Nine distinguished Europeans, Jerzy Buzek (Poland), Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (Italy), Jean-Luc Dehaene (Belgium), Jacques Delors (France), Wim Kok (The Netherlands), Paavo Tapio Lipponen (Finland), Mario Soares (Portugal), Peter Sutherland (Ireland) and Guy Verhofstadt (Belgium) have endorsed the Call to “Give European citizens a voice” (link to the Call: www.iai.it/pdf/Call/Call_eng.pdf ), in view of the upcoming 2009 European Parliament elections. The Call has been drafted by Tommaso Padoa Schioppa, former member of the board of the European Central Bank, together with five prestigious European think tanks.

In the concluding part of the appeal, the nine personalities call on European political parties and candidates campaigning for the June elections and, afterwards, on the newly elected MEPs and their groups to commit themselves to:

• mobilizing public opinion in a truly political debate on the future of Europe;

• selecting candidates fully qualified for, and committed to, building a strong EU;

• elaborating EU-wide policy programs instead of fragmented national platforms;

• rejecting any downgrading of the election to a national contest;

• making full use of the powers of the European Parliament;

• naming candidates for the post of President of the European Commission, so that EU citizens can cast their votes on those candidates as well;

• overhauling the EU budget to make it an effective policy instrument.

The Call is the outcome of the research project Democracy in the EU and the role of the European Parliament. The five European research institutes supporting the project are the Istituto Affari Internazionali (coordinator, Rome), Centro Studi sul Federalismo (Turin), Institut für Europäische Politik (Berlin), Notre Europe (Paris) and the Federal Trust (London), in cooperation with TEPSA and EU-CONSENT (both networks of research centres in Europe).