Snoring while a superstate emerges

Date: 10/05/03

The European Union's powers are quietly but steadily growing

CRITICS of the European Union often warn that it is in danger of mutating into a “superstate” which gobbles up the powers of the 15 countries that belong to it. Rather than being alarmist, this warning is in some ways curiously behind the times. In most EU countries more than half of new laws are already drafted in Brussels and then simply translated into national law.

Getting firm statistics is tricky. The Economist contacted all the major Brussels institutions and embassies to ask for estimates of the balance between national and European legislation across the EU. In most cases the responses were variants of “darned if I know”. But of those prepared to offer a number, all reckoned that EU legislation now accounts for more than 50% of new laws. The Austrians think that 60-70% of their domestic legislation is now framed in Brussels. A study by France's Conseil d'Etat in the early 1990s estimated that 55% of new French laws were being drafted in Brussels, a figure thought to have remained broadly stable. Lord Inglewood, a British member of the European Parliament's constitutional affairs committee, puts the figure for Britain at about 50%. John Cridland of the Confederation of British Industry reckons that, of the 120 policy dossiers his organisation is dealing with, around half are essentially European issues - ranging from health and safety regulations, to the rules about temporary work and the standardisation of railway gauges.

The single biggest torrent of European legislation was unleashed by the formation of a single market which was agreed upon in 1985. As the single market has bedded down, the number of new directives and regulations decided on in Brussels has actually declined - from over 361 in 1995 to a mere 241 in 2000. But this may be just a temporary pause. This week the European Commission announced plans for a new lot of legislation to bolster the single market for services, which account for 70% of GDP. The commission is hoping to push through legislation tackling everything from the regulation of professional qualifications to sales promotions.

The EU's writ runs well beyond internal-market regulations. The biggest areas for new legislation at the moment are the environment, public health, consumer protection and internal security. For all the talk of “subsidiarity” - making law and policy at the most local level possible - the urge to Europeanise is still very powerful in Brussels. Both the commission and the European Parliament have an institutional interest in expanding their powers (“competences”, in Euro-speak). The system of giving each country six months to set the EU's policy agenda also encourages headline-grabbing initiatives. Nick Clegg, a Liberal Democratic MEP, argues that, though the flow of new laws has slowed,”The political momentum towards a relentless expansion of the acquis [EU law and competences] is constant.”

Sometimes it takes a crisis to create an opening for action from Brussels. The terrorist attacks on the United States generated the political will to push through an old idea - to create a European arrest warrant - which had hitherto been too controversial, since it expands the EU's remit into criminal law. Last year's oil-spill off the coast of Spain led to a new drive for European legislation on tankers. Rulings from the European Court of Justice also play a role in expanding EU powers. Last November the court ruled that bilateral airline deals struck between individual EU countries and the United States violate European law, so the commission is now pressing to take over the negotiation of international aviation deals.

The rule of thumb is that an EU role is demanded wherever a faintly plausible case can be made that an issue needs to be dealt with “on a cross-border basis”. But even this rule can be ditched, particularly if a piece of legislation can be sold as socially progressive. The working hours of professionals like doctors in one EU country have few implications for the citizens of another, but they are regulated in Brussels in the name of “the European social model”. On occasion this desire to promote an EU vision of society leads to a higher level of policy integration than is achieved in the United States. For example, the death penalty is banned across the EU but in America it is for individual states to decide whether to keep it or not.

There were those who hoped that the convention on Europe's future, currently under way in Brussels, would lead to a little judicious trimming of the EU's powers. That now seems highly unlikely. Alain Lamassoure, a prominent member of the convention, reckons that the EU's powers will stay broadly stable, with one big exception - immigration and internal security - where they will be expanded. He argues that the convention's real goal should be to ensure that the Union's enormous powers are exercised in a more open and democratic fashion.

Wake up!

That is surely desirable. But it still seems unlikely that the European public will take much interest in the goings-on in Brussels. This somnolent attitude is an irritation both to Euro-enthusiasts and to Euro-sceptics, who find it baffling that people take so little interest in the making of the laws that govern their lives.

But there are explanations. The EU may account for more than half of all legislation across the Union, but it tends to deal with the boring stuff. The issues that get people marching in the street - pensions, welfare benefits, education - are still largely run at a national level, although the EU is beginning to nibble at the edges. New directives are in the works to regulate cross-border aspects of pensions and health care. And while the European Union is a legal and regulatory giant, it is a fiscal dwarf. The total EU budget is around 1% of its members' total GDP, compared to a federal budget in the United States of around 24% of GDP. The Union has also yet to win the right to levy taxes. Europe's nation-states have handed over the legislator's quill-pen to Brussels, but they are still - so far - keeping a fairly firm grip on their wallets.

Commentary feature: The EU's powers are quietly but steadily growing.

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