| Contributions
RICHARD
SEEBOHM: note on 18 January 2002
European
Governance
This
is the title of a think piece published by the European Commission
in July [2001]. It has had a long gestation and will be open to
discussion until March 2002. It arises partly from the challenge
of EU enlargement but mainly from the perception that ordinary people
in the existing member states have lost confidence in the European
ideal. The EU does not seem to act effectively in crises (food scares,
armed conflicts on its borders). It gets no credit for its successes.
It is blamed for actions which have been agreed by national governments
and for their inept implementation by those national governments.
Many people know nothing of how the EU takes decisions and see no
entry points for their concerns. The Irish voted no to the Nice
treaty not from an examination of its content but because of a fear
of quite other imagined interferences from Brussels.
The
Commission has published a number of other studies which inform
this debate, notably on sustainability (which covers everything
from economic growth to environmental protection) to coherence (which
covers inequalities, both social and economic, and the financial
and other policies needed to diminish them).
The
Commission sets great store on the ‘community method’.
The Commission (alone) makes legislative and policy proposals. The
Council of Ministers (representing member states) and the Parliament
(representing voters) jointly turn these into ‘legislative
and budgetary acts’. The Commission and the member states
implement the resulting policies that are their respective responsibilities.
The European Court of Justice ‘guarantees respect for the
rule of law’.
The
concepts underlying the Commission¹s proposals for reform are
openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence.
Underlying these are the principles of proportionality (don’t
use steamhammers to crack nuts) and subsidiarity (don’t
decide in Brussels what should be a matter for each independent
local authority). The Commission claims that its initial proposals
often conform better to these two principles than the versions that
emerge after horse-trading in the Council and Parliament.
Unexpectedly,
the White Paper leaves until near the end its attempt to discern
the ultimate objective of the EU. This is: sustainable development
in the long term for all nation-states that consider themselves
European. The building blocks of this are: ‘improving human
capital, knowledge and skills; strengthening both social cohesion
and competitiveness; meeting the environmental challenge; supporting
territorial diversity; and contributing to regional peace and stability’.
What,
then is the Commission proposing?
1.
Better communication. ‘It is particularly important in some
member states to find locally trusted and credible carriers of the
messages the institutions want to pass on’.
2.
Reach out to citizens in local regions and cities. The Committee
of the Regions is new and needs to be given more weight. Some policies
perhaps relating to the environment could be handled as ‘tripartite
contracts’, Commission/member state/region. Such developments
should be coherent and not compartmentalised by sector (for example
environment and agriculture should be linked).
3.
More recognition of the contribution of civil society. The relationship
should be structured so that privileged groups do not have an unfair
advantage. The Economic and Social Committee (whose membership is
to be widened by the Nice Treaty) and the Committee of the Regions
should engage in policy debates at an earlier stage. The Parliament
should hold more public hearings. European-level political parties
could improve their visibility.
4.
The legislative process could be improved in various ways, ranging
from co-regulation, that is to say combining directives with non-statutory
industry agreements, through to an abandonment of regulation when
publicising best practice is sufficient. It should try to be less
prescriptive and enable member states to do things their way. Unwelcome
proposals should be more readily withdrawn, and outdated rules repealed.
5.
Regulatory agencies should be used where Commission services are
bogged down by uncontroversial details, but such agencies should
not have to adjudicate between competing interests.
6.
Enforcement of existing law should give priority to economically
significant issues.
7.
In the rest of the world, the EU should be more accessible to governmental
and non-governmental stakeholders. It should improve the effectiveness
and legitimacy of global rule-making, itself seeking to speak with
a single voice.
8.
The Councils of Ministers seems to have lost their capacity to give
political guidance and to reconcile the interests of individual
home departments. The Commission should have more say in setting
their agendas. Member states should learn from each other in bringing
national parliaments into the European process. The European Parliament
should share the Council¹s power to specify the Commission’s
competences. It (the Parliament) should thus be led to be more concerned
with broad policy evolution than with budgetary nitpicking.
This
is all good stuff, but what does it amount to?
Firstly,
it is introspective. It reflects the Commission’s view of
its own tasks and its relations with the other stakeholders in the
European project. From many points of view, this is desirable, since
the Commission exists to be the guardian of the treaties and of
the aim which underlies them. Grievances felt by individuals anywhere
in Europe are potentially a threat to each of its inhabitants. None
of the recommendations in the paper are intrinsically perverse.
Two
basic difficulties, however, make many of these recommendations
seem either irrelevant or trivial. These difficulties are external
to the Commission. One is the political process of the member states.
The other is the disenchantment of citizens with this political
process itself.
Politics
in democracies as we know them are based on parties and party programmes.
Normally there is an alternation between (to put it crudely) the
interventionist left and the laissez faire right. Each to some degree
seeks to unravel the excesses of its predecessor. The Commission
is not party-driven. It can take a longer view because of the continuity
this provides. Its work is transmitted to member states, however,
through the party lens of the government in power. If, as seems
to be the case, the voters are disenchanted with all the parties,
or if one of the parties is antagonistic to the basic European project,
the communication will be partial or non-existent.
As
well as ministers of elected governments, there are three organised
links between member states and Brussels. One is the European Parliament.
The MEPs are in most [all?] cases drawn from party lists and not
chose by voters as individuals. Where there are regional constituencies
(as in the UK), these are too big for easy contact with ‘your’
MEP. This gives a ‘true’ party balance, but this is
negated when turnout is low. It is perhaps a healthy counterbalance
to the elective dictatorships of certain national governments that
the European Parliament tends to divide more by party than by national
interest. Thus the individual MEP needs to show initiative in linking
in to civil society at home. This calls for study.
The
Commission mentions the need to involve national parliaments more
closely. The British upper and lower houses have scrutiny committees
which have time to scan only some of the Brussels material, and
it is not at all clear how often their findings influence events.
Perhaps they ought to have a formal line to the EP so that as well
as directing their views to the domestic government in its capacity
as Brussels negotiator they can lean on their counterpart MEPs.
One extremely encouraging development is the ‘Convention’
which drew up the EU’s new Charter of Fundamental Rights.
In this, MEPs and members of national parliaments sat alongside
representatives of member state governments and the institutions
and were numerous enough to outvote them. The Belgian presidency
of the EU has managed to persuade fellow member states to adopt
this procedure for the debate on the future of the EU which is to
take place between now and the 2004 intergovernmental conference.
The
Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC) is intended to bring to Community
legislation the advice of the social partners (employers and unions)
and representatives of civil society. The definition of civil society
will be widened when the Nice Treaty comes into force, but it is
hard to know how a real representivity can be achieved. No one with
an axe to grind uses the Committee as an entry point for lobbying.
The Commission is right to suggest that the Committee will be strengthened
if it is brought in at a more formative stage of proposals, but
no notice need be taken of its views once it has laid them o the
table. Its most promising way forward may be to embark on own-initiative
interventions, which with its new Secretary-General may be a possibility.
The
Committee of the Regions is new and untried. Its position in the
scheme of things is analogous to that of ECOSOC. As far as the UK
is concerned its members are appointed by the government of the
day, just as ECOSOC, and they are exclusively local authority elected
members. There is something of desperation on the part of the Commission
in thinking they may get through by a regional route rather than
through national capitals, but certainly more and more regional
bodies are opening offices in Brussels. It would be a bonus if they
could be a channel of communication both ways, and not just concerned
with structural funds.
Finally,
of course, there is the role of the individual concerned citizen.
It has never been easier to access EU news and documents over the
internet. I would particularly commend the introduction by the Commission
of ‘scoreboards’ charting the progress of Community
action in the various policy areas. The internal market version
is at http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/update/score/index.htm.
It makes a good read even for the uncommitted. The networks of pressure
groups and NGOs are ready to act as two-way channels. But the citizen
has got to want to become involved. The media do little to help.
There
is one more area of discourse which the Commission is too timid
to attack head on. This is the system of pillars, under which the
Commission has an enshrined place for the internal market and for
a wider range of policies which have followed from economic integration,
while the Council reserves its control over the second pillar, foreign
policy and in particular security policy. The third pillar, home
affairs and justice, is bit by bit moving from the Treaty of European
Union to the Community (and hence the Commission’s freedom
to make proposals on its own initiative). Member states are unlikely
to surrender much more sovereignty than they have already. In fact,
they are to some extent encroaching on the Commission¹s right
of initiative by prescribing at Council meetings all manner of tasks
which they expect the Commission to pursue to fruition. Some have
suggested that the Parliament should ‘be more of a legislature’
and have its own stronger right of initiative. Its control of the
purse strings is probably responsibility enough and I agree
with the Commission that this should be exercised at a higher level
of policy scrutiny. (As a point of detail, the European Development
Fund which finances the Cotonou Agreement with ACP countries should
not be exempt from parliamentary scrutiny.)
I need
not say much about the euro. It will become a pervasive fact of
life, and the distinction between its subscribers and the rest will
gradually become blurred.
All
that I have said so far relates to an EU of 15. It is even more
difficult to awaken interest on the part of existing citizens in
the implications of enlargement. The citizens of candidate countries,
however, may well be agog to know how they will be affected, economically,
in freedom of movement and in their relations with their own political
leaders. It is my guess, drawing on experience in the Council of
Europe where these countries are already members, that the new government
ministers and the new parliamentarians will surprise the rest of
us with their insights and their capacity to contribute.
If
we don’t get governance right over the next few years, however,
we shall all be the poorer.
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