cobert et al_the european parliament at fifty

JCMS 2003 Volume 41. Number 2. pp. 353-73

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

The European Parliament at Fifty: A View fromthe Inside*

RICHARD CORBETTMember of the European Parliament

FRANCIS JACOBSEuropean Parliament Secretariat

MICHAEL SHACKLETONEuropean Parliament Secretariat

Abstract

This article offers three different perspectives on the changing role and behaviour ofthe European Parliament as seen by ‘insiders’. The first concentrates on the overallsuccess of the Parliament in transforming its constitutional position. The second con-trasts the dominant position of budgetary politics in the 1980s with the much morevariegated shape of the Parliament’s role in policy-making now. The third underlineshow parliamentary ‘oversight’ has assumed greater importance in response to thehigher visibility of the impact of EU laws.

Introduction

The European Parliament (EP) has changed more than any other major Euro-pean Union (EU) institution in the last 20 years. This article considers thechanges from the inside and offers three views of what is different todaycompared with the Parliament that emerged from the first direct elections. Itconsiders the experiences of three officials (one of whom has become an MEP)who have lived through the remarkable development of the institution.

The first section looks back at the progress of the Parliament from its ori-gins to the Intergovernmental Conferences of the 1980s and 1990s whichhave transformed its constitutional position. It suggests how this transforma-tion was secured by the Parliament and to what effect. In this process, Parliament

* All views expressed are offered in a personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the position of theinstitution.

354 RICHARD CORBETT, FRANCIS JACOBS AND MICHAEL SHACKLETON

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

has established itself as part of what makes the EU radically different from atraditional intergovernmental organization.

The second section recalls the dominant place of budgetary politics in theEP during the 1980s, looking specifically at the 1987 budgetary procedure. Itconsiders the constraints on Parliament at that time, the restricted volume ofcommunication with the Council and the very special status enjoyed by theCommittee on Budgets. It contrasts the position then with the greater range ofoptions now available to the Parliament, the much denser level of contactswith Council and the greater affirmation of legislative committees.

The third section takes two areas of EP activity which were all but non-existent 20 years ago, namely the implementation of policy and the scrutinyand control of the other EU institutions. Greater participation in the establish-ment of legislation and higher political visibility of the impact of EU laws atnational level have pushed MEPs to undertake the task of ‘oversight’ in a waythat rarely crossed the minds of their predecessors in the 1980s.

I. A Retrospective Look at the Road Travelled

It might not seem like it to those of us who are involved day-by-day in the EP,but half a century is a historically short period to develop from a token talk-ing-shop into a significant player in shaping legislation that applies acrossmost of a continent. After all, when they set up the original European Com-munities, the authors of the treaties – the national governments – were waryof giving powers to the EP. It was essentially a forum, composed until 1979of delegations from national parliaments. It was consulted merely on a smallrange of legislative proposals prior to their adoption by Council and given theright to dismiss the Commission in a vote of censure by a two-thirds majority.These powers were, not surprisingly, considered to be too limited, especiallyby those called upon to serve in the EP, who claimed that a system wherebyministers alone could adopt legislation was suffering from a ‘democratic defi-cit’. Parliament had to fight for its powers.

Most of the major steps forward taken by the Parliament are well docu-mented: the budget treaties of 1970 and 1975; the introduction of direct elec-tions by universal suffrage in 1979; the 1980 Isoglucose ruling of the Euro-pean Court of Justice, giving Parliament a de facto delaying power; the Sin-gle European Act in 1987, introducing the co-operation procedure and theassent procedure; the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993, bringing in the co-deci-sion procedure, and giving Parliament the right to allow (or not) the Commis-sion as a whole to take office through a vote of confidence; and the Treaty ofAmsterdam, which greatly extended the scope of co-decision, modified it to

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THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AT FIFTY: A VIEW FROM THE INSIDE

Parliament’s advantage, and gave Parliament the right to confirm or reject adesignated President of the Commission.

As a result of these and other changes, we now have what has been de-scribed as ‘a classic two chamber legislature: in which the Council representsthe states and the European Parliament represents the citizens’ (Hix, 1999, p.56).

How did Parliament Manage to Secure these Changes?

Unlike most national parliaments, the EP has not regarded itself as part of afinished institutional system, but rather as part of one requiring evolution oreven transformation, and to which goal it has always sought to act as a cata-lyst.

Parliament’s vocation to promote constitutional change was emphasizedat its very first session in 1952 when Chancellor Adenauer, on behalf of theCouncil, invited it to draft a treaty for a European Political Community. Par-liament, designated as the ‘ad hoc Assembly’ for this purpose, proceeded todo so. Although its project fell with the demise of the European DefenceCommunity in 1954, many of Parliament’s ideas were used in the negotiationof the EEC Treaty two years later.

Parliament has continually pressed both to develop policies and to im-prove its position within the institutional framework of the Union. It hasachieved this not only through treaty change, but also through obtaining un-dertakings from the Council and Commission, by taking advantage of par-ticular interpretations of the treaties, and by negotiating inter-institutionalagreements that supplement the treaties. First and foremost, Parliament hadto press constantly for many years for the implementation of the treaty provi-sion regarding its own direct election by universal suffrage. The achievementof this objective in 1979 was in itself a major constitutional change, and wascrucial in paving the way to the more rapid rate of change that came later.

Granted, direct elections initially had an ambiguous effect. They conferredon the Parliament a greater ‘legitimacy’ in that it could justly claim to be theonly directly elected European institution, but at the same time they arousedpublic expectations that were difficult to meet. The public had, after all, beencalled upon to choose its representatives in an assembly that did not have adecisive say. Electors who, in the national context, were used to parliamen-tary elections revolving around the performance of governments and whetherto change them, suddenly found themselves having to vote for a Parliamentwhich could not elect a government, and which did not even have a decisivesay on EU legislation or policies. This new political animal was all too easilyridiculed in the press, misunderstood by the public, and a ready target forthose opposed to the European project.



But, direct elections were a step forward. They transformed the Parlia-ment into a full-time body and created a new class of elected representativesin Europe. Within almost every major political party, there was now a smallbut significant number of politicians whose career depended on making some-thing of the European dimension. They acted as vital go-betweens in explain-ing the Union and its potential to national parties and in bringing nationalparties further into European discussions. This was a painstaking process.Nevertheless, it slowly helped to engage political circles, if not always thewider public.

Part of this process involved simply shaping attitudes to particular Euro-pean issues and policies. Part of it involved moderating the attitude of thoseMEPs who were initially elected on an anti-European platform, but who, overthe years, changed their position and helped change that of their party. Thiswas certainly the case of many of the 1979 and 1984 intake of UK LabourMEPs, the initial intake of Greek Pasok MEPs and many others. And part ofit involved the Parliament deliberately setting out to win support for specificinstitutional changes. These changes have consistently promoted three dis-tinct but related objectives.

The first object of the EP was to clarify and strengthen the responsibilitiesof the EU. Parliament has consistently argued that powers should be attrib-uted to the Union on the basis of the ‘principle of subsidiarity’, i.e. it shouldexercise those responsibilities (but only those responsibilities) that can becarried out more effectively by common policies than by the Member Statesacting separately. It is a measure of how far Parliament has managed to shapethe political debate that this rather ungainly expression of subsidiarity hasbecome part of the political vocabulary: it was a term virtually unknown inEnglish political discourse until Parliament started to use it in the 1980s.

Second, Parliament has argued that responsibilities exercised at the Euro-pean level should be carried out more effectively. Parliament has been par-ticularly critical of the practice of unanimity in the Council, arguing that whereit has been agreed to run a policy jointly, it makes no sense to give a blockingpower to each of the component states of the Union.

Third, Parliament has made the case for better democratic control and ac-countability. Those responsibilities which national parliaments, in ratifyingthe Treaties, have transferred to the Union should not be exercised by theCouncil (i.e. ministers) alone. The loss of parliamentary powers at the na-tional level should be compensated by an increase in parliamentary power atEuropean level.

The three major treaty revisions enacted since Parliament became directlyelected were all strongly influenced in the above directions by the Parlia-ment, as was the more limited Treaty of Nice. They illustrate that, whilst

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Parliament is not able to secure all its wishes, it can have a major influence asa catalyst for change. In each case, by putting together proposals that had thebacking of its main political groups (starting with the Spinelli draft treaty of1984), the Parliament was able to create sufficient political momentum, vianational parties and national parliaments, for at least some national govern-ments to press its case, and for a majority of them to accept that there was acase to look at. Of course, the bottom line of unanimity among the MemberStates meant that there were limits as to what could be achieved, but the mo-mentum was sufficient to enable a compromise package to get through whichin each and every case improved Parliament’s powers.

Parliament has also been more assertive in using its existing powers. Thiswas most spectacularly illustrated in 1999 with the resignation of the SanterCommission. It was the Parliament that initially unearthed the practices thatgave rise to concern. It was Parliament that set up the committee of independ-ent experts (and forced the Commission to accept that the committee couldgo through the Commission’s books, files and papers to identify exactly whowas responsible for what). And it was within two hours of it becoming clearthat there was (as a result of the investigation) the necessary majority in Par-liament for a vote of no confidence that the Commission pre-empted this andresigned.

The impact was not entirely positive: the Member States did not appoint areplacement Commission for several months, leaving the discredited team inplace; in the ensuing elections, public opinion tended to take a ‘plague onboth your houses’ view; and the Commission was weakened as an institutionand as a frequent ally of the Parliament. Nonetheless, it was a reminder to allof the Commission’s accountability to Parliament and its need to enjoy Par-liament’s support.

And to What Effect? – The European Parliament Today

The role that the Parliament has established for itself is part of what makesthe European Union radically different from a traditional intergovernmentalorganization. Without the Parliament the EU would be dominated by bureau-crats and diplomats, loosely supervised by ministers flying periodically intoBrussels. The existence of a body of full-time representatives in the heart ofdecision-taking in Brussels, asking questions, knocking on doors, bringingthe spotlight to shine in dark corners, in dialogue with their constituents backhome, makes the EU system more open, transparent and democratic than wouldotherwise be the case. MEPs are drawn from governing parties and opposi-tion parties and represent not just capital cities but the regions in their fulldiversity. In short, the Parliament brings pluralism into play and brings addedvalue to the scrutiny of EU legislation.



It also takes the edge off national conflict. Council can all too often givethe appearance of decision-taking by gladiatorial combat between those rep-resenting ‘national interests’. Reality is more complex and the fact that theParliament organizes itself not in national delegations but in political groupsshows that the dividing line on most concrete subjects is not between nationsbut between political viewpoints or between sectoral interests.

Granted, the EP is not a ‘sexy’ Parliament. Compared to many nationalparliaments, it lacks the cut and thrust of debate between government andopposition. Like the US Congress, its real work is done in committee. Theplurality of languages used makes the debates far from spectacular. For thesereasons, among others, it gets far less media coverage than do most nationalparliaments.

But when it comes to the detail of legislative or budgetary work, MEPsshape legislation in a way that MPs in many national parliaments do not. Insome national parliaments, when a government publishes a bill, it is usuallyclear what will come out of the procedure – it is headline news if the parlia-ment amends it against the will of the government. Such is certainly not thecase in the EP. A draft directive really is a draft – MEPs go through it para-graph by paragraph amending it and rewriting it. So do the ministers in theCouncil – and ultimately the positions of the two must be reconciled – but thenet effect is that every year, thousands of amendments to draft legislation putforward by ordinary backbench MEPs end up on the statute book.

In some national parliaments, being a backbencher, or an opposition partyMP offers limited power other than the prospect of, perhaps, one day wield-ing a ministerial post. MEPs, on the other hand, whilst not having a careerpath to a ministry (though a surprising number do become ministers) can playa significant role in shaping legislation – a classical parliamentary functionalmost forgotten by some national parliaments.

The style is also different. One measure of a good MP in a national contextis someone who is a good debater, able to score points over his or her oppo-nents. An effective MEP is someone who is good at explaining, persuadingand negotiating with colleagues from 15 different countries. This is done atthree levels: first, within political groups, as MEPs from different nationalparties work towards developing a common position as a group; second, withother groups in the Parliament, as no group has an overall majority and coali-tions must be built. Indeed, the type of majority can vary from one issue toanother as there is no predetermined coalition, but a general willingness towork by means of achieving substantial majorities on most issues; and third,with Council for the final outcome. Such a style of Parliament leaves amplescope for a good wheeler-dealer.

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Despite the significant and growing role of the EP, turnout in Europeanelections has remained low, and even declined to 50 per cent of the electoratein the 1999 election. Although this is higher than, for example, US Congres-sional elections, it remains below that commonly experienced in EU MemberStates for national Parliamentary elections (although these too have been de-clining, and sometimes at a faster rate). This is likely to remain the case, for anumber of reasons. First, the EU will remain less significant for day-to-dayissues of immediate concern to voters than national institutions. Second, thereis no government directly at stake in European elections and the bulk of theelectorate is used to voting in national parliamentary elections to keep orthrow out a national government. Third, the EU institutions are inevitablymore distant than national or local institutions. Fourth, there is the lower me-dia coverage of the Parliament alluded to earlier. Fifth, there is the consensus-style decision-making at EU level which often prevents partisan alternativesfrom being highlighted to the electorate.

Finally, however, there is the widespread lack of understanding as to howthe EU institutions actually operate. In some countries, a significant propor-tion of the press is overtly hostile to the EU. But in all countries there is anabundance of incorrect information, false assumptions and numerous misun-derstandings in the media and among national politicians.

Can this be countered with better information and explanation? Perhapsthe Convention on the Future of Europe currently underway can help by sim-plifying and codifying the treaties into a clear constitution. Maybe the pro-posal that Parliament should elect the President of the Commission wouldcreate the link between the European elections and the leader of the executivethat voters are accustomed to in their national elections. Perhaps there is atime lag between reality and perceptions: Parliament has had co-decision pow-ers – the fundamental right to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to legislation with decisiveeffect – over the bulk of EU legislation for only four years and is still per-ceived as a toothless tiger.

But one other ingredient would help: a bit less defensiveness about a Par-liament that in certain crucial respects compares well to our national parlia-ments as a pluralistic forum in which legislation is shaped through discussionand compromise. As we look around the world – or, indeed at our own Euro-pean history – we can be proud of what we have achieved with our uniquemulticultural, multilingual Parliament.



II. The Long March From 1986

Looking Back to 1986

This second part of the article looks back at a specific moment in the Parlia-ment’s history, the first and second reading budgetary debates of Novemberand December 1986 on the 1987 budget. At that time budgetary policyassumed a much more central position. It was the arena within which thepriorities of the Community were determined. Budgeting also gave the Par-liament its one major avenue into the corridors of power but with a limitedarmoury of weapons. Only now can we see more clearly that it was a periodof transition to a very different Community where the budget is much lesscentral and the Parliament has a far wider range of instruments at its disposal.

In the autumn of 1986, the Delors Commission had been in office for 18months and the single market 1992 programme was only just beginning totake shape. The Single European Act had been signed but it was not to enterinto force until the following year after an Irish referendum, bringing with itsignificant improvements in the prerogatives of the Parliament. Assent andco-operation were two terms that were to become a reality in 1987 and tobring with them a capacity for the Parliament to influence enlargement, cer-tain international agreements (more than many supposed) and, for the firsttime, the contents of legislation.

In budgetary terms, the great struggles of the 1980s were to be brought toan end with the arrival of the first financial perspective at the Berlin EuropeanCouncil in 1988. Few could have imagined how this innovation was to be-come a fixed part of the Community environment, offering guarantees fordifferent categories of expenditure whilst, at the same time, limiting the ef-fective scope for Parliament to influence the overall shape of the budget. Itmay have been an exaggerated belief but in 1986 all members felt that theParliament was in a position to have a major effect on the budget as a whole.Few think this now.

The budget was the one area where the Parliament did have teeth and hadused them. On the basis of the powers granted it in 1970 and 1975, it couldreject the budget, which it did in 1979 and 1982, it could and did amend thelevel of spending, within the limits of the maximum rate of increase, and itcould refuse the discharge for annual expenditure, a power often threatenedbut not used even to this day.

What though of the 1987 procedure? Three features show how much theParliament has evolved in the intervening years. First, budgetary policy loomedmuch larger than it does today, but the use of the budget as a way of develop-ing the Community was shown to have strict limitations. Second, the budget

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argument was conducted through a form of megaphone diplomacy with mes-sages passed from a considerable distance. The level of conflict with the Coun-cil was high and it combined with a level of contact that looks extraordinarilynarrow from the standpoint of 2003. Third, the Budgets Committee enjoyed aposition of pre-eminence in the hierarchy of the Parliament that was unchal-lenged by other committees. It held the status of pioneer that is now a distantmemory with other committees increasingly determined to claim their placein the sun.

A Limited Tool of Policy

The central issue of the budgetary debate in 1986 was the lack of resourcesavailable to the European Community. There was a budgetary shortfall of 1.3billion ECU, which was expected to grow in 1987 to 4 billion ECU, takingthe total far beyond the 1.4 per cent VAT ceiling for expenditure. As manyspeakers in the Parliament pointed out, it was not just a financial crisis but acrisis threatening the very existence of the Community.

The apocalyptic tone of much of the debate sounds odd today when we arearound 0.18 per cent below the GNP ceiling (an amount equivalent to around€10 billion). In 1986 the budget was seen as the essential measure of thepriorities of the Community and nearly everyone agreed that the balance ofexpenditure was wrong. The Community needed new policies with adequateexpenditure provision. There were differences about where expenditure shouldbest be directed, but there was very wide acceptance that the budget of theCommunity was unbalanced. In particular, agricultural expenditure was notonly running out of control, it was putting at risk other forms of expenditure.As Ove Fich, the Danish Socialist, put it, ‘we are fast approaching a situationin which the EAGGF Guarantee Section is nothing more than a big black holesucking in all the resources which should be going to other policy areas’.1

The conflict between agricultural and non-agricultural spending was par-ticularly acute because the former was (and remains) compulsory, with theParliament having only a limited say over it through ‘proposals for modifica-tion’ that the Council could set aside, and the latter non-compulsory, pre-cisely that category that the Parliament could influence under the provisionsof the then Article 203 (now 272). The pressure of agricultural expenditurehad already prompted a major argument between Parliament and Council ear-lier in 1986 when Council took Parliament to the ECJ for entering more ap-propriations for structural spending (regional, social and agricultural guid-ance funds) than was possible under the provisions of the maximum rate laiddown in the Treaty. The Court dismissed the Parliament’s claim that the budget

1 Official Journal, Annex No.2 of 12.11.1986, p. 91.



had to be increased to meet previous commitments, and insisted that the twoinstitutions had to agree explicitly on a new maximum rate of increase fornon-compulsory expenditure.

What could the Parliament now do? Well, it decided to adopt at first read-ing a proposal for modification to reduce milk quotas by 5 per cent and tofinance measures to reduce the stocks that it cost the Community so much tomaintain. It was, however, a call in the wilderness that showed the weaknessof the weapons available to the Parliament at the time. When Peter Brooke,the British Financial Secretary to the Treasury, came to the Parliament inDecember, he commented that the Council had indeed heard the ‘politicalsignal’ coming from the Parliament and was willing to send a signal back. Tothis end it entered a new budgetary line entitled ‘measures to be taken follow-ing review of reduction of surplus production and accumulated stocks’, butwithout any money on the line. It left it to colleagues in the Agriculture Coun-cil to adopt the legislative decisions necessary to enable such expenditure tobe made.

Parliament was effectively side-lined and in a very weak position. It hadno means of making its position stick and obliging Council to modify itslegislative stance. As Peter Price, a then British Conservative, put it, ‘thecentral problem for the Community is that Ministers have retained for them-selves both legislative and budgetary powers over the CAP, but have failed touse these powers effectively’.2 Parliament had tried to compensate for its lackof say over legislative outcomes by developing a doctrine whereby the entryof appropriations in the budget was considered a sufficient basis for expendi-ture. It was a position firmly rejected by the Council. A joint declaration ofJune 1982 was supposed to settle the argument but failed. It specified thatwhere expenditure was entered in the budget for ‘significant, new Commu-nity action’, Parliament and Council were to ‘use their best endeavours’ toadopt a regulation by the end of May of the budgetary year in question. Thisonly provoked a different argument about what was significant, what wasnew and what Community action was, as well as leaving open whether theinstitutions had in fact tried their best. It took over a decade until 1999 for thisdispute to be effectively resolved. In 1986 everyone realized that Parliament’ssuggestions were a contribution to the debate but not ones that could signifi-cantly influence outcomes. Legislative power remained in the Council.

If we look back now, we see that the shape of the Community or Unioncorresponds to much more than the shape of the budget. In particular, the ideaof a Community that lays down rules and standards has made major progressat the expense of the notion of a Community budget serving as the central


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allocator of resources. The federal tone of the MacDougall report in the 1970swas overtaken by the more modest ambitions of the Cecchini report of the1980s with the move to EMU encouraging a much more limited conceptionof central budgetary policy. Now fiscal federalism is far from the centre ofpolitical debate: in 1986 it continued to have a significant effect on thinking.The change has in many ways proved a fortunate one for the Parliament. Ithas been drawn into deciding the contents of rules and standards through theco-decision procedure, thus shaping environmental, consumer and other poli-cies in a way that no one could have imagined 15 years ago. Hence the con-tinuing limits on Parliament’s ability to shape agricultural policy are muchless visible than they were 15 years ago and are concealed in the much moredetailed debates that take place between the institutions throughout the pro-cedure.

Restricted Forms of Communication

What the 1986 debate also brings out very clearly is the distance that existedbetween Parliament and Council and the very limited means of communica-tion between them. There was much shouting across the parade ground butvery little close-up bargaining in smoke-filled rooms. Members lamentedministerial profligacy but were not obliged to exercise any degree of persua-sion or negotiating skill to get the Council to change its approach. Councilcould content itself with having an urbane President who effectively thankedParliament for its efforts, ensured MEPs that they had been listened to withinterest and remained locked in the logic of distant antagonism.

An example of this distance between Parliament and Council can be citedfrom the debate in December 1987 when David Curry, Parliament’s budgetrapporteur, pointed out Council’s response to Parliament’s suggestion thatborrowing and lending be treated as a separate part of the budget, rather thanas a simple annex. Not apparently a revolutionary idea but one that promptedCouncil to state in its response to Parliament’s first reading:

A decision to enter such items in the budget adopted in the framework ofthe budgetary procedure would … be so seriously and manifestly illegalthat there are grounds for asking whether this amendment can in law be saidto exist at all.3

David Curry described the last phrase as ‘apoplectic drivel’, but it revealed animportant aspect of the attitudes on both sides. Council did not wish to en-gage in a serious discussion about the issue of borrowing and lending andcould afford to be rude to the Parliament in writing. Parliament had no real




opportunity to engage in debate on the issue at either the political or the ad-ministrative level. Hence it responded in kind, with little or no attempt atgetting minds to meet.

Despite the importance of the role of the Parliament, direct contacts withthe Council were remarkably limited. There were conciliation meetings withthe Council before the first and second readings of the budget, but theyamounted to little more than courtesy calls and offered no continuity of con-tact. At first reading, Horst Langes, the EPP spokesman, urged the Councilnot to wait until two days before second reading to have talks with the EPabout its proposals.4 He knew that in fact there would be little more thansporadic encounters and occasional phone calls. Each institution acted au-tonomously with very limited interaction.

It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can see what a revolutionarychange has taken place since then. The word ‘trilogue’ is now part of theinter-institutional scenery as a forum for bringing together restricted delega-tions of Parliament, Council and Commission. In budgetary politics, there arenow at least four such meetings during the procedure. As a result, both sidesare much better informed about each other’s intentions and can try to findmutually acceptable outcomes, even where the Parliament has limited power.

Such trilogues are also not restricted to the budgetary world. They are aneveryday part of legislative discussions, particularly in conciliation. They haveled to an explosion in contacts between Parliament and Council at all levels.Working group chairs are now regular visitors to MEPs’ offices as well as tocommittee meetings. Similarly, the Permanent Representatives and their Depu-ties from Coreper are figures that have emerged from the shadows and be-come familiar interlocutors. Indeed such is the level of contact with the Councilthat the Commission often feels that the Parliament prefers to deal directlywith the Council and to make deals at its expense. They are not always wrong.

It is also now very clear that individual governments devote considerabletime and energy to making their views known to MEPs. This is not to say thatthe direction of influence is one way, but it does mean that it becomes harderfor members to stay united across national lines when significant nationalinterests are at stake. It is a clear recognition that the Parliament is no longera non-identified political object, but has become part of the political processat European level in a way it was not in 1986. The old times have most defi-nitely gone.


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The Pioneer Committee

In 1986 the Committee on Budgets enjoyed the highest possible status in theParliament. It had been at the forefront of the budgetary battles of the previ-ous years, defending the prerogatives of the institution as laid down in theTreaty. It had been behind the adoption of the 1986 budget that the ECJ haddeclared illegal in the summer of 1986, paving the way for the adoption of abudget that went a considerable way to meeting the claims of the Parliament.It mastered the terminology of the budget, maximum rate, classification ofexpenditure, etc. and was seen as the only committee able to find its waythrough it in the context of conflicts with the other institutions.

This is not to say that other committees always appreciated what the Com-mittee on Budgets did. In November 1986, Gordon Adam, a Labour MEP,castigated the Committee for ‘a failure of almost staggering proportion’ in itsattitude to research expenditure.5 Nevertheless, it was widely accepted that itcould speak on behalf of the Parliament in devising an overall response to themain issue of the day. This was particularly apparent in the comments madeabout the role of the Committee on Agriculture. Edith Scrivener, the futureFrench Commissioner, commented in the debate, ‘the Committee on Agricul-ture has thus far been unable to find a solution, so that, confronted with anurgent problem, the Committee on Budgets was left with no course but toaddress this problem’.6 Jean-Pierre Cot, chair of the Committee, was moreoutspoken, recalling the comment of Clemenceau that war was too importantto be left to the generals. Similarly, agricultural policy was no longer a matterfor the farmers alone.7

The importance of showing a common front towards the Council was per-ceived as extremely important and the Budgets Committee was allowed tofulfil that role. Such an attitude is much less prevalent today for at least threereasons. First, the budget is no longer such a fundamental issue. It is not thecentral question that the EU has to deal with in the way that it was 15 yearsago. It is much more a managerial matter, where the experts of the institutionsget together to resolve common problems. Second, many Committees nowhave a chance to influence budgetary provision through the co-decision pro-cedure. Third, there is much more argument about smaller sums where indi-vidual committees claim expertise and dislike being told what to do. Hencethere are just as many amendments as ever (around 1,000 at first reading) butmuch less concern with the basic shape of the budget as a whole. In short, theBudgets Committee is no longer in the vanguard of the struggle to protect theprerogatives of the institution.5 Official Journal, Annex No.2 of 9.12.1986, p. 82.6 Official Journal, Annex No.2 of 9.12.1986, p. 88.7 Official Journal, Annex No.2 of 9.12.1986, p. 90.



III. Monitoring Implementation, and Scrutiny and Control

The third section of this article looks at two aspects of the Parliament’s activ-ity which were unimportant in the past but are now becoming of greater sig-nificance, namely the Parliament’s involvement in monitoring the implemen-tation of EU policies, and in scrutiny and control of other EU institutions andbodies. In the US Congress the term ‘oversight’ covers both of these aspects,and has been given as much emphasis as more traditional parliamentaryactivities, such as the legislative function. Within European national parlia-ments this concept of oversight has been much less developed, and this hasnaturally been reflected within the EP. This has gradually begun to changeand a greater emphasis is now being put on such oversight. This last sectionof the article explores these recent trends, and examines the scope for theirfurther development.

Monitoring Policy Implementation

There are a number of ways in which individual EP committees can monitorthe general trends of EU policies, such as through own-initiative reports orpublic hearings. The problem with these is that they are ‘ad hoc’ andunsystematic in nature, whereas monitoring of policy development needs tobe regular to be really effective. A particularly useful instrument, therefore, isParliament reports on annual or periodic Commission reports in particularsectors, such as those on competition policy, the state of the internal market,and the annual report on the implementation of Community law.

The monitoring of general trends inevitably also leads to a greater interestin the detail of specific policies and their state of implementation. This ismost obvious in the area where the EP has the clearest stake in implementa-tion issues, namely the EP’s powers of budgetary control, an area of greaterprestige and interest for ambitious MEPs in the light of the decisive role thatit played in the downfall of the Santer Commission. It has also helped tostimulate oversight in two key ways, firstly by focusing attention on the needfor the Commission to devote more attention to the resources required forpolicies and to better implementation and management, and secondly by en-suring greater parliamentary access to certain Commission documents andinformation (the availability of which is essential to any successful system ofoversight).

A second and related activity that leads inevitably to an interest in thespecific is the Parliament’s budgetary work that was mentioned earlier on inthis article. A recent initiative in this context, however, has been the BudgetsCommittee’s creation of a number of working groups on specific programmes,for example the LIFE programme in the environmental area where concerned

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members of the Environment Committee are beginning to work together withthe Budgets Committee’s general rapporteur.

Parliament has also had a long-standing involvement in monitoring theCommission’s annual legislative programme. In 2002, for the first time, itwas put into a more systematic framework, in the form of the so-called An-nual Policy Strategy (APS), with the Commission seeking to provide a bettermatch of new policies with available staff and other resources. While meantto be a forward-looking exercise, if done properly it should also lead to morerigorous examination by individual EP committees of why promised propos-als have been delayed, or why existing measures have not been working prop-erly.

A further area where the EP is already associated with the implementationof policy is that of comitology, where the EP has gradually become moreinvolved in the scrutiny of secondary legislation prepared by the Commissionand filtered through committees of Member States’ experts, and is alreadyreceiving a wide range of background information on the agendas and workof the committees, as well as a large number of draft implementing measures.Lack of EP resources will force it to choose its battles carefully, but it willinevitably be drawn further into the scrutiny of individual implementationmeasures when sensitive political or economic issues are involved.

Scrutiny and Control of Other EU Institutions and Bodies

The US Congress looks not only at whether policies are being properly im-plemented, but also at the overall performance of individual government de-partments and agencies, whether they are well managed, whether they havetoo many or too few resources, and so on. The EP’s work on implementationoutlined above is gradually confronting it with such general problems of over-sight of institutions and not just of policies, but this is still only very unevenlydeveloped within the Parliament.

One important linkage that emerges at the outset is that between the Par-liament’s role in nominations and its interest and involvement in general over-sight of the institution concerned. Where the Parliament has such a role,whether it be through full assent – as for the President of the Commission – orthrough simple consultation – as for the President and Vice-President of theEuropean Central Bank and the members of the European Court of Auditors –the EP is forced to focus much more systematically on the nature of its rela-tionship with a particular institution, and a benchmark is established for thefuture. The EP’s role in nominations was almost non-existent a few yearsago, but has now become increasingly significant. It is thus providing an im-portant new stimulus for Parliament’s oversight activities.



By far the most significant of these activities are those directed at over-sight of the Commission, since the EP is the best placed democratically electedbody to monitor and control the activities of the Commission. Its legislative,budgetary and budgetary control activities, its confirmation hearings of theCommissioners, the fall-out from the demise of the Santer Commission and anumber of other developments are all leading the EP into taking a greaterinterest in the way that the Commission is managed, the way it establishes itspriorities and the way it uses its limited resources.

A particularly important instrument of the EP oversight of the Commis-sion is the EP–Commission framework agreement signed in July 2000, whichsets out general terms of political co-operation between the two institutions,the nature of the political responsibility of the Commission to the Parliament,and the provision of confidential and other information to the Parliament.More specifically it also deals with the details of EP–Commission co-opera-tion on the legislative process and with EP–Commission relations with re-gard to international negotiations. The provisions of the framework agree-ment are not always advantageous for the Parliament, but they clearly pro-vide an important opportunity for EP oversight of the Commission to be puton a more systematic basis.

Since the EU political system is more akin to US-style separation of pow-ers than a more traditional European national parliamentary system, the pos-sibilities for oversight of other EU institutions besides the Commission isobviously far more limited. This is particularly the case as regards the Coun-cil, with which the EP, for example, has had a long-standing ‘gentleman’sagreement’ not to look too closely at the details of each other’s budget. Minis-ters from the Council Presidency do appear regularly before committees, butthese are often protocol occasions, and could not be said to constitute mean-ingful oversight of the activities of an individual Presidency, let alone of theCouncil in general.

The European Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance are alsoclearly outside the scope of EP oversight, and the ECJ, in particular, has fiercelyresisted any suggestions that the EP be given any role in nominations to theCourt. This is also the case for the European Investment Bank. The EuropeanCentral Bank is a slightly different case, in that the Bank has a very highdegree of independence (on the old Bundesbank model), but the EP is con-sulted on the nominees for President and Vice-President, and the Parliament’srelevant committee also has a regular dialogue with the Bank’s President.

An interesting case is that of the evaluation of EP scrutiny and control ofthe decentralized EU agencies. The EP’s Budgets Committee has taken a closeinterest in the functioning of these agencies in the process of looking at theirindividual budgets. The specialized EP committees, to a greater or lesser ex-

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tent, also try to follow the work of those agencies that fall within their areasof responsibility.

The Environment Committee, for example, regularly visits both the Euro-pean Environment Agency (EEA) in Copenhagen and the European Agencyfor the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA) in London. The EEA hasalso organized briefings for the committee in Brussels and Strasbourg, andthe committee decided to set up a working group in late 2002 to provide theEEA with input into its longer-term management programme.

In the past the main formal way of ensuring EP accountability of the agen-cies has been to appoint two members and two substitutes of their manage-ment boards. These members are meant to report back to the relevant EPcommittee, and to inform them of the agendas of management board meet-ings and of other important developments at the agency. They may also beinvited to address the committee.

In December 2001 a new model was introduced for parliamentary account-ability for the European Food Safety Agency, whereby the EP would not haveits own candidates on the management board, but would be consulted on itsentire composition, and would also hold a public hearing of the managementboard’s nominee to be executive director before his or her final appointment.The EP would thus have a more direct link with the executive director. TheEP is currently looking at a proposed reform of the existing structure of theEMEA in London, and it is quite possible that it will support a similar reformhere.

One argument used by some in the EP against the creation of agencies wasthat their geographical dispersion could lead to difficulties in ensuring parlia-mentary accountability. Ironically, there is often more parliamentary scrutinyof the agencies’ activities than of those of normal Commission directorates-general in Brussels or Luxembourg.

Monitoring Policy Implementation: The Environment Committee

One EP committee that has been putting an ever-greater emphasis on imple-mentation issues in general is the Committee on the Environment, PublicHealth and Consumer Policy.

For a number of years the committee had been drawing up individual re-ports on the implementation of particular policies, but on an ad hoc basisonly. In the present Parliament, it has decided to draw up implementationreports on a more systematic basis. The committee now does three such fol-low-up reports each year, choosing adopted directives that have been in forcefor enough time for meaningful analysis, and which have posed difficulties ofimplementation in a sufficient number of EU countries. The emphasis is muchless on whether a directive has been correctly transposed, as to why it has



proved hard to implement, or whether it is meeting the objectives that wereset for it.

In 2000, for example, the committee again reviewed the nitrates directive,impressed by the fact that the Commission was taking action against almostall of the Member States for non- or poor implementation of the directive. Adelegation was led to the Netherlands to see why the environmentally con-scious Dutch were having such great difficulty in meeting their EU obliga-tions. A second report in 2000 was on the implementation of the habitatsdirective, on which the establishment of the Natura 2000 network of protectedsites has posed great practical difficulties in a number of Member States. Thecommittee’s rapporteur led a delegation to the south-west of France to exam-ine some of these problems on the ground, and to meet with local administra-tors, environmentalists, hunters and farmers.

Other follow-up reports over the last couple of years have included thoseon the PCB directive, on packaging and packaging waste, on urban wastewater, on package tours, on medical devices and on the directive on animalexperiments. In drawing up these reports, the committee has based itself onCommission reports on the functioning of the directives and the periodicCommission reports on the implementation of EU environmental law. It hasalso been obtaining assistance from the European Environment Agency inCopenhagen. The committee has identified inadequate reporting by the Mem-ber States as a key problem, and has recently drawn up a report on the need tostrengthen the directive that lays down the basic reporting requirements.

The committee has also taken up implementation issues on a more infor-mal basis. A key way of doing this has been through question time in commit-tee. Individual members submit short questions to the committee secretariatand, after the Chairman has been consulted, the question is then placed on thefirst convenient committee agenda. The Commission official responsible forthe specific policy areas, who has had sufficient time to prepare a structuredreply, answers the question and then responds to any follow-up questions, notonly from the member who has posed it, but from any other interested mem-ber as well.

In general, this procedure has proved to be much more flexible and helpfulthan its equivalent in plenary, where there are often fewer members in attend-ance, where the answers are over-rehearsed (and often read out by Commis-sioners who do not know the substance) and where there is far less opportu-nity for members to counterattack after unsatisfactory answers.

The defining moment of the Environment Committee’s new emphasis onimplementation issues, the so-called ‘Greek fine’ issue, arose as a result ofone of these oral questions in the Committee. The European Court of Justicehad condemned Greece for non-compliance with EU environmental law as a

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result of the uncontrolled dumping of waste in the Kouropitos Gorge in Crete.No implementing action was taken and finally, in June 2000, the EuropeanCourt of Justice imposed a heavy daily fine on the Greek government, thefirst time that this new post-Maastricht power had been used. In November2000, almost half a year after the fine had been imposed, the Committee chair-man asked an oral question to the Commission as to whether the fine wasnow being paid. The answer was no, and that the Commission was still work-ing out the necessary modalities. The Committee then decided to make the‘Greek fine’ a standing item on the agenda of each committee meeting untilthe Committee had received a satisfactory response.

Over the next few months this uncharacteristic persistence appeared to getunder the skin of the Greek authorities and even of the Commission. After awhile the Commission was able to report that the first instalments of the finehad been paid and later that subsequent instalments had also been paid. Even-tually the Committee was informed that the Kouropitos dump would be closedand the Committee then sought guarantees that the Commission was satisfiedwith the terms of the closure. In the end the Commission expressed its finalapproval, and the committee dropped the issue from its agenda.

This episode led to a decision that there should be a regular ‘implementa-tion’ question time in committee, in addition to ad hoc individual questionson any topic. A range of sensitive issues were raised, including a further Greekcase, the issue of the development of the Schinias site (near the site of thebattle of Marathon) for certain activities of the future summer Olympics on apotential Natura 2000 site. Greece was not, of course, the only country af-fected, and other countries were also in the Committee’s sights.

Not all of the concerned Commission officials were happy with the Envi-ronment Committee’s persistence, with some saying that this regular claimon their attendance at committee meetings was a drain on their limited staffresources. Eventually, though, an informal agreement was reached betweenthe Committee chair and the Environment Commissioner that these imple-mentation monitoring sessions in the Committee would be held only everytwo months, and that a minimum period of notice of MEPs’ questions of 10working days should be introduced. The Commission also promised to pro-vide certain basic information, but there was then disagreement on the extentto which the Commission could provide the Committee with information onongoing cases, with the Commission adopting the restrictive view of its Le-gal Service. The Commission hides, in particular, behind the detail of the EP–Commission framework agreement that excludes information on infringementsfrom the coverage of the agreement.

In spite of the lack of full agreement between the Committee and the Com-mission, a couple of sessions under the new guidelines have already been



held, with the Commission providing background data to the Committee andthen responding to questions. The Commission’s DG Environment has beenas open as it could be within the confines of its restrictive policy, but some ofthe limitations of the agreed system are already becoming apparent. The work-ings of the system will be reviewed in the near future.

Conclusions

The further development of the EP’s role in scrutiny and oversight is subjectto a number of constraints of both a legal/institutional and practical nature.The EP has few formal powers. Its role in implementation issues is not yetfully accepted by the Commission and Council, and the EP’s secretariat isalready stretched in carrying out its legislative powers, let alone in monitor-ing comitology acts or going into even more time-consuming monitoring ofimplementation of adopted legislation. Moreover, MEP interest in implemen-tation issues is still unevenly spread among the members.

In spite of these constraints, the EP’s involvement in these areas is likelyto develop further. There are a number of ways in which this trend could beassisted, such as by increasing the EP’s powers as regards EU nominations,introducing ‘sunset’ clauses into comitology measures or even into primarylegislation (thus forcing the legislator to review whether an act is actuallymeeting its objectives before deciding to extend its life or to discontinue it)and, finally, by working more closely with national parliaments over imple-mentation issues, so that EP scrutiny of the Commission can be mirrored bybetter national parliamentary scrutiny of their own national administrations.This is an ambitious agenda, and will not be achieved overnight, but what isat stake in terms of increased democratic accountability and EU efficiencymakes the effort essential.

Correspondence:Richard Corbett Francis JacobsEuropean Parliament European Parliamentrue Wiertz, B-1047 Brussels, Belgium rue Wiertz, B-1047 Brussels, BelgiumTel: 00 32 2 284 2111 Tel: 00 32 2 284 2111email: [email protected] email: [email protected]

Michael ShackletonEuropean Parliamentrue Wiertz, B-1047 Brussels, BelgiumTel: 00 32 2 284 2111email: [email protected]

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References

Cecchini, P. with Catinat, M. and Jacquemin, A. (1988) The European Challenge1992: The Benefits of a Single Market (Aldershot: Wildwood House).

Hix, S. (1999) The Political System of the European Union (Basingstoke: Macmillan).MacDougall, D. et al. (1977) Report of the Study Group on the Role of Public Finance

in European Integration. Economic and Financial Series, A13, April, Brussels.

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