Europe needs to synchronise elections.

All together now!

All together now!

Imagine if the House of Commons or the Bundestag or Dail Eireann was not elected en masse in a single election, but had ongoing elections with individual seats elected every few months. Imagine the paralysis that would cause in politics. Yet, curiously, that is how we run the European Union, with upcoming national elections forever causing national leaders to postpone decisions or refuse to take potentially unpopular decisions.

The truth is, Europe is now so integrated that this is causing us problems, so how do we address it? I have a suggestion. Supposing every member state commits to scheduling the next national elections after the next scheduled elections to be all held in the same six month period. It would mean that newly elected leaders would not have to cut their terms short, and that within 5-7 years nearly all the EU would be going to the polls in the same year, those allowing a whole swathe of European leaders, freshly elected, to have a clear run, allĀ agreeing that the final year of their terms would be an EU low activity period. Just a thought, assuming that we actually have an EU in 5-7 years!