Charlemagne: I’m sorry, I must be going

Date: 10/04/04

The disintegrating European Commission

PEOPLE are beginning to fidget. More and more are muttering their excuses and leaving early. Even the captain and master-of-ceremonies is losing interest. It could be a boring dinner - or a ship cruise. Unfortunately, this is the European Commission, the institution charged with running the European Union.

Officially, the commission's mandate does not end until November. But three members of the college of 20 have already left to return to national politics. The first to go was Anna Diamantopoulou, a Socialist who gave up her job as social-affairs commissioner to stand in Greece's general election last month. Next Pedro Solbes, in charge of economic affairs, was appointed as Spain's new finance minister. And last week Michel Barnier, the commissioner for regional policy, became France's new foreign minister. All three have been replaced, but by lesser figures.

Others are thinking of going. Possibly panicked by the sight of his less-talented French colleague achieving such prominence, the trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, has made an ill-judged late bid for the job of boss of the IMF. Romano Prodi, the commission president, is increasingly preoccupied by his role as de facto leader of the Italian opposition. To add to the impression of disorder, the commission is having to take in new “shadow commissioners” from each of the ten countries that is joining the European Union on May 1st. With all these comings and goings, the commission now looks more like a station waiting-room than a European executive.

The official line is that the departures are good news, for they testify to the high esteem in which commissioners are held across Europe. In the past, bigger European governments have tended to treat a job at the European Commission as a consolation prize for somebody whose career in national politics was over. The new prominence of Mr Barnier and Mr Solbes suggests that taking a job in Brussels need no longer be a signal that you are nearing retirement. On the other hand, the alacrity with which the two men accepted posts back home makes a less flattering point about the commission. For all its pretensions to be a nascent European government, all commissioners know that the most powerful and highest-profile jobs are in national capitals.

The rash of departures is certainly being treated as bad news by many permanent Eurocrats in Brussels, who worry that this is a bad moment for the commission to drift along without strong leadership. They can see that the future of the European Union is up for grabs: its expansion is coinciding with final negotiations on a new constitution, the appointment of a new commission and the decision on whether to open entry negotiations with Turkey. The Eurocrats' fear is that the commission is vulnerable to attack from national politicians who see it as an over-mighty organisation that needs to be put in its place.

The commission plays a crucial role in the European Union. Its great strength is the “sole right of initiative”: the exclusive power to propose laws for the Union. It is up to national leaders, meeting in the European Council, to set broad policy guidelines, but it is the commission that turns these into detailed legal proposals. The most successful commission presidents have interpreted this right of initiative very broadly, pushing such ambitious ideas as a single market and a single currency. Jacques Delors, the most respected recent commission president, says his essential task was to achieve “intellectual control of the agenda of the European Council”.

The commission's other big role is as an enforcer. If a country breaks EU law, it is the commission that will launch the legal action that can result in fines and a humiliating reversal of policy. Its control over both the production and the enforcement of legislation gives the commission enormous power, in a Union in which half of all new laws now emanate from Brussels.

Power struggles

Yet there are signs that the biggest European countries - particularly Britain, France and Germany - have the commission in their sights. Last November, when Brussels tried to discipline France and Germany for running bigger budget deficits than the euro's rules allow, the French and Germans rallied enough support from other euro members to vote the commission down. The commission is now challenging this action before the European Court of Justice. But its authority has suffered a serious blow that may not be reversed even if it wins in court. Another sign of the emerging free-for-all came this week, when the commission declared that three more euro members - Italy, the Netherlands and Greece - had either already broken or were about to breach the budget-deficit ceiling.

The sense of political tides moving against the commission was strengthened by a Franco-German-British summit in Berlin in February. The three countries proposed that the new commission that takes office in November should have a new “super-commissioner” in charge of economic reform. Informally, they let it be known that they wanted this job to go to a German candidate. This was distinctly cheeky. In theory, it is up to the new president of the European Commission, who will be appointed in June and take office in November, to organise the work of the commission and allocate the various portfolios. If three big countries fix things in advance, the new commission president risks looking like their creature. That would further alarm the smaller countries that rely on the commission to identify and protect a “European interest”.

The commission's future now depends critically on the choice of its new president. There is no front-runner for the job. But a third weak president in a row - after Jacques Santer and Romano Prodi - could see its authority critically undermined. Brussels can certainly be arrogant and power-hungry. But a commission that is unable to draft intelligent policies or to enforce European laws might be worse still.

Commentary feature on the disintegrating European Commission as a number of individual Commissioner return to national politics during 2004.

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