In the list of federal party positions up for election this autumn is the Lib Dem delegation for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe ALDE Council. The arrangements for this have changed recently, hence this post.
As an internationalist party, I am immensely proud of how, despite Brexit, the Lib Dems are still major players on the European political stage, through our membership of ALDE and in the wider world through our membership of Liberal international. The ALDE Party includes political parties from inside and outside the EU. None of the other political groups in Europe – apart from the Greens – allow non-EU parties, like ourselves, to participate as full members. In the other political groups to the left and the right of the political spectrum, non-EU parties are treated, at best, as guests or observers. However in ALDE we send delegates to both meetings of its Council and Congress, bring forward motions and participate fully in debates. ALDE is a European party not just focused on the EU.
The ALDE Council meets twice a year, to which we currently send 8 elected delegates – which include the Chair of the Federal International Relations Committee and delegation lead, a representative each from Scotland, Wales and under 26 year olds with the four remaining positions taken from the top four candidates elected by all members in the federal elections.
The ALDE Council delegates ensure that the voice of our party is heard on the European stage. It plays an important governance role at the heart of our European political family ( and which we co-founded as EDLR in 1976). Our delegation keeps in contact throughout the year and meets in the run up to ALDE Council meetings to consider motions to be submitted ourselves or to propose amendments to motions submitted by other parties. It is our responsibility to ensure that those motions we submit reflect our party policies. At the ALDE Council meeting itself we have the opportunity to ask questions and endorse political parties wishing to join our liberal political family, and generally network and build relationships with colleagues from our sister parties.
Working together over the three years makes us an effective team. I am very proud to have led the current ALDE delegation for the past three years – they have made sure our voice has been heard loud and clear and respected across Europe.
Whilst we currently have 8 delegates to the upcoming ALDE Council in Brussels in October – our delegate numbers are dependent on the national election results of our sister parties and the EU Authority ruling that the votes of non- EU parties are not to exceed a third of the total so that any decisions regarding ALDE EU policy or expenditure cannot be controlled by non-EU parties. With the German FDP having their national vote reduced from 13% to 4.9% in this year’s elections – it is likely that our delegate numbers on ALDE Council for 2026 could be reduced to between 5 and 7. Our delegate numbers change every year, which in effect means that the STV election results often have to rerun by the Returning Officer – in case a candidate’s circumstances have changed making them no-longer eligible to stand or no-longer wish to be included in the ballot.
In the past three years the ALDE Council has met in Bucharest, Vilnius, Estoril, Brussels, Stockholm, and Helsinki. Delegates are given some financial support for their travel costs and most food and drink are catered for throughout the duration of the ALDE Council, but accommodation is at one’s own expense. We encourage sharing apartments to keep down costs.
I hope that has helped to clarify the ALDE Council delegates up for election this autumn. I have mentioned several times the ALDE Congress, to which our party also sends a delegation – in its case not elected – and it can be a great introduction to our international work. I shall write more in a further article to follow on shortly from this one.
If you have any further questions with regards to the ALDE Council, please get in touch.
* David Chalmers is Chair of Federal International Relations Committee and leads the Lib Dems ALDE Delegation
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
A perpetual pirouette of prevarication?
Michael Meadowcroft: A Liberal of Intellectual Rigour and Uncommon Integrity
Debt-ridden graduates claim they are seen as cash cows
Why non-fiction books need their indexes
Changes in status: Local Elections wrap up
Tom Bailey
Daniel Walker
Matt (Bristol)
Hywel
14 Comments
What I don’t understand is how ALDE can include Ireland’s Fianna Fáil, a right-wing, conservative party. I couldn’t vote for a party with its views.
Brenda Will – Personally I lean more to the Social Democrats on the Irish political spectrum, but Fianna Fáil is somewhat of an ideological oddity, being somewhat of a “catch-all” party due to the impact of the Civil War – Micheál Martin and many of its present ministers have socially liberal inclinations, and have been much more progressive than the British government on Gaza, but others, and a sizeable proportion of its rural vote are indeed a lot more conservative than its TDs. In any case, there are other ALDE members who would be distinctly more right-wing than FF, such as Renaissance, and the Dutch VVD.
Fianna Fáil is probably closest to the Liberal and social democratic mainstream in Great Britain – indeed for a while it was widely believed that the Social Democratic and Labour Party of Northern Ireland would merge with FF. Hardly right-wing.
ALDE is, of course, a talking shop for self-important people who like going on foreign trips.
It all sounds great but i’m assuming that if elected you have to fund yourself?
Lyell Yardarms “ALDE is, of course, a talking shop for self-important people who like going on foreign trips.”
Well, if you think a body attended by Liberal Prime Ministers, European Commissioners, MEPs and MPs from all over Europe is a talking shop, then your definition is very different from mine.
@Dave Warren. Yes
@Dave Warren. Fares yes, hotels yes, but food and drink usually not. I can’t remember if there is a pooled fares scheme
@Mick Yep, sounds about right to me. I stand by my definition.
Both the old Civil War parties in the Republic of Ireland used to be conservative, in a churchy-statist way, reflecting Irish society as it used to be. Irish society has changed radically over recent decades, and its political class has moved with the times. So both FF and FG now fit neatly into the modern centre/centre-right political space. Maybe FF is still an oddity in ALDE, but not the way it would have been in the 1980s had it been a member then (in those days Ireland had the FDP/VVD-like Progressive Democrats).
@ Lyell Yardarms “ALDE is, of course, a talking shop for self-important people who like going on foreign trips”.
Have you ever attended ALDE, Mr Yardarms, ? If you have, why did you go , and If not what evidence do you have for making that statement ?
@David Raw. No. I draw my conclusions based on the sort of members who go, the content of this article and many others like it and the dictionary definition of a talking shop.
I am sure the delegates had a nice time and I am happy for them.
@David. I’m confused: You state in the article that the reason for writing the article is that The arrangements for this have changed recently, hence this post , but I see nothing in the article that explains in what way any arrangements have changed compared to how things were done up to now. Can you clarify?
@ Lyell,
I think that you’re being a bit harsh, although perhaps as a former member of our ALDE Council delegation myself, I would say that, wouldn’t I?
That said, I’d liken ALDE Party Council more to English Council, as it focuses more on the running and management of the ALDE Party, whereas Congress is the primary policy making body. It isn’t glamorous, but like much of the internal workings of any political party, compliance with an increasingly complex legal framework is at the heart of its work.
And, as a bureaucrat rather than a politician, I was fortunate to find a niche within ALDE where I was able to be useful and to make it somewhat more inclusive and effective.
But, as someone who has been publicly critical of our international work in the past, I will note (perhaps to David’s surprise) that recent delegations have been much more professional and focused, building links with sister parties that inform our policy on building stronger links with the European Union. David should take credit for that.
Perhaps, Lyell, as the next ALDE Congress is in Brussels, you might apply to see for yourself what our Congress delegation does, rather than exercise your evident prejudices against the Party’s international work.
@Simon R
Our own electoral process for the ALDE delegation has not not changed, but the number of delegates our party can send to ALDE Council is subject to the rule that non- EU parties are not allowed more than 1/3 of the total votes cast. This complicates the process – as our delegation number is recalculated for almost every meeting and most likely reduced from what it might previously have been expected to be. That aspect needed clarifying for potential candidates.
Having been on a few ALDE delegations, I can completely refute the idea of it being “just a talking shop”. The event itself is just the core of the overall thing, which includes preliminary meetings, policy reviews and discussions. If you are going to characterise this as “a talking shop” then by the same definition so is Federal Conference!
The ALDE delegation’s role is critically important to our party’s long-term objective of rejoining the European Union. It’s also very important in our overall pan-Europe goals with regards to (currently) non-EU states such as Ukraine and Switzerland.
While Labour, Tories and Reform have abandoned their European partners, we have stayed engaged, maintaining and forming the political contacts that will, in the long run, see the UK follow a Liberal European course.
Our ALDE delegation needs committed, principled, Liberal members to carry on with this task.