Speed voting European style

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Speed voting European style

By Iain Roberts | Sat 23rd October 2010 - 2:38 pm

Follow @slowbikeiain

Votes at Westminster are painfully slow, as MPs are summoned from far and wide to file past into the voting lobbies.

Not so the European Parliament, which was considering over a thousand amendments to the 2011 budget proposals.

Amendments are voting on within six seconds, to the extent that one MEP complains she can’t keep up with all the voting six minutes in.

I’ve not got the faintest idea what any of the amendments were – I can only hope the MEPs themselves had some clue. I also don’t know why some votes are by hand (and they seem to have to be poised for action to get the timing right and actually vote the way they intend) and others electronic.

At about 21 minutes and 40 seconds there’s a vote where one MEP appears to be keeping her hand up for the vote in favour, against and to abstain.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the decisions, I have a new admiration for our MEPs just for keeping up with the procedure.

Read more by Iain Roberts or more about european parliament.
This entry was posted in Europe / International.

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5 Comments

MattT 23rd Oct '10 - 4:19pm

I think the Lib Dems really need to develop a little more Euroskepticism. That 6% increase to their own budget the European Parliament just voted in is ridiculous, and, at the risk of sounding more UKIP than I’d like, the coalition should tell them where to stick it.
David Evans 23rd Oct '10 - 4:39pm

Isn’t this the same EU that said it wasn’t possible to report on who had voted for and against each measure?
Ryan M 23rd Oct '10 - 5:13pm

@David Evans

The vast majority of the electronic votes in this clip were “roll-call votes” and individual votes are recorded.

The hands are the equivalent of voice votes here, where no individual vote direction is recorded. Some use their hands even on electronic votes, these are MEP equivalent of whips giving a thumbs up or down.

For example, here is Lib Dem MEP Sharon Bowles’ votes on the measures in this clip
http://www.votewatch.eu/cx_mep_votes.php?an_start=2010&luna_start=10&zi_start=20.10.2010&euro_parlamentar_id=77
David Evans 23rd Oct '10 - 6:30pm

@Ryan M

Thanks for that. Nice to see Sharon was totally loyal to the party line on Civil Liberties.

Going back to UKIP’s gripe, did they get their way, or was that another issue?
Foregone Conclusion 23rd Oct '10 - 6:49pm

MattT – I think some of our MEPs have already said that they disagree with the settlement. I know Chris Davies (NW England) has.