowledged.
"In real terms, the local campaigns are a lot dedicated to national issues," he said. "On the European election, you have some sort of mixed motivation - one European and the other one strongly national. This is life."
Mr Prodi's five-year term ends in October, when he is expected to return to national politics and run against Italian President Silvio Berlusconi in a general election due next year.
The former centre-left prime minister brushed off criticism of his electioneering in his home country, noting that one former Commission chief, Mr Roy Jenkins of Britain, had helped found a new national party while heading the EU executive.
Additional reporting: Reuters