The let’s pretend parliament

The trouble with confirmation hearings for commissioners

FOR the past few weeks, the European Parliament has played an intoxicating game of “let's pretend”. Let's pretend that the European Union is the United States, the European Commission is the White House and the European Parliament is Congress. The opportunity has come in the confirmation hearings for new European commissioners, who are due to take office next month. But there are key differences between such hearings in Brussels and in Washington. Commissioners do relatively dull things like blocking mergers, or fiddling with fish quotas, rather than waging wars or running up trillion-dollar deficits. The powers of their inquisitors are also limited. Senate committees often block presidential appointments, but MEPs have no power to veto individual commissioners. All they have is a nuclear option: the power to reject the commission in its entirety.

Yet MEPs have been successfully testing the limits of their powers. They do not have the formal power to reject a nominee for president of the commission, but the European People's Party (EPP), which is the largest group in the parliament, made clear in June that it would create a huge row if Europe's leaders failed to nominate a commission president from the centre-right. The threat worked, and European national leaders duly named an EPP-approved candidate: José Manuel Barroso of Portugal.

After this little victory, it was predictable that MEPs would seek to demonstrate their power again by picking a fight over at least one of Mr Barroso's team of 24 commissioners. But who would be the fall guy? Some thought it might be Neelie Kroes, a Dutch businesswoman chosen to be competition commissioner, who was widely accused of conflicts of interest. Other possible victims included Peter Mandelson, a Briton nominated as trade commissioner, who twice had to resign from the Blair government, or Mariann Fischer Boel, a Dane nominated to the agriculture portfolio, who was felt to be too close to her industry.

In the event, the victim was Rocco Buttiglione, an Italian nominated to the justice and home affairs portfolio. His mistake was to move beyond technical responses and bland statements about his desire to promote the European ideal. Instead Mr Buttiglione, a philosopher and devout Catholic who has written papal encyclicals, was drawn on to the tricky ground of personal morality. He outraged feminists by appearing to suggest that a woman's role was to stay at home and raise children. Worse, Mr Buttiglione said he considered homosexuality a sin.

Although he quite properly drew a distinction between a sin and a crime, and added that the state had no right to stick its nose into this area, it was enough to outrage some MEPs. The “gay marriage” debate is very much alive; Spain will soon be the third EU country to legalise gay marriage. Marriage laws are a matter for member countries. But some MEPs detected a relevance to Mr Buttiglione's duties, since he will be in charge of EU laws on free movement of people, which could be stretched to cover gay partnerships. He might also have a role in anti-discrimination laws.

Mr Buttiglione had other strikes against him. He was nominated by Silvio Berlusconi, a hate-figure in the European Parliament, particularly on the left, ever since he likened a leading German Social Democrat (now leader of the Socialist group) to a concentration-camp guard. The Italian government is engaged in a crackdown on illegal migrants that some see as a violation of the European asylum laws which Mr Buttiglione is meant to uphold. And then there is the poisonous state of Italian politics. The committee hearings quickly degenerated into an intra-Italian slanging match. But the upshot was that his nomination was narrowly rejected in a vote by the parliament's civil-liberties committee. Moreover, now that the left is perceived to have turned down Mr Buttiglione, the right is threatening to veto the Hungarian Socialist nominated as energy commissioner, Laszlo Kovacs, who was deemed to have given an undistinguished performance in his confirmation hearings.

Da capo

This situation creates a big headache for Mr Barroso. In theory, the commission president could simply ignore the parliament and confirm both commissioners in their jobs. But that could tempt hot-headed MEPs to go for the nuclear option and reject the entire commission. The parliament has already forced the resignation of one commission, after a corruption scandal in 1999. It would surely be wise to shrink from staging a repeat performance before the new commission has actually taken office. But even if Mr Barroso successfully forces through the Buttiglione nomination, he would still have the problem that the justice portfolio, one of the most sensitive and rapidly expanding jobs in the commission, would be in the hands of a man who seemed to be damaged goods.

The easiest solution, from Mr Barroso's point of view, would be for Italy to withdraw Mr Buttiglione's nomination, and present another candidate. But Mr Berlusconi is unlikely to do this, for reasons of both principle and amour propre. That leaves Mr Barroso having to negotiate a tricky compromise over the course of the next two weeks.

As the new commission president ponders this, his first crisis, he faces a broader philosophical question: where should power really lie in the European Union? Conservatives argue that ultimately the EU is an organisation of nation-states. Federalists want to see more power move to supranational institutions, and above all to the European Parliament. For both political and ideological reasons, Romano Prodi, Mr Barroso's predecessor, did his best to cultivate the parliament. But, partly as a result, Mr Prodi's relationships with national governments deteriorated - and the commission suffered a damaging loss of authority. It is a lesson that Mr Barroso would do well to heed. The success or failure of his commission is ultimately more likely to be determined in Berlin, London, Paris and Rome than in Strasbourg.

Commentary feature which considers the Autumn 2004 confirmation hearings for the incoming European Commissioners.

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