Mediator? The reinforcement of the European Parliament's role in Community life has altered that of the European Commission. This alteration, which is already fully underway, will develop further in future with the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, which will extend the powers of co-decision of the EP to new areas. This is not a forecast but a statement of fact; the Commission itself acknowledges it. Here is a relatively minor but telling example. Nicolas Sarkozy wrote to the European Commission to ask it not to retain an amendment of the European Parliament in the "Telecoms Package", which is subject to the co-decision procedure. Taking note of this procedure, the Commission nonetheless indicated that it must respect the decision of the Parliament, and the spokesperson to Viviane Reding, the commissioner with responsibility for this dossier, explained that it was up to France to defend its position in the framework of the Council (which will meet on 27 November); after which, if the Council on the Parliament fail to reconcile their opinions on the controversial point, "the Commission is prepared to play its role as a mediator, in order to seek a compromise" (see our bulletin 9756).
"Its role as a mediator": these are the key words. Paolo Ponzano, the Commission civil servant who analysed the repercussions of current developments, recently shared his conclusions and comments (at the occasion of the launch of a book by Riccardo Perissich on "The European Union- An Unofficial History"). Mr Ponzano said that "the influence of the Commission on the adoption of European legislation has been considerably reduced, mainly to the benefit of the Parliament (...). Its legislative role has become considerably scaled down by the EP/Council co-decision procedure. When the Parliament and the Council negotiate directly between themselves from the first reading of the text (it is during this stage that 70% of acts subject to co-decision are adopted), the Commission increasingly becomes a mediator, an honest broker" (our translation throughout). It has from time to time come to pass that the Commission has withdrawn a proposal to prevent the Council from denuding it of its content (Mr Ponzano reminded the audience of a few past examples); today, "it is completely powerless once the EP and the Council reach agreement (...). Furthermore, the Parliament is able to carry out arbitration between diverging interests or between the old and the new member states, as it did over the Bolkestein directive on services and the Reach regulation on chemical products". The Commission, which is aware of this situation, often aims for the lowest common denominator from the word go, and Mr Ponzano wonders whether it would take an important but controversial initiative, such as the Galileo project, today.
Hands off the right of initiative. The evolution thus described, Mr Ponzano continued, in no way reduces the requirement for the Commission to keep in full its virtually exclusive right of legislative initiative (with the exception of foreign policy and legal issues). Otherwise, how would it be possible to take account of the interests of all member states, including those which have only five or six MEPs out of 750? Who outside the Commission could, for example, guarantee that any project on electronic commerce or the environment took due account of the legislation of the Scandinavian countries, which are at the forefront in these fields? Only an administration which knows all of the national bodies of law and in which all member states are represented could possibly do so.
Democratic requirement. The role of the Commission remains essential, therefore, but it has undergone a partial change in nature. These considerations explain and, to an extent at least, justify the tendency of the Commission and its president to err on the side of caution and carry out broad consultations before launching any new projects; sometimes, it decides to delay them, so that it can go into greater depth with its preparations. This does not mean that it has given up on taking bold or controversial initiatives, in the field of the environment or telecommunications, say; but in difficult cases, it cannot ignore the fact that it is up to the Council and the Parliament to define the vital compromises, once the time comes. And in any case, we have all seen how many times it has happened, after hard-fought battles, that the compromises decided upon essentially consist of the solutions which the Commission put forward to start with.
Sometimes, the Parliamentary groups are as aggressive as they are small: they curse the Commission if a given project does not end up just as they wanted it to, whilst ignoring the fact that in a democracy, you need a majority in order to get your views across, and that the Commission, in its role of mediator, can never forget that.
(F.R./trans.fl)