Wille, Α. (2014) “The Commission after the 2014 EP Elections“, Ideas on Europe – UACES Blog, 19 Νοεμβρίου.
‘This Time It’s Different’! This was the campaigning slogan for the official run-up ahead of the 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections. Voters were led to believe that these elections would be different. Not only would they be choosing the EP, but indirectly they also would select the next president of the European Commission. The leading candidates of the political groups crisscrossed Europe for weeks to address rallies in an attempt to transform the European elections into a genuine contest over competing political agendas. After the elections, former Luxembourg PM Jean-Claude Juncker, the candidate of the European People’s Party which won the most seats, was elected with a majority of 422 votes in a secret ballot as President of the new European Commission.
But was this something genuinely different? The European Commission, previously often seen as the European Union’s civil service, has in recent years increasingly come to play a more political role. In the 1950s, it started out as a technocratic international organization, but it has acquired many of the organizational features and behavioral patterns that are highly typical of the ‘normal’ executives in national settings. The election of the President by the EP fits remarkably well in this long time transformation which is known as the ‘normalization’ of the European Commission (cf. Wille 2013). It means that the Commission has increasingly become like a real government, with a clear divide between politics and administration.
Since the debate on the ‘democratic deficit’ in the EU in the early 90s, a long series of revisions in the Treaties (Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice, Lisbon) changed the legal and political framework within which the Commission operates. The Commission has become subject to a broader set of checks and balances and a web of accountability arrangements has been woven around this EU executive. Particularly, the power of the European Parliament has significantly increased, not only in the drafting of legislation, but also in the democratic control and accountability of the European Commission. The Commission should therefore increasingly take into account the European Parliament. Each new Commissioner, for instance, has to appear before parliament and to answer questions.
Σχετικές αναρτήσεις:
- Dale, E. & Porcaro, G. (2014) “Juncker’s new start for Europe – a brief summary of past Bruegel research as it relates to Juncker’s new agenda for the European Commission“, Bruegel Institute, 23 Ιουλίου.
- Salamone, A. (2014) “The European Council should not feel obliged to choose any of the leading candidates as President of the European Commission“, LSE EUROPP, 02 Ιουνίου.
- Grabbe, H. and Lehne, S. (2013) “The 2014 European elections: Why a partisan Commission president would be bad for the EU“, Centre for European Reform, 14 Οκτώβρίου.