Union’s bridge to its citizens

Date: 11/07/1996

SOME European institutions incite strong emotions. The Economic and Social Committee is not one of them.

It is one of the least known of the Union's organisations and although the occasional siren call for its abolition is invariably rejected, few outside the EU's inner circle would notice its disappearance if those calls were answered. The invariable bon mot is that if it did not exist, it would not be invented.

It was not always so. When the Economic and Social Committee (ESC) was first created in the early 1950s, its unique ability to bring together employers, trade unionists and other traditional interest groups was seen as a way to bury mutual hostilities.

The concept was particularly French and reflected the country's enthusiasm for assembling such groups to work towards post-war reconstruction. But while France created an Economic and Social Council, Germany was heading in another direction and had actually abolished a similar organisation which had been active in the pre-war Weimar Republic.

Despite these differences, the ESC came into being with a remit to bring different interests together under one roof.

The sentiment behind its creation was best expressed by one of the EU's founding fathers, Jean Monnet. In his memoirs, he considers the impact the first ESC - in the European Coal and Steel Community - had on such disparate groups.

“If this body was never a place of confrontation, it is because people which everything had separated up until then found themselves not opposite one another and opposed to one another, but together, confronted for the first time by new and common problems for each of them,” he observed.

That spirit of partnership and search for consensus among potentially divisive opinions remains one of the leitmotifs of the Committee's activities. Indeed, its members lay great store on the fact that they are not politicians.

The ESC demonstrated this skill to great effect in its input into the highly political debate on the Social Charter.

In the late 1980s, the then Commission President Jacques Delors, without holding out high hopes of success, asked the Committee - rather than any other EU body - to draft a Social Charter.

To most people's surprise - and largely due to the skilful efforts of French trade unionist François Staedelin - the Committee rose to the challenge. The charter was approved by Union leaders at their Strasbourg summit in December 1989 and led to the social provisions of the Maastricht Treaty.

“This clearly demonstrated the influence the Committee can have when it gets a credible majority in each of its three groups for a policy. Its opinion led to the Social Charter, the Social Chapter and the Social Protocol, and allowed Delors to defend and argue the idea before government leaders. If the issue had been handled by the social partners, as Delors had originally threatened, it would have been killed off by the employers early on,” explained one senior official.

The ESC still sees one of its main roles as providing well-informed opinions on future EU legislation. With members active in a vast range of national policy areas, it is well placed to offer such technical advice, although most are realistic enough to admit they have little idea of the extent to which their pronouncements actually influence EU legislators.

But one member with ten years' experience of the Committee, Scottish Trade Union Congress General Secretary Campbell Christie, believes that its influence should not be measured in purely legislative terms.

“It represents an attempt to involve wider forces in society seriously in the preparation of legislation. In the UK, no such attempt is being made and, as a result, we have a particularly divided society. The concept of representatives of employees, employers, consumers and farmers having an input into legislation is in principle very worthwhile. It helps to create a more harmonised society,” he explains.

Now the ESC is busy trying to define an updated role for itself.

In one sense, the challenge has been forced upon it. As the Commission consults an ever-wider cross-section of opinion before even tabling legislative proposals, the scope for the ESC to have a real influence on policy debates is more limited. Similarly, the emphasis on social dialogue between European trade unions and employers on non-legislative agreements on labour and employment practices has reduced the ESC's role in these areas.

But in another sense, recent Union developments have presented the Committee with new opportunities.

Denmark's initial rejection of the Maastricht Treaty and the widespread public scepticism that this fuelled in other member states strengthened the case for using intermediary organisations whose members had a strong base in the local community to bridge the gap between the EU and the 'man in the street'.

The Committee, whose members have full-time jobs in their own countries, has an obvious role to play.

But when Union leaders discussed the issue at their Birmingham summit in October 1992, they completely forgot about the ESC and saw the role of bridging that gap as one solely for the Committee of the Regions (CoR).

Somewhat symbolically, the ESC's headquarters are not located alongside other EU institutions in the Euro-area of Brussels, but in the downtown area which is home to the city's central station.

For some, this confirms that the Committee has at least one foot in the real world; for others, it underlines how far out on a limb it is from the EU mainstream.

The ESC is now emerging from a period of uncertainty - but it is also lowering its sights.

The uncertainty stemmed from the creation of its sister advisory body, the CoR. With a membership made up of local and regional politicians, this new body, it was feared, would eclipse its older sibling.

That anxiety is now disappearing. “At one time, the ESC feared for its future as the CoR appeared to be on the up and up. But it is not afraid any longer and some nice things have been said about its opinions,” commented one source.

The single market is also being seen as a vehicle for breathing new life into the ESC. Many of its members represent organisations who will be directly affected if EU legislation is ignored or badly implemented.

The Committee is setting itself up as a public watchdog and has established a Single Market Observatory to channel citizens' comments and complaints. It is now pressing for this role to be formally acknowledged by the Intergovernmental Conference and written into the revised treaty.

The ESC's other IGC demands reflect a more traditional approach towards trying to increase its influence. The Committee wants its official status to be raised from the present rank of an EU 'organ' to that of an 'institution' alongside the Commission, European Parliament, Council of Ministers, Court of Justice and Court of Auditors. It is also seeking to work more closely with MEPs in advising on future legislation and to be more closely involved in the march towards a single currency.

Some observers believe the Committee will fail in its bid to become an institution during the current IGC negotiations - just as it did during the Maastricht debate in 1991. “The problem is that there is no willingness to kill it, nor is there any willingness to transform it into something worthwhile,” said one senior official.

There are many who believe the ESC should focus more of its work on citizenship, enlarging its membership to bring in a wider range of single-issue pressure groups and non-governmental organisations.

With members appointed by national governments, the composition of national delegations to the Committee has changed little over the years.

“The French organisation Le Quatre Monde has been trying unsuccessfully to win membership of the ESC for years. They are already represented on the French equivalent. But the problem is that most existing members are rather conservative and do not want to lose their seats,” explained one EU official.

The ESC may well need to shake off some of that conservatism if it is to fulfil its ambition to have a greater impact on Union business in the years ahead.