Tag: institutional reform

"Five years (or two and a half, in the case of Bulgaria and Romania) following accession, EU membership for the ten central and eastern European states […] has not marked the end of the process of transition of those countries," writes Assya Kavrakova in a recent report for the European Policies Initiative (EuPI).

A leading public health NGO cautiously welcomed plans to establish a dedicated health committee in the European Parliament, calling on the European Commission to make its health commissioner responsible for pharmaceutical policy too.

Political groups with less than 25 members will be outlawed after the June 2009 elections to the European Parliament. But the changes, approved by a majority of members during yesterday's (July 9) plenary in Strasbourg, were labelled "detrimental to democracy and parliamentary efficiency" by liberal MEPs.

The EU continues to function just as well as before enlargement, according to Professor Anand Menon from the European Research Institute at the University of Birmingham. Speaking to EurActiv.sk in an interview, he said an important innovation of the Lisbon Treaty is the "yellow card procedure", which would give national parliaments a say on draft Commission proposals. 

The European Parliament may soon start to "filter" written questions, which are often regarded as silly or irrelevant. But a tug of war is taking place on how strict the filter would be, as setting restrictions on MEPs' right to ask questions to the Commission would not be easily accepted.

The Treaty of Lisbon represents "another milestone" towards further EU integration in a journey which started over 20 years ago with the Single European Act, write Andreas Hofmann and Wolfgang Wessels of the University of Cologne in an article for 'Integration' magazine.  

The Treaty of Lisbon represents the abandonment of the "constitutional concept" whereby the current EU treaties would have been replaced by a single text, writes Marianne Dony for the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

Twelve directorate generals at the European Commission should be abolished, claims Alex Singleton in a paper for the Globalisation Institute.

The EU's Reform Treaty has actually produced two treaties: "a treaty on the EU, which contains most of the institutional provisions, and a second treaty on the functioning of the Union", write Daniel Gros and Stefano Micossi of the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS).

Last week's treaty summit may mark the end of an entire phase of the European integration process in which progress has chiefly been made through institutional "giant leaps forward", argues a post-summit analysis from the European Policy Centre (EPC).

It is not a foregone conclusion that the 'committee of wise men' proposed by Nicolas Sarkozy to reshape the EU's future will be a success, and it is vital to prevent it from being "instrumentalised in the political arena", argues a new Spotlight Europe paper.

An agreement on the new Reform Treaty looks likely at this week's summit, according to Hugo Brady and Katinka Barysch of the Centre for European Reform (CER).

"Sometimes I like to compare the EU as a creation to the organisation of empire," stated President José Manuel Barroso recently. Even though there is no "imperialist temptation" in the EU, this statement reveals a number of tensions that are pressing the EU to rethink its organisation, nature and overall strategy, argues Jean-Thomas Lesueur.

The field of Justice and Home Affairs is among those most "fundamentally changed" by the Reform Treaty, write Sergio Carrera and Florian Geyer in a 17 August 2007 paper for the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS).

Italian PM and former Commission president Romano Prodi talks to EurActiv Slovakia about the new EU Treaty and his desire for a stronger European Union. He believes that a two-speed integration is sometimes needed to go forward. 

The EU needs a two-chamber Parliament and a real European government headed by an elected leader, argues Jo Leinen – chairman of the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee – in a July article for Europe's World.

The centralisation of political power by the EU is one of the main reasons that people mistrust it, argue former German President Roman Herzog and Lüder Gerken in an article for Europe’s World magazine. They put forward several measures to "cure the ailment".

European Union leaders clinched an agreement in the early hours on Saturday (23 June) to reform the EU's creaking institutions in a complex compromise which introduces a two-step delay in new Council voting rights vehemently resisted by Poland.

EU leaders were scrambling to reach agreement over a draft mandate for institutional reform at a summit on 22 June. A Polish veto threat over voting rights in the Council and British 'red lines' on labour law, justice and other issues remained the main obstacles on the way to a deal.

The impasse over the Constitutional Treaty shows that old cleavages and conflicts in Europe are resurfacing, with new coalitions of interest becoming apparent, write Dominik Hierlemann (Bertelsmann Stiftung) and Sarah Seeger (Centre for Applied Policy Research) in a June 2007 paper for the Spotlight Europe series.

Britain has outlined its 'red lines' for negotiations on a new Treaty ahead of the European Summit and is showing a tougher stance on plans for an EU Foreign Minister backed by Germany, France and Spain.

With a view to the June Summit, Italy's Prime Minister Romano Prodi and France's President Nicolas Sarkozy demonstrated unity on reforming the European institutions, despite their differing views on a new Treaty.

The two heads of government exposed their opposing views on how to proceed with the Constitutional Treaty and clashed on the issues of voting rights, division of competences and symbols in the current text.

Commission President José Manuel Barroso changed his plans to hold informal talks with a hand-picked group of key EU leaders on the stalled EU Constitution, after controversy broke out over the number of invitees.