The elections for the European Parliament are coming up soon, and this time around, I decided to ask all candidates a few questions and post their answers. But before sending these questions, it makes sense to look at the details, the first and most important being that the voting day is May 26 between 7:00 and 21:00, local time (EST) and there’s not voting by correspondence.

If you live in Europe, you may decide to vote for the MEP in your country, rather than Romanian MEPs. Here in Canada, there's a voting section in every major city (Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver, even Moncton). In Toronto it’s at the Romanian Consulate, at 789 Don Mills Rd,  Unit 501.

new

So, what’s new? Start with this infographic (PDF).

For headlines, Britain is out, and despite its demographic decline, Romania elects one extra MEP. PNL leads so far, but PSD is still strong and I predict that even if USR / PNL would manage to seriously upset them, my 2016 musings wrt to direct democracy and money politics are still valid. More precisely, in the latest poll at this time (Politico), PNL leads with 26%  (i.e., 9 MEPs), followed by PSD with 22.7% (8 MEPs) and USR 16% (7).

The voting day is remarkably close to 2014, (one day later), but the TestVot application (which I covered in 2014 and 2016) does not appear to be have been updated since I last covered it. So this time around, the results will be different compared to 2014 in terms of names; as for me, I care even less, but I’ll still vote as long as there isn’t a line-up longer than 30 minutes.

Instead of testvote we now have the Robert Schuman site (schuman-ro) and you can find info on existing MEPs on the EuroParl site (existing-meps).

stakes

What’s at stake? Here’s from the EU site (does4me, thistime).

The Romanian president (Iohannis) has been trying hard to squeeze in a referendum on corruption, while PSD had been fighting against it tooth and nail (through UDMR, for instance). So far, it seems to be a “go”. Petre M Iancu writes a far-hitting article on DW (p.dw.com/p/3HPXd).

There’s been some public grandstanding between PNL’s Rares Bogdan and MAE Teodor Melescanu, with the former accusing attempts to restrict diaspora vote, and the latter aquiescing to more voting sections. There has been significant migration within UE, from Italy, Spain and Portugal to UK, i.e., from 250000 to 700000.

MEPs make €8,700 a month, but it's reduced to about €6,800 after taxes (bbc-mepseuros), plus “secret” monthly expenses of €4,416 (grdn-mepxpns). They get a transition allowance of up to €206,664 on leaving. Nigel Farage, for instance, will get a pension of about 70% of his salary.

LE: In an interview recently taken by Recorder with retiring MEP & actor Mircea Diaconu, the numbers are slightly different, likely because he mentions taxes and might not be aware of the entirety of his allowances/sinecură. It's also worth mentioning the #yeslavot campaign (in Romanian, "yes" is similar to "ies" which means "I go out"); there was a poorly thought out clip pitting generations against each other, and a pretty good one, by Mircea Bravo, resulting in euronews coverage. AFP has a nice infographic of Europe’s Parliament; see also Wikipedia.

I’ve read conflicting reports about Brexit: some claim they are still forced to have elections because they’re dragging their feet on an agreement, others that some of the British spots are to be divided among some countries and others saved for future expansion (ep-seats). My preference would be to abstain from adding any of those and simply allow the EU Parliament to decrease, saving time and resources in debates and decision-making (similar reasons as in puscameral).

Europe passes numerous laws and regulations, most of them enriching and raising consumer standards.

Here’s a few recent news: implosion, ghinea, juncker, iohannis-go, fakenews, 10teme, campaniaro, survey

candidates

There’s quite a few parties and among them the following independents, whom I’ll try to feature more prominently (they all gathered and submitted at least 100000 signatures):

• Gregoriana Carmen Tudoran (a8, adv, @tudorangreogoriana 8366/8920)
• George-Nicolae Simion (a12, adv, w)
• Peter Costea (fb 12599/12590, af, ro)

The list of all candidates was published on April 18 by BEC / MAE (proces verbal ramanere definitiva mae, PDF).

At the first look, USR seems to have the best site so far (diaspora.usr.ro). They also make it very easy for you to observe the elections as their paid “delegate” (delegati.usr.ro). PSD’s seems unfinished and 2016 repurposed (diasporapsd.ro) and for PNL all that I can find is its Facebook presence (/DiasporaPNL).  Then again, proportional representation means that the candidates are not tied to a location. I will try to present the top 10 for the first 3 parties using their answers ( f ).

Next, we look at who is running on parties lists and ask them our questions.

Sources / More info: votdiasp, usr-cand, pdf-finalcand, eu-alegeri-despre, bec-declaratiiAVRi, bec-declaratiiAVRp, bbc-mepseuros, grdn-mepexpns, ro-acumvotez, mae-all, cesastii, ep-seats, euvote-data, f, existing-meps, schuman-ro, wiki-romep19, p.dw.com/p/3HPXd, mae-sectii, mae-ghid, mae-rules, bec-obs