A bit of side-slipping. The somewhat ambiguous nature of the lively debates surrounding statements made by Rocco Buttiglione before the MEPs (see this column yesterday) is not a one-off; other cases exist. Certain stances taken by various MEPs to affirm their personal beliefs have, in my view, goen far beyond the exercise of hearing the Commissioners. It is, of course, quite normal, even positive for the political groups to defend their idea of Europe and of society; that is part of the "politicisation" of the European Parliament. But they cannot demand that each Commissioner share their views! The Commission must be judged as a whole, not on such and such a point of detail. It is certainly true that the political groups often expressed very positive opinions about Commissioners who are not part of their political family. But there was quite a lot of side-slipping, which sometimes gave the impression that for some of the MEPs at least, the main assessment criterion involved the political leanings of the Commissioner being questioned. If they were the right leanings, he or she was reliable, well prepared, trustworthy, and absolutely right for the task in hand. If not, then he or she was difficult, lacking or incapable of overseeing the portfolio allocated. A few contradictory judgements verged on the ridiculous; the same Commissioner was receiving both extravagant praise and pressing invitations to stand down, with the unpleasant impression that a kind of bargaining was going on between the groups: I'll let your candidate through if you let mine through.
Sometimes, some of the MEPs' individual attitudes seemed difficult to justify. An example of this is the strident tone taken by Ignais Guardans's press release against Margot Wallström, because she had voiced some misgivings about adding Catalan to the already overlong list of Community languages. The MEP would have been quite at liberty to voice his disagreement over this detail. He chose instead, however, to state that Ms Wallström should not be allowed to take up the position she had been appointed to, and call for her to be rejected. He remained isolated, because Ms Wallström's performance went down very well with the MEPs as a whole (see our bulletin of 2 October, pages 4 and 5). Something similar happened to Peter Mandelson: his presentation was outstanding and well-balanced (see this column of 12 October), but it managed to fire up a single MEP, who wrote an incensed press release. Other anomalies seem quite straightforward to me. Several MEPs expressed misgivings and reservations about Neelie Kroes as Competition Commissioner, because of her past connections with the business world, but none of them seems to have had any criticisms of the precautions suggested by the legal service, in order to remove all risks of "conflicts of interest". The legal service suggested that Ms Kroes should not handle any dossiers involving companies in which she has formerly held a position; these will be entrusted to other Commissioners, or to President Barroso himself. Under these conditions, and given that these dossiers are cross-cutting by their nature, how can the responsibility for competition be exercised with coherence, continuity and credibility? The legal service seems, for my money, to have been a bit over-scrupulous and under-explicit.
Three principles to be respected. I will come back later to other situations which merit clarification, such as the future of the Common Agricultural Policy and, more importantly, how it will be paid for, or the competencies of Commissioner for Development Policy, Louis Michel. For now, I will just indicate the three principles the EP should bear in mind in any exercise of this kind: a) no political group, even the strongest, can demand that the European Commission share it views, because there is no single majority group, and the Commission must represent an overall balance; b) the Parliament must have faith in the Community method, under which all proposals of the Commission are put to it. It is the Parliament itself which gives a definitive form to the drafts, or rejects them if they do not tally with the majority views within it. This is the reality of Community life, and there should be no prior censure to these proposals. It is better to see the EP fighting to reinforce the power which it already has and to improve how it works, rather than seeing political groups calling for Commissioners which are aligned to their points of view; c) the good Commissioners are not necessarily the ones with the best grasp of their dossiers when they take up their posts, but those whose belief in Europe is clear and those with an imposing personality, because we know from experience that the Commissioner's role is in itself an effective school in Europe-ification. In the Prodi Commission, alongside the Commissioners who were hailed from the word go (Mr Lamy, Mr Monti, Mr Vitorino, Ms Loyola de Palacio, etc), others gradually made their mark due to their authority and ideas: Ms Reding, Ms Schreyer, Mr Busquin, and others. the Barroso Commission will doubtless have similar surprises in store for us. (F.R.)