The European Parliament has expressed its views so the new president of the European Commission can start preparing for the new College of Commissioners getting down to work, assuming of course that the Lisbon Treaty does actually come into force. I am not referring to the Commission's work programme. In addition to the guidelines already laid out by Barroso, the full programme will be decided by the commissioners en masse. Instead, I am referring to how the Commission will actually function in practice given the current legal situation.
1. Awaiting the most important commissioner. In order to avoid a power vacuum arising from extension of the current Commission's term of office (because it would only be able to deal with “current affairs”), the new Commission should start work as soon as possible based on the Nice Treaty, because the Lisbon Treaty will not come into force until early next year in any case. This means that the number of commissioners will for a while be lower than the number of member states - at least one country will not have one of its nationals as a commissioner.
Guy Verhofstadt, while pointing out that it was the Council's job to decide, suggested the following solution - leave commissioner-less for the moment the country which would later provide the person who would take on the triple job of vice-president of the Commission, high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and chair of the 'External Relations' Council. All mouths are watering at the prospect of getting this job (the Socialists are demanding it, for example). Heads of state could decide on this person immediately after the new Irish referendum, and at the same time, the person appointed as the new long-term president of the European Council could take up office. Political and geographical balance between the three top jobs - president of the Commission, president of the European Council and high representative for foreign policy and security - would in this way be established in the first half of October before the Lisbon Treaty formally comes into force.
2. The powers of the many-hatted vice-president. The above-mentioned vice-president will help the Commission express a single, over-arching EU attitude to the outside world. At the moment, the commissioner with responsibility for foreign affairs is often in the embarrassing situation of not having the authority to talk about trade policy, development aid and other important areas of the EU's foreign policy because these areas have their own commissioners who want to keep their powers to themselves. The Commission needs to work out procedures that will combine the over-arching responsibility of the vice-president-high representative-chair of the Council with powers for areas covered by his or her colleagues. Not an easy task…
3. Justice, security and immigration. Will immigration policy be one of the areas of responsibility of the new multi-hatted vice-president? Quizzed about this by a student from the Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg, current vice-president Jacques Barrot said that he thought that collegiality meant that the new vice-president could be asked to deal with immigration issues. Barroso has announced that the current justice-freedom-security portfolio will be sliced in two - justice, fundamental rights and civil liberties; and home affairs, security and immigration, both of which would have their own commissioner. Barrot says that a three portfolio solution would be the best option, in order to avoid immigration remaining within the orbit of security issues, namely: a) justice and human rights; b) security; and c) immigration. Cohesive action at the Commission would need to be assured through collegiality.
4. Managing collegiality. This is the underlying problem. Extending EU powers and increasing the number of commissioners makes it impossible for all topics to be discussed at length among all European commissioners. It is clear, however, that total lack of debate would kill collegiality. It will not be easy to strike a balance between these two extremes.
On top of that, there is the crucial issue of voting at the European Commission. During his first term of office, Barroso avoided any formal voting. Preparatory work on the initiatives of the different commissioners would make it possible, for any topic on which there is disagreement, for a compromise to be reached or a clearly majority view to be set out. If this were not to work, Barroso says he believes the commissioner in charge should decide himself or herself to withdraw the topic in question. Two cases of this are well-known: Peter Mandelson gave up on the idea of mooting a re-writing of the EU's anti-dumping system, and Charlie McCreevy agreed to the idea of a common tax basis for corporate taxation.
This tactic of avoiding formal votes at the Commission should be fine-tuned and worked upon to protect collegiality and avoid turning the European Commission into one big debating chamber, which would prevent effective action being taken.
5. How many portfolios? The gradual increase in the number of commissioners under the Lisbon Treaty (one commissioner per member state) will probably not only affect the way collegiality operates but will also determine the number of portfolios. In addition to the justice-civil rights-immigration case discussed above, Barroso has announced two further changes - a commissioner would be given responsibility for broad climate issues with the option of speaking on any policies and measure that impact on the climate (like energy, transport, farming and so on); and a chief scientific adviser would be given the authority to express views on the design and implementation of EU policies.
Other arrangements will also be needed but these need to be discussed by the new Commission itself. (F.R./transl.fl)