MEPs vow to keep 'Merkozy' in check during second term

The MEPs elected in June 2009 were the first to benefit from increased powers on budget and legislation under the Lisbon Treaty.

They were not afraid to use these on numerous occasions, including blocking a controversial directive on using cloned animals for food production, a fisheries deal with Morocco over alleged human rights abuses in the territory of Western Sahara, and the so-called SWIFT agreement to share Europeans' banking details with the US.

The Parliament has also been actively using its powers as constitutionally co-equal legislator to influence negotiations on draft laws and budgets. This has included backing an expansion of the EU budget, shifting more funds to research, and pushing binding targets for energy efficiency.

To Jan Zahradil, a Czech MEP and former leader of the eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists Group, this is a sign both of the desire of MEPs to assert themselves and the Parliament's politicisation.

"Increasingly the situation happens where the Parliament is divided by centre-right versus centre-left voting blocs where parties tend to vote more according to their own political philosophies and ideologies rather than according to some power-sharing schemes," he said.

In contrast with the 2004-2009 term, Zahradil said, Parliament was less prone to automatically accept legislation and was becoming "a less technical and more political body, and that's the way it should be."

Marginalised in economic crisis

However, while the Parliament's clout in day-to-day legislative and budgetary matters has become increasingly apparent, the EU's only directly elected body has often found itself marginalised on perhaps the most important issue of the day: the response to unending economic and financial challenges.

Leadership has been dominated by the periodic meetings of the European Council of national leaders, where MEPs are mere observers, and in particular by the Franco-German duo of President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"Paradoxically [in view of its assertiveness elsewhere] on all these issues relating to financial crisis, the European Parliament did not do much of substance. They were more or less rubber-stamping what was approved before, mostly within the Council," said Zahradil.

For Rebecca Harms, a German MEP and co-leader of the Greens, Parliament's lesser role is in some measure self-inflicted by the timidity of members of the centre-right European People's Party, the largest group in the Parliament.

EPP leader Joseph Daul, she said, "very often says the right things, also in this debate on the financial crisis, but when he has to jump into conflict with his prime ministers – Sarkozy, Merkel or whoever – then he is not that strong."

The leaders of many of the EU's largest countries are members of the EPP, including Germany, France and Spain.

Growing disenchantment with the Council

MEPs, however, are growing increasingly restless in view of the management of the eurozone crisis, including Daul, a French MEP.

"Personally, my biggest disappointment [since 2009] … is that [the European Council] was unable to show the expected leadership to solve a financial crisis and a debt crisis which is darkening the future of our fellow citizens," Daul said.

In a veiled criticism of Merkel and Sarkozy he added: "The mistake not to be made is to return to an intergovernmental Europe, where the 'big' [countries] impose solutions on the 'less big'".

MEPs have been increasingly assertive in the face of just such a possibility. Belgian MEP and Liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt, perhaps the most outspoken proponent of a 'federalist' path out of the crisis including eurobonds and a tax on financial transactions, defended MEPs' accomplishments in responding to the crisis.

"Parliament was instrumental in insisting that the so-called 'six-pack' of legislation on economic governance retained the original Commission proposal for automatic sanctions on member states for breaching their debt and deficit limits … France has now become a fervent convert and is pushing for automatic sanctions to be enshrined in the Treaties," he said.

Nonetheless, MEPs are continuing to struggle for a role in the 'fiscal compact', where they enjoy only observer status at the negotiating table. Verhofstadt was among the MEPs to protest a recent draft of the treaty, which led to the adding a clause for granting leading MEPs the right to address eurozone summits.

Green leader Harms argued such assertiveness in the face of the Council was likely to increase. "We've had the experience of 20 or so crisis councils and still no solution in sight – this makes the Parliament more ambitious," she said.

Crisis of public opinion

In addition to the economic crisis, MEPs contacted by EurActiv saw the challenge of persuading the public of the desirability of European integration as second in importance only to the economic crisis itself.

EPP leader Daul said: "The second challenge [after the economic crisis] is that of the growing suspicion of many of our fellow citizens towards the process of European construction. This development is a reality, and the European Parliament must answer it."

This was echoed by liberal leader Verhofstadt, who said MEPs, along with addressing the economic crisis, needed to work on "renewing popular support for the vision of the founding fathers of a close and integrated Union of the peoples of Europe … Conversely this means standing up and refuting the populist and nationalist sentiments beginning to take hold in a number of member states."

According to a recent Eurobarometer poll, trust in EU institutions has been on a continuous downward slope since the beginning of the eurozone crisis in late 2009. Europeans saying they "tended to trust" the Parliament dropped from 50 to 41%, which was still higher than that for other EU institutions, such as the Council and Commission.

Public disenchantment with the Parliament in particular has also been evident. The 2009 elections had a voter turnout of 43%, the lowest ever recorded at European level. Last year, the Parliament's image was tarnished by the cash-for-amendments scandal which saw three MEPs forced out for bribery and eventually led to a new code of conduct for MEPs.

For the eurosceptic Zahradil, however, the rise in anti-EU sentiment in some countries has not really affected the Parliament, saying that "this is of course a mistake because first and foremost the Parliament should reflect the public mood."

"There is still a big tendency not to take seriously the changing mood in the European Union. The Parliament in my view still lives in an atmosphere of wishful thinking … about some kind of federal Europe," he said.