Can Berlusconi be a candidate? Reding “European rules are clear” (that is: “no”)

The Italian law in force applies for European elections too and Brussels cannot change the situation. Juncker and his vitriolic joke.

Can Silvio Berlusconi be a candidate in the next European Parliament elections? “Rules are very clear,” said European Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding (EPP, the same European party of the former Italian Prime Minister), to those asking her about the possibility for the leader of Forza Italia of running for the European Parliament notwithstanding his tax-fraud conviction. A polite way to say that no, it won’t be possible, given that the ban established by the Italian law (so called ‘Legge Severino’) on running for public elections applies to all kinds of election – and Brussels has no power on national laws.

Neither the EPP is supporting Berlusconi. The candidate for the European Commission Presidency, Jean Claude Juncker, asked about the absence of Silvio Berlusconi at the EPP Summit in Brussels, at the Meise Castle, replied with a vitriolic joke: “No one told me why he is not here,” he said to journalists. When told that the Justice of Milano had not released Berlusconi a ‘no impediment permit’ for using his passport, he commented, “I didn’t know about it. I remember him when he had a passport.”

The only possibility left for Berlusconi is quite imaginative, yet real: he could be a candidate running for the European Parliament if he obtained the citizenship of another EU Member State. Citizenship, not residency.

That’s because of the Council Directive 93/109/EC, laying down detailed arrangements “for the exercise of the right to vote and stand as a candidate in elections to the European Parliament for citizens of the Union residing in a Member State of which they are not nationals”. The directive is quite clear, “Any citizen of the Union who resides in a Member State of which he is not a national and who, through an individual criminal law or civil law decision, has been deprived of his right to stand as a candidate under either the law of the Member State of residence or the law of his home Member State, shall be precluded from exercising that right in the Member State of residence in elections to the European Parliament.” Paragraph 2 of Article 6 of the Directive reads, “An application from any citizen of the Union to stand as a candidate in elections to the European Parliament in the Member State of residence shall be declared inadmissible where that citizen is unable to provide the attestation referred to in Article 10, paragraph 2.” That is, “When he submits his application to stand as a candidate a Community national must also produce an attestation from the competent administrative authorities of his home Member State certifying that he has not been deprived of the right to stand as a candidate in that Member State or that no such disqualification is known to those authorities.”