The EP could, here, have rejected the entire commission as they had similarly threatened to do over the Santer Commission’s fraud crisis. After a possible “vote of censure”, the Santer commission resigned. The EP represents citizen’s views and protects their civil liberties by making sure that each Commissioner does its job properly and well, but on the other hand, the EP has only the “nuclear option” to reject or dismiss entire Commissions. They cannot dismiss one Commissioner and as such, the entire Commission is at stake. This is surely not a democratic use of the EP’s power.
On the other hand, one could argue that the ability to make the threat is only made when the President of the Commission refuses to dismiss one of his ministers, thereby not representing the interests of the European Union as a whole sufficiently, or when the entire Commission is so corrupt it cannot be redeemed. The threat is not made with the intention of internally reprimanding the Commission but publically humiliating the President and his Commissioners: it is an external threat so as to make the public more aware of the EU and perhaps to act as an example to other EU institutions.
The EP’s “nuclear” option is of great importance, as is the public humiliation and internal reprimand of a threat of Commission dismissal. As it is more likely that the EP would want to dismiss an unsuitable Commissioner, as with Buttiglione, than to need to dismiss an entire Commission, some may say their ability only to threaten to dismiss the Commission is not especially important; threats which embarrass the Commission would rule out the need to carry through these threats, as was clear with Buttiglione. Others would say that the ability to threaten the Commission with such disgrace is just as good as the ability to dismiss a Commissioner, and had the Santer Commission not resigned the EP would have the ultimate power to dismiss the incompetent Commission.
The EP does not have a government and therefore can be seen as less important in relation to other EU institutions, if one compares the EP with Governments and within Parliaments in individual member states. There is no ruling party to form a government to represent the EP to the public; instead, the President of the Commission represents the EU. Some argue that the President should not take on this role, as he is unelected, and technically a member of the civil service of the EU. In the UK government, the elected body of the House of Commons is the most recognisable to the public. We know, as a country, that Gordon Brown is our elected representative to the world. As EU citizens, one must wonder why our representative is unelected, and not even a part of the elected body; a figure like the Speaker of the House of Commons. This will be addressed through the Lisbon Treaty, if and when it becomes law, by the appointment of a 6-year-term President of the EU. This President would be appointed but unelected, and as such would act as a more recognisable face for the EU than the President of the Commission. Until this time, however, the unfamiliar face of the EU remains an issue.
The EP is made of 732 individuals, each MEP representing around 600 000 voters, who are either members of parties in their own country, and represent these groups at election, or are individual candidates. When the MEP gets to Parliament, they sit with an EU wide group, such as the European People’s Party (where the UK Conservatives MEPs sit) or the “non-descrits” (MEPs who do not join an EU wide party, but sit together in a group). These are loosely connected parties based on vague ideological allegiance.
The importance of an individual MEP could therefore be greatly important. As there is no government dominating individuals through a whip system as in Westminster, the individual MEP has far more power than he might do in individual state parliament. However, this also allows extremist voices to be heard as clearly in the debate chamber, even if they will not find as much support from fellow MEPs or the public. A sometimes forgotten role of the MEP is his committee work. When an MEP becomes an MEP, he must join at least one committee, which works all year round on specific topics. The MEP can join more than one committee on any topics he likes. Here, an MEP’s voice can be heard in a chamber where everyone is absolutely interested in the topic, whereas in the central Parliament building those listening may not have a vested interest. This is an arena where everybody is interested and has, most probably, some form of personal or professional experience in the field and therefore a good knowledge of the topic. As in Westminster, committees are vital.
In the Westminster Parliament, adversarial politics and active debate is practised. Rory Bremner, famous political satirist, said, “People hunger for energy and passion in their politicians. All we have at present are weary bureaucrats”: MEPs sit in a semi-circle so heated “energy and passion” does not happen as much as it perhaps ought to especially when policy is at legislature stage; this is important to attract media and public attention. The EP receives so little media attention in fact (see the lack of a TV channel in the UK showing the EP at its work, as with “BBC Parliament” for example), except when there is a scandal, it is no surprise election turnout is so low. Even in Italy, where voting is compulsory, there was only a 73.1% turnout in 2004. Low turnout results in a lack of authority, some would argue, but others would argue that the EP’s laws are implemented and apply to all, regardless of turnout, as the state is not optional, and thus low turnout has a negligible effect on authority.
One could argue that as the EP is doing its job well without a government or strong parties in the EU. How, one might say, in an EU where many citizens are not aware there is a European Parliament, how would introducing more confusion of new party names help? It is far simpler to allow citizens to elect an MEP from a familiar party and to have fair consensus politics than to have strong parties ruling over the EP – the “vague” allegiances of the current EU-wide parties allows individual countries to hold on to their traditions and to keep what can become sometimes angry politics, rather than active politics, out of the arena of rational debate. Besides, as the EU-wide parties form larger and smaller parts of the EP there is still some form of party dominance: Radical parties have less opportunity to force extremist policies through, and centrist and calm politics can still remain dominant.
A Parliament without a government certainly has its disadvantages in terms of media attention and public interest – for many EU citizens, it is hard to identify with MEPs in Brussels, and as Denver said in 2004, “[m]ost people in Britain know little and care less about the role and powers of the European Parliament and its members”. However, a Parliament where small radical and large centrist parties do not have equal reign over legislation but where parties can find common ground to work together in a rational atmosphere certainly has advantages. If one balances these out one must conclude that a stable and effective Parliament is better than an unstable but exciting Parliament. Therefore, the importance of the Parliament’s lack of a government or strong political parties is minimal.
The European Parliament’s roles include the CAP and free trade within the Single Market of the EU. The EU is the most highly populated trading “state” in the world, with one of the highest demands for goods. However, “The European Parliament has little or no impact on those policies considered important by voters such as health, education and taxation” (Kevin Bloor, A Level Politics Made Easy, 2008). If one asks why the European Parliament is not invested with powers that, according to Bloor, would make a significant difference to EU citizens, one might consider two points.
Firstly, there are anti-federalist attitudes in the UK amongst other member states and there is a lack of public interest forcing the EP to take more control. If the EU public were more federalist in its attitude, in line with France and Germany, perhaps the EP would have more power and cooperation from member state governments.
Secondly, perhaps there is an unwillingness from other EU institutions: “The European Parliament is the junior member in the EU decision making system, mainly because (unlike conventional legislatures) it cannot introduce laws or raise revenues (these are the powers of the commission), and it shares the powers of amendment and decisions with the Council of Ministers” (John McCormick, Understanding the European Union, 2008). The result of this, one might say, is a reluctance to allow the democratically elected part of the EU take on too much power against the “professional” EU bureaucrats. However, one might argue that this stops the EP becoming too powerful against experts in government and specialists on trade, agriculture and so on. This argument falls short in part because the Council of Ministers, “experts” in, for example, economy and therefore “qualified” to co-decide on matters of free trade. The Finance Ministers from member states may have experience in their country’s individual economies but often the minister in charge of a department will not hold a degree or “real world” experience in the field. The EU allows 27 politicians to decide on equal or near equal terms with over 700 MEPs. The MEPs are, therefore, statistically more likely to hold greater experience than the Council of Ministers.
The European Parliament has been deemed a “talking shop” in the past. However, the EP is now invested with legal powers within the European Court of Justice, as the Chernobyl Case of 1990 shows. Before this case, the European Parliament was only allowed to be a defendant in ECJ cases and not a plaintiff, the body who brings the case.
The Comitology Case of a few months previously had not allowed the EP to bring a case against the Council, and thus the Commission. However, later in 1990, the Commission proposed a piece of legislation over public health under the Eurotom Treaty, but the European Parliament maintained the legislation fell under EEC Treaty. The EP attempted to bring the case to the ECJ and this time the ECJ ruled that it was nonsensical to have a body of the European Union treated unequally in the eyes of the law. According to the ECJ, Article 175 (now 232) allows the EP to bring cases.
The European Parliament has become more and less significant in the past and to gauge this would be easier than to answer how important is the European Parliament. Based on the considerations I have put forward, I would venture that in some areas, such as public opinion and relation to other EU institutions, the EP is somewhat less significant than it ought to be. On the other hand, even though the way the EP interacts with other institutions is flawed, whether other institutions want to safeguard their own powers against the EP or simply that the EU has improvements left to make that will be addressed in future treaties, it still gets legislation through that affects our lives, for the most part, for the better. The EP is the one democratically elected body representing all EU citizens – the EP counters the Council’s democratic deficit through co-decision, although this could improve. This shows that the European Parliament is important where it counts most: in representing the citizens of the EU, the lives of whom the EP seeks to protect and better.
Naomi Bloomer, U6H Page of 20th