Giving Brussels a sense of direction

Giving Brussels a sense of direction

As the debate heats up at Europe’s constitutional convention over the powers of the European Commission, it is unclear whether delegates will face up to the problems confronting this vital institution. In a nutshell, the Commission is weak, undemocratic and in some respects out of control.

The political weakness of Romano Prodi, the Commission president, has led to a damaging absence of strategic leadership and direction. The other commissioners have not filled the vacuum at the centre. With 20 now and 25 when the new member states join in 2004, there are too many commissioners. Collective leadership has given way to 20 fiefs. Consequently, the Commission lacks the political clout to deal with national governments and to control its own bureaucrats.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Commission officials often follow their own agendas. These myriad agendas may reflect internal differences over policy but often they are personal. Turf wars, petty bureaucratic infighting and tussles over career promotion are common to all bureaucracies but in Brussels they are pervasive, obstructing the commissioners’ policy programmes.

The result is a Commission that is opaque, slow-moving and difficult to direct. It is not by chance that national governments, and not the Commission, have led the way on the major policy innovations such as the constitutional convention itself or economic reform. Yet if the Commission did not exist, we would have to invent it. We need a body to represent the common European interest. And the European Union would not work without its own bureaucracy to manage, monitor and implement decisions. So the crucial question for the convention is how to ensure that the bureaucracy is controlled by the commissioners and that the commissioners in turn can be held to account.

The British government’s answer – giving more power to national governments – would be counter-productive. National politicians passing through Brussels every month or two cannot guide the EU bureaucracy. The answer must be to make the European commissioners more effective and more political. The challenge lies in doing both.

A small “college” of a dozen commissioners, with one seat per country by rotation, is the way forward. A small college would provide genuine collective leadership and better co-ordination among departments, even with a weak president. EU policymaking would be less susceptible to national interference, especially if the influentialcabinets, or political offices, of the commissioners included staff of all nationalities except their own.

The bureaucracy should also be restructured. Resources should be re-allocated to priority tasks and away from the secondary issues where the Commission has few powers, such as culture. Many of the Commission’s departments should be merged to improve co-ordination.

The Commission should also be given greater political authority through a democratic mandate. The first step would be for the European parliament to elect the president on a two-thirds majority. Ideally, all commissioners would be elected. But if that is considered a step too far, the European parliament should have the right to reject and dismiss individuals as well as the whole body.

This would greatly enhance the Commission’s legitimacy and therefore its political authority over the bureaucracy and in its dealings with national governments and the European parliament. It would also encourage this notoriously inward-looking body to engage with the wider public.

While some including Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister, have suggested that politicising the Commission would lead to a damaging loss of independence, politicisation is in fact another word for democracy. Without democratic legitimacy, how can the Commission retai n the right to put forward legislative proposals and to defend the common interest?

Radical reform may be opposed by both the Commission’s supporters and its detractors. Britain and France see distribution of power between the institutions as a zero-sum game and want more of it for national governments. Meanwhile, the smaller countries, traditionally advocates of a strong Commission, want each to retain a permanent seat. But only a smaller, democratically elected Commission will have the legitimacy and authority to hold a larger Union together.

Published in the Financial Times 14 January 2003

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