| One month before the EU elections, it is useful to look back and see how the nine previous votes have exemplified historical developments and the changing balance of power in our union. The first European elections were held in 1979, as a series of parliamentary elections across the nine (at the time) European Community member states. They were also the first international elections in history. This was done in accordance with the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which established the European Communities and specified that the European Parliament must be elected by universal suffrage using a common voting system. The European Parliamentary Assembly first met in 1958 while the European Parliament, under this name, dates back to 1962. Until 1979, member states appointed members to the European Parliament from their national parliaments. The 1979 campaigns varied. The former Social Democrat German Chancellor Willy Brandt took an international campaign to France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands to boost the Socialist group. And it was the social democrats who won the largest number of MEPs (113, leaving behind the Christian democrats with 107). This was the beginning of a centre-left domination that lasted 20 years. France’s Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor and women’s rights activist and politician best known for the 1975 law that legalised abortion, was elected as the first president of the elected Parliament and the first female president since it was established in 1952. | 