The European Free Alliance aims for minority rights and self-determination in the EU, as outlined in their recent manifesto.
The European Free Alliance’s objective for the European elections in June 2024 is to ensure that minority liberties are respected in the European Union and also the privilege of self-determination. These are some of the significant demands of its manifesto, which it introduced on Friday after a two-day assembly in Brussels, Belgium.
The event was observed by its two leading contenders, or spitzenkandidaten, Maylis Rosberg and Raül Romeva, who were introduced last October. The party has urged the need for a European Commissioner to protect the rights of minorities.
“I consider national minorities to be one of the basic things in the European Union,” stated Rosberg, who belongs to the Danish minority in Germany. He added that they are “the diversity of the EU.”
He asks for “protection and measures to develop their rights.” His party’s manifesto also urges for reform so that the European Committee of the Regions can “influence and amend” European legislation.
At this point, this European institution has only a consultative role. The other leading candidate, or spitzenkandidat is ex-Catalan MEP Raül Romeva, who was convicted to 12 years in prison for his participation in the Catalan referendum in 2017. After that, Romeva was detained for nearly three years and was pardoned, but is politically disqualified until 2030.
The pro-independence leader’s candidacy is mainly symbolic. “It is a way of sending a message,” the Catalan politician described. Romeva believes the European Union has “important deficits in representativeness, not only of representativeness in terms of the nation but also of languages, of minorities, of options.”
This is not the first time that the EFA has had a top candidate who has been charged for the events related to the Catalan referendum. In the 2019 European elections, it fielded Oriol Junqueras, who at the time was also jailed.
The top candidate or spitzenkandidat is the individual that each European party designates as a possible president of the European Commission. After the European elections, the presidents and prime ministers of the EU countries must determine the next leader of the EU executive.
In 2014, Jean-Claude Juncker thrived after participating in an election drive for the post. And in 2019, the then-almost-unknown Ursula von der Leyen was chosen. Von der Leyen is standing for the European People’s Party in these upcoming elections. She will race against, among others, the Social Democrat candidate and current European Commissioner for Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit.
The European Free Alliance party is one of the most undersized represented parties in the European Parliament, with 10 MEPs. Most of them sit in the European Parliament in alliance with the Greens. The three members of the Flemish nationalist party sit with the far-right CRE group.
