Presidencies and Vice Presidencies of the Committees of the European Parliament have always been allocated following the d’Hont method, a mathematic calculation system which allows political groups to distribute offices in a fair way, according to the size of each party. Not a right but a tradition allowing to allocate top offices in a fair way. This tradition was broken this time, in retaliation against UKIP MEPs who turned their back to the European anthem during the first Plenary: the EFDD group, to which Farage and his fellows belong as well as the Movimento 5 Stelle, was denied any institutional office, and in particular the Presidency of the Petitions Committee which should have been given to Eleonora Evi (M5S).
Something similar has already happened in the past though: in 1994, according to the d’Hont method, EPP should have been given the Presidency of the Research Committee, to be precise the office should have been covered by Umberto Scampagnini, Forza Italia. The centre-left did not like the rising star of Italian politics of the time, Silvio Berlusconi, and decided to candidate and elected the Socialist Claude Desama instead, breaking the tradition. In the past, a President indicated by a group had not been elected already, but the ‘fight’ was internal and composed internally, usually between two personalities of the same group. With the Scampagnini case instead, it was the first time for an ‘external blitz’. The EPP then decided to filibuster another Committee, where a Socialist was supposed to be elected, as long as the anomaly had been corrected. After the summer break, when works were restarted, Desama was forced to quit the office and Scampagnini was elected in his place, correcting the situation.
Still, this time the EFDD was not only denied one Presidency, they didn’t receive six Vice Presidencies too. There’s a precedent too even in this case, two precedents to be precise, even though in a minor scale. In 1989 the far-right party composed of Front National, led by Le Pen Senior, by German Republicans and by the Belgian Vlaams Blok (iat the time it was not necessary to have MEPs from 7 Member States to create a Group) was supposed to have the third Vice Presidency of the Transport Committee, but the official candidate, Hans-Günter Schodruch, wasn’t accepted and with him all the other candidates the group proposed. The same happened in 2007, when the far-right ws able to create the group ‘Identity, Tradition, Sovreignity’ (which actually lasted less than a year) to which Luca Romagnoli (Fiamma Tricolore) and Alessandra Mussolini (at the time part of Azione Sociale, she was replaced by Roberto Fiore) both belonged. The group was supposed to entitled the first Vice Presidency of the Culture Committee, and the third of the Transport Committee. Both were denied though.
