First European Parliament Elections (1979): Voting Across Europe

The first European Parliament elections took place on 7–10 June 1979, when voters in the nine member states of the European Community chose their representatives directly for the first time. About 62 percent of some 180 million eligible voters took part, electing 410 members. The new Parliament met in Strasbourg in July and chose Simone Veil, a French minister and Auschwitz survivor, as its president.

Background: from appointed assembly to elected parliament

The Parliament began in 1952 as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community. After the Treaty of Rome created the European Economic Community, it became a joint assembly for the three Communities in 1958 and named itself the European Parliament in 1962.

Its members were national MPs delegated by their own parliaments. The Treaty of Rome had foreseen elections by direct universal suffrage, but France in particular resisted for years. At a summit in Paris in December 1974 leaders agreed to hold direct elections, and the Act concerning direct elections was signed on 20 September 1976. A first date in 1978 was postponed because some countries, notably the United Kingdom, were not ready.

The elections

Each country voted under its own electoral law and on its own usual polling days. Britain, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands voted on Thursday 7 June; Italy on 10 June, a Sunday, as did most others. Britain used first-past-the-post in Great Britain, with proportional voting in Northern Ireland; the other countries used forms of proportional representation.

Seats were divided by country rather than by population alone:

Campaigns were largely national in tone. Parties often treated the vote as a test of their national governments, and debates turned more on domestic politics than on European policy. In France the Gaullists under Jacques Chirac ran a separate list hostile to further integration, while in Britain Labour was still divided over membership four years after the referendum. Transnational party federations, created for the occasion, issued common manifestos but had little visible role.

Turnout varied widely. It was around 90 percent in Belgium and Luxembourg, where voting was compulsory, and around 85 percent in Italy, but only about 32 percent in the United Kingdom and under 50 percent in Denmark.

Results

The Socialist Group won 113 seats and became the largest group. The Christian Democratic European People’s Party won 107, the European Democrats, led by the British Conservatives, 64, and the Communists and allies 44. Liberals and Democrats took 40 seats and the European Progressive Democrats, including the French Gaullists and Ireland’s Fianna Fáil, 22.

Prominent figures elected included the former West German chancellor Willy Brandt and several other national leaders. Many members still held seats in their national parliaments, a practice that was later phased out.

Simone Veil and the first session

The newly elected Parliament met in Strasbourg on 17 July 1979. The opening session was chaired by its oldest member, the 86-year-old French journalist and veteran European campaigner Louise Weiss.

On the same day Simone Veil, standing for the Liberal group with centre-right support, was elected president after more than one round of voting. A survivor of Auschwitz and, as French health minister, the author of the 1975 law legalising abortion in France, she became the first woman to preside over the Parliament and served until January 1982.

Key people

• Simone Veil (1927–2017): French politician, Auschwitz survivor and first president of the elected Parliament (1979–1982).
• Louise Weiss (1893–1983): journalist and campaigner for European unity who opened the first session as its oldest member.
• Willy Brandt (1913–1992): former West German chancellor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, elected as a member in 1979.

Consequences

The elected Parliament quickly used the budget powers it had gained in the 1970s: in December 1979 it rejected the Community’s budget for 1980, the first time it had done so. Its powers grew further with the Single European Act of 1986 and later treaties, which made it a co-legislator with the Council in most areas.

Direct election also gave the Parliament new legitimacy. Its members began to sit in political groups rather than national delegations, and the Parliament pressed for further reform, most ambitiously in the Draft Treaty establishing the European Union, led by the Italian federalist Altiero Spinelli and adopted in 1984.

Turnout, however, has been a recurring concern. After 1979 it fell at almost every election until 2014, before rising again in 2019.

Timeline

• 1974, December: Paris summit agrees to hold direct elections.
• 1976, 20 September: Act concerning direct elections signed in Brussels.
• 1979, 7 June: Voting begins in Britain, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands.
• 1979, 10 June: Voting ends; results announced across the Community.
• 1979, 17 July: First session in Strasbourg; Simone Veil elected president.
• 1979, December: Parliament rejects the 1980 Community budget.

Why it matters

The 1979 elections gave the European Community its first institution chosen directly by citizens. They laid the basis for the Parliament’s later growth into one of the most powerful elected international assemblies in the world.