To what extent has reform of the interrelationship between the principal institutions of the European Union now become an inevitable process?

Introduction to Legal Studies Kristian Payne

Assessed Essay 2001-2002 08/05/07

The European Union is built on an institutional system, which is the only one of its kind in the world.

The Member States delegate sovereignty for certain matters to independent institutions that represent the interests of the Union as a whole, its member countries and its citizens. The Commission traditionally upholds the interests of the Union as a whole, while each national government is represented within the Council, and citizens directly elect the European Parliament. Democracy and the rule of law are therefore the cornerstones of the structure. This "institutional triangle" is flanked another institution: the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

The European Parliament is elected every five years by direct universal suffrage, the European Parliament is the expression of the democratic will of the Union's 374 million citizens. Brought together within pan-European political groups, the major political parties operating in the Member States are represented. Parliament has three essential functions:

It shares with the Council the power to legislate, i.e. to adopt European laws (directives, regulations, decisions). Its involvement in the legislative process helps to guarantee the democratic legitimacy of the texts adopted;
It shares budgetary authority with the Council, and can therefore influence EU spending. At the end of the procedure, it adopts the budget in its entirety;
It exercises democratic supervision over the Commission. It approves the nomination of Commissioners and has the right to censure the Commission. It also exercises political supervision over all the institutions.

The Council of the European Union is the EU's main decision-making body. It is the embodiment of the Member States, whose representatives it brings together regularly at ministerial level. According to the matters on the agenda, the Council meets in different compositions: foreign affairs, finance, education, telecommunications, etc.

The Council has a number of key responsibilities:

It is the Union's legislative body; for a wide range of EU issues, it exercises that legislative power in co-decision with the European Parliament;
It co-ordinates the broad economic policies of the Member States;
It concludes, on behalf of the EU, international agreements with one or more States or international organisations;
It shares budgetary authority with Parliament;
It takes the decisions necessary for framing and implementing the common foreign and security policy, on the basis of general guidelines established by the European Council;
It co-ordinates the activities of Member States and adopts measures in the field of police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters

The European Commission embodies and upholds the general interest of the Union. The President and Members of the Commission are appointed by the Member States after they have been approved by the European Parliament. The Commission is the driving force in the Union's institutional system:

It has the right to initiate draft legislation and therefore presents legislative proposals to Parliament and the Council;
As the Union's executive body, it is responsible for implementing the European legislation (directives, regulations, decisions), budget and programmes adopted by Parliament and the Council;
It acts as guardian of the Treaties ...

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It has the right to initiate draft legislation and therefore presents legislative proposals to Parliament and the Council;
As the Union's executive body, it is responsible for implementing the European legislation (directives, regulations, decisions), budget and programmes adopted by Parliament and the Council;
It acts as guardian of the Treaties and, together with the Court of Justice, ensures that Community law is properly applied;
It represents the Union on the international stage and negotiates international agreements, chiefly in the field of trade and co-operation.

The Court of Justice ensures that Community law is uniformly interpreted and effectively applied. It has jurisdiction in disputes involving Member States, EU institutions, businesses and individuals. A Court of First Instance has been attached to it since 1989.

The EU's current structures, formed in the 1950s under the Treaty of Rome, have been creaking under the strain for years. They were initially designed for six members and currently accommodate 15. Proposed expansion is expected to take membership up to 27 countries. Various reforms in the relationships between the 4 main institutions have already taken place in order to adapt to the EU’s expansion.

Institutional reform was raised in the 1977 Papers prepared by the Commission in preparation for Mediterranean enlargement. In the paper the Commission recognised that an enlarged Community would impose strains on the institutional structure designed for only six members.

The Commission reaffirmed the basic principle that all member states must be represented in all the institutions. For the Parliament, though its members increased to 516, the Commission argued against altering the distribution of seats among the existing nine member states. For the Council, the Commission proposed setting the Qualified Voting Majority (QMV) threshold at 51 out of 76 votes. The Commission argued that this would maintain the existing power balance between large and small states. The Commission proposed the extension of QMV into areas where no vital national interests were at stake. These proposals identified some of the procedural reforms that were later linked to the implementation of the Single European Market.

By 1987 Spain and Portugal had joined the EU taking the number of states up to 12. The Single European Act (SEA) was also introduced in 1987 and its implications for EU decision making and inter-institutional relations have been far reaching. The elimination of the single member state veto allowed the Council to move beyond lowest common denominator bargains. This meant the Commission was able to play a more constructive role in the bargaining process when it did not need to cater for minority views in the Council. The QMV rule also allowed the European Parliament, through the co-operation procedure, to integrate itself into the decision-making system. If the European Parliament could persuade the Commission to accept its amendments to a Commission proposal, then only a qualified majority of Council members is needed to accept the revisions.

The fourth enlargement of the EU in 1995 when Finland, Austria and Sweden joined, resulted in a compromise concerning the distribution of votes, which reinforced the classical method by refusing to undertake major institutional reform during enlargement negotiations.1

The introduction of the co-decision procedure in the 1990’s transformed the Council-Parliament relationship form one of permanent confrontation to one of both formal and informal co-operation. Attitudes have clearly changed on both sides: the Council now takes the Parliament and its work more seriously and the Parliament is less obsessive about gaining more power. The Parliament is now a real co-legislative authority with the Council, even if their co-operation is subject to complicated procedures.

The improvement of the Council-Parliament relations in the co-decision procedure has had a knock-on effect on the Commission’s dealings with both the Council and the Parliament. The Parliament is no longer the junior partner of the three institutions; it can now approach the Council directly, and is no longer dependent on the Commission as its interlocutor with the Council as was the case in the past. The three institutions are required to co-operate because they are now so clearly inter-dependent. The Commission is responsible for producing proposals but is reliant on the Council in tandem with the Parliament to adopt the measures it has proposed.2

At Nice, EU member-states agreed to overhaul the workings of the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice (ECJ) and its junior institution, the European Court of First Instance (CFI). One reason was the prospect of EU enlargement. Another was the expansion of the Court's jurisdiction into new areas, such as intellectual property. However, the Court is already groaning under the strain of its existing caseload. Delays in the ECJ have created serious conflicts with national courts that do not wish to wait for ECJ rulings. Rapid reform was vital to provide the Court with the tools to cope with its escalating caseload. The Nice Treaty reforms aim to increase the speed at which cases are heard and processed. One notable initiative permits the creation of specialist judicial panels, which will increase the Court's ability to deal with technically difficult cases, or areas outside its traditional jurisdiction, such as EU staff cases. Furthermore, the introduction of qualified majority voting in the Council for amendments to the ECJ's rules of procedure will make it easier for the Court to push through future reforms.

The latest reforms should ensure the Court becomes even more efficient in future. The Nice Treaty left the fine details of the reform to be resolved by the Court and the Commission. This process should be transparent and seek to draw on best practice in all European jurisdictions. Both current and new member-states will not enjoy the benefits of EU membership without an efficient court system, which applies the law speedily and effectively.

As stated before the basic problem with the EU’s institutional framework is that it is still essentially based on the Treaty of Rome, which created a system for an organisation of only six countries. As I have already shown it is true that there has been a degree of change, both formally in the shape of Treaty amendments and informally through practice. However the basic framework has not been fundamentally reformed. Most of the institutional questions raised by future enlargement stem from two parameters: the size of the EU and the balance (of representation) between large and small member states. Therefore the proposed future enlargement means the Commission and Parliament could potentially grow to an unmanageable extent. There is also concern that decision-making in a Council of over 25 Ministers will become impossible unless QMV is accepted as the norm. As Robin Cook suggested the real issues are the size of the Commission and the procedures for majority voting.3

The institutions themselves all accept the need for reform to cope with EU expansion. The Commission argued in Agenda 2000 that it was a prerequisite for enlargement that the operations of the institutions must be strengthened and improved in line with the institutional provisions of the Amsterdam Treaty. The Commission has also proposed that the political decision on the weighting of votes in the Council, which is meant to go in hand with a reduction in the number of Members of the Commission by the next enlargement be taken well before enlargement. It is also been made clear that the Parliament will not accept any further enlargement of the EU without significant institutional reform. The magnitude of the reforms is still open to debate.

All the evidence seems to suggest that with the forthcoming enlargement of the EU the principal institutions will definitely reform in order to reduce democratic deficit (by redistributing votes) and to increase the efficiency of the decision making process. The ECJ is will also need to reform to ensure the Court becomes even more efficient in future.

Therefore in answer to the question asked in the title of this essay, I believe that reform in the inter-relationship between the principal institutions of the European Union is an inevitable process due to the expansion of the EU.