Brussels, 30/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Convention has not yet tackled issues relating to the European institutions and has not therefore touched upon the configuration of the future Commission. The polemic nonetheless continues between John Temple Lang and Eamonn Gallagher, who support a college with as many Commissioners as EU Member States, and Stanley Crossick and Giovanni Grevi, of the European Policy Centre (EPC), who favour a smaller Commission (see EUROPE of 10 April, p.9, and 3 April, p.4).
John Temple thus responds to certain arguments put forward by the EPC. He mainly states that: - regarding the role of the Commissioners' Cabinets (which are, he recalls, composed of nationals of different Member States), "relying on members of Cabinets would be a very poor substitute indeed for the right to nominate a Commissioner". Mr Temple Lang seizes this opportunity to express a widely felt feeling that "they (i.e. the members of Cabinets) have too much power in the light of their limited experience, expertise and independence"; - on the need or otherwise for the European Commission to be fully representative, he believes the Commission must be both representative and independent. At the EPC, which believes the size of the College must correspond to the tasks that fall upon it, he replies that: with enlargement and the missions under the second and third pillars, these tasks "are going to increase" and not "substantially reduced"; - regarding the protection of the interests of "small" States, "it is now clear that, for the first time in the history of the EU, the three large Member states want to dominate the affairs of the Union and it is precisely because of this that the role of the Commission is even more important, and is more threatened". Furthermore, Mr Temple Lang considers it "naïve" of Mr Crossick and Mr Grevi to believe that the rotation to be introduced between Commissioners would guarantee that all the States are treated on a basis of equality. "A large Member State with no Commissioner is in a very different position from a small Member State with no Commissioner", he said, before noting that, "it was a large State in Nice which insisted on the clause reducing the size of the Commission". He concluded by saying: "We stressed that all commissioners are appointed to represent the whole EU, but that a nominee of each State is needed so that the Commission will be aware of minority interests, and will be seen to be so. We said that a State cannot have as much confidence in a Commission on which it has no nominee: their answer, a naive debating point, is to say that mutual trust would contribute to the success of the Union. So it would: that is why institutional mechanisms such as a fully representative Commission are necessary, because they help to build trust".