Democracy Shield: Parliament gives the go-ahead for a scheme that has already been launched
Today in the European Parliament, we witnessed an institutional sequence that was, to say the least, unusual. The Strasbourg assembly has endorsed a mechanism designed to defend democracy and to intervene, in particular, in the context of national elections where the scope of the Union’s powers may itself be at the heart of the political debate – even though the Commission has already begun to implement it without a… prior vote by Parliament. By 420 votes to 220, with 26 abstentions, the European Parliament adopted Thomas Tobé’s (EPP) report on the Democratic Shield. A large majority, comprising the bulk of the EPP, the Socialists, the Liberals and the Greens, faced opposition concentrated mainly within the Patriots for Europe and Europe of Sovereign Nations groups and a large section of the…