Understandable but inapplicable. One of the essential aspects of the institutional innovations resulting from the Lisbon Treaty concerns the future composition of the European Commission. Reflection about to begin on implementation of this treaty (see yesterday's column) should therefore, when the time comes, also cover this aspect, which is perhaps the most controversial aspect of the new treaty and one which causes the most perplexity. The formula adopted is the result of a two-fold requirement: a) that of preventing the Commission from becoming increasingly swollen with each new membership until it becomes ineffective or unwieldy, a place for debate rather than an executive authority; and b) that of placing all nationalities on an equal footing in order to ensure that there is no discrimination against medium or small states compared to the large states.
As one knows, this has resulted in the number of commissioners being equal to two-thirds the number of member states as of 2014, and in equal rotation between nationalities, and all nationalities in an equal playing field. Both these elements are considered increasingly inappropriate. The seven-year period during which the number of commissioners will be equal to that of member states is excessive. But it cannot be changed, as it is the result of a political compromise. So we must resign ourselves to it until this period is over, in the hope that this distension of the institution will not alter its nature in any way.
The aspect of the Commission's composition is more serious as it is, in principle, definitive. The criterion of equal rotation is dangerous especially for the Commission itself, as well as for its influence and for its authority in the future. The reasons for which this criterion has been chosen were valid and in principle they remain so. At the outset, the member states of Central and Eastern Europe could not, politically, take into consideration the hypothesis that a commissioner of their nationality should not be a permanent member of the Commission. In these countries, the European Commission represented the essential institution, the symbol of the Union to which they were now members. Not to be represented in this institution would have brought back bad memories, memories of the regime from which they had just freed themselves, where decisions concerning them were taken in a foreign capital. No longer under the sway of Moscow to come under that of Brussels? It would not have been easy to show the absurdity of such a comparison without recognising that each should have a permanent commissioner of their own nationality. That was in the beginning. Then, the principle of a certain amount of rotation had been allowed, as the prospect of an almost uncontrollable increase in the number of member states (with division of the former Czechoslovakia, the birth of Montenegro and the prospect of Kosovo, etc) would have changed the Commission into an Assembly. It was, however, necessary to conceive equitable rotation.
Those who dared. No authority in office has contested equitable rotation. But other eminent figures have done so. Let me mention just three. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing said that a Commission without a German or French or British member and in which the representatives of the small countries would be largely in the majority, would not have the necessary legitimacy to deliberate by majority vote. It could not vote. By voting, decisions would be taken without taking into account either the population or the economic power of the member states. This remark concerns above all the concrete powers of management held by the Commission, powers which are in several areas very far-reaching (competition, agriculture, infringement procedures, etc).
Piero Calamia, who, after having presided one of the key bodies with respect to the Union's institutional working (the Committee of Permanent Representatives) continues to regularly speak on European affairs. He has commented that, with the principle of equal rotation, Malta, Cyprus and tomorrow Montenegro, etc will have the same weight within the Commission as Germany, which does raise some doubt about the future politico-institutional weight of this institution. Such a development “will strengthen national ambitions in an attempt to return to a traditional scheme of things in relations between states”.
Philippe de Schoutheete foresaw that the mechanism for equal rotation will not be applied as it is as “it is not reasonable, and if a rule is not reasonable … we change it”. The Lisbon Treaty provides for the system of rotation of Commission members to be established by the European Council by unanimity, and that the number of commissioners may, still by unanimity, be amended.
I shall continue with my musings tomorrow by seeking to better define the gradual process of the exercise as it no doubt unfolds at official level.
(F.R.)