Martin Schulz has been re-elected as president of the European Parliament. The go-ahead from the assembly to the German Social Democrat came on the first ballot, with 409 votes in favour. Given the number of voters (723 out of 751 elected members) and the number of blank or void ballots (111), the valid votes were 612, and an absolute majority of 307 votes was required.
Schulz therefore obtained over a hundred more than necessary thanks to the agreement between the two major groups, the Ppe (221 seats) and the Pse (191 seats), strengthened by the adhesion of the liberals (67). However, the sum of the votes of the three groups is 479, therefore 70 Schulz actually received 70 votes less than the maximum possible of the alliance that had declared itself in favor of him. Some MEPs, evidently, failed in party discipline in the secrecy of the ballot.
It is however the first time that a president of the European Parliament has been re-elected for a second term of two and a half years (equal to the duration of half a legislature). After today's success, Schulz reassured the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, that in the European Parliament he will find "a large majority" in the more flexible interpretation of the European rules on budgetary discipline.
The runner-up, the British Sajjd Karim of the conservative ECR group, obtained 101 votes, or 70 for the ECR, plus a good part of the 48 for Nigel Farage's Eurosceptic group, EFDD (48 seats). The other two candidates practically received only the votes of their own group: 51 for both the Spaniard Pablo Iglesias (his group, the European United Left, has 52 seats) and the Austrian Ulrike Lunacek (the Green group, which has 50 seats). It is not clear how we voted for the deputies of the 5 Star Movement, which is part of the EFDD group.
