Difficult to understand. Denmark has just taken up the reins of the presidency of the Council for the next six months and everything would suggest that this will be an efficient and balanced presidency. The president of the European Council obviously maintains his prerogatives because the terminology is misleading: the two bodies are separate and their tasks are significantly different. For our readers, this goes without saying. Public opinion, however, and most journalists in non-EU countries still find the EU institutional terminology a real headache. Nothing has really changed on the subject since Mr Kissinger's famous question - “what is the phone number for Europe?” The institutions and individuals involved have a modus vivendi that allows them, in principle, to tackle any possible confusion or misunderstandings. On countless occasions the president of the European Council, Mr Van Rompuy, and the president of the Commission, Mr Barroso, have supported common positions in an effort to give the outside world the impression that Europe is speaking with a single voice. Nonetheless, each institution, particularly the European Commission, must, at the same time, demonstrate its autonomy and specific powers.
The terminology currently used is disastrous. The European Council is the heads of government and it is therefore the highest and most powerful level of the Community institutions. It has nothing at all to do with the Council of Europe, despite the semantic resemblance (which is a source of confusion and misunderstanding), because the latter brings together all European countries whether they are members of the EU or not. At the same time it even goes beyond European borders because Turkey and Russia are part of it and most of their territory is in Asia.
Let's get back to the EU: if we remove the adjective from the European Council, we have an institution whose presidency changes every six months and whose powers are sectoral. I'm not going to explain a situation that our readers know perfectly well, I simply intend to explain why this confusion arises for the public and sometimes extends to the media. The way the six-monthly presidency of the Council (without an adjective) functions is not clear to everybody. For example, the prime minister of the country exercising the presidency does not preside over anything at all and is simply a member of the European Council, under the permanent presidency of Mr Van Rompuy!
If the prime minister in question happens to be dynamic and seeks to get his voice heard and be directly involved in Community activity (which was the case with the head of the Polish government), he will present himself to the European Parliament, which will willingly invite him to represent the EU in different situations, in agreement with Ms Ashton (who is submerged with work and has quite logically placed her theoretical and absurd role of European Commission vice president to the side). Is everything clear? I doubt it.
The European Parliament is asserting itself but... In this situation of overlapping powers, the EP is the indispensable guarantor of the Commission's autonomy and other aspects of Community orthodoxy: there are many MEPs who play an important and valuable role in this connection. Is, however, this Parliament already fully aware of its powers and the real repercussions resulting from the decisions it reaches? It prevented the extension of the fisheries agreement with Morocco out of a question of principle. It obviously has the right to evoke this principle but should try to avoid compromising the jobs of European fishermen.
The EP sometimes acts as if it needs to demonstrate its usefulness by getting itself known to the public and by significantly increasing the declarations it makes and the spectacular activities it is involved in, such as its visits made en masse, the meetings with other parliaments or the setting up of mixed parliamentary bodies in which rhetoric is the operative word. EP meetings with Mercosur parliamentarians regularly finish by singing the praises of the mutual free-trade zone (the biggest in the world! - let us emphatically underline), which has no chance of being completed whilst bilateral agreements with different countries from this continent, particularly Brazil, remain both possible and useful. Spectacular activities are welcome if they are not too expensive. I am more in favour of the positions taken by MEPs when they have something to say (this does happen) and who do not swell the budget when they speak in a personal capacity or on behalf of their respective groups.
Its essential role. The essential role of the EP can now be located in its legislative activity, which is on a par with the Council. This involves the most significant democratic development since the introduction of direct elections, and the EP often exercises this in an impeccable way: it moulds the EU's activity and directly influences the daily lives of its citizens. The way in which it has determined the future financial regulation of the EU, text by text, will influence the future of Europe. It can play a similar role in the adjustment of the texts which will determine the new cohesion policy and the new common agricultural policy.
(FR/transl.fl)