A good crisis for the Parliament

Written by Andrew Duff and published in Parliament Magazine on Mon 29th Nov 2004

A GOOD CRISIS FOR THE PARLIAMENT

In a European Union which is still experimental constitutional affairs are seldom dull. My recent task has been to follow the Parliament's approval process for the new Commission. As the auditions process heaped one indignity after another upon the hapless Commission candidates, the Parliament's efforts to assess Mr Barroso's team and to verify it as fit for office became the stuff of controversy.

The Parliament has had rather a good crisis. MEPs have worked seriously to vet the candidates, and, at their best, have influenced the new Commission in the formulation of its policy. The citizen at large can easily recognise a parliamentary struggle against the executive. The political crisis in Brussels has breathed some democratic life into the debate about the Constitution. That should help ratification.

Having read the answers to over 600 questions and sat through most of the 84 hours of oral hearings, I can vouch that, despite some weaknesses, the present procedure is valid. It is accepted not only by the Commission and the Parliament but also by the Council and the member states. It is an important exercise for the media. It is a legitimate process with serious political consequences. As Mr Barroso himself has said, it is a process without parallel in any member state.

Nevertheless, there is room for considerable improvement in the procedures if we are to ensure in the future a greater degree of fairness between the candidates, a more robust dialogue between the Commission and the Parliament, and a sharper verdict.

The Treaty provisions concerning the appointment of the Commission are characteristically overcomplicated. There are shortcomings in the Parliament's own Rules of Procedure. The Commission's Code of Conduct for Commissioners could do with an overhaul.

The structure of the Parliament's hearings was too rigid, often serving to impede a robust political dialogue. Sometimes the hearings descended into a rather breathless superficiality. I doubt the value of the written questions, as the general questions were too vague to be useful and the policy questions too technical. Moreover, it was obvious that not every MEP had bothered to read the answers.

Above all, the Parliament lacked a coordinated procedure to ensure the horizontal scrutiny of the results of the hearings. We have no assured mechanism for assessing the general political orientation of the incoming Commission. The evaluation letters of the individual committees contained variable approaches and ambiguous messages.

My main proposal for the future is to set up a Grand Committee to conduct all the hearings with a small permanent membership, supplemented but not led by members of the sectoral committees. I would insist on higher standards of disclosure of professional and charitable interests as well as of criminal records.

Under the Constitution, the Parliament will be consulted by the European Council prior to the nomination of the new President. Thus strengthened by parliamentary legitimacy, Mr Barroso's successor should be in a stronger position to refuse inadequate nominations made by heads of government.

Although he does not have a free hand in the choice of his Commission, the Treaty of Nice gave the President the power to insist on the resignation of any member of the Commission 'after obtaining the approval of the college'. These revisions were made in the wake of the affair of Mme Cresson's dentist. During the Prodi Commission the question of the political accountability of individual Commissioners was raised, not least in the context of the Eurostat affair. During the Barroso Commission hearings, the question of conflict of interest took on a fresh prominence. Several MEPs were understandably anxious to stress the relevance of the right to sack. Speculation about freemasonry and the late revelation about Mr Barrot's previous conviction turned the spotlight on to the need for candid disclosure.

Each scandal leads fairly inevitably to a tightening of the rules. Despite the wide gap that exists in terms of political culture across the continent, European Parliamentary scrutiny of the Commission seen at its sharpest during the approval process is establishing EU norms of accountability that demand high standards of probity, integrity and candour. It is indeed perfectly proper that, when it comes to democracy, European integration settles on the highest common factors and not the lowest common denominators.

The Commission emerges from this crisis more accountable to Parliament. The key provision of our resolution of 18 November 2004, passed by 478 votes to 84, stipulates that, where the Parliament withdraws confidence in an individual member of the college, 'the President shall either require the resignation of that Member or justify his refusal to do so before Parliament'. A refusal to accept the Parliament's vote of no confidence, therefore, will risk the survival of the President himself. MEPs have found the escalator that will lead them, if necessary, to a position where they can use their constitutional 'nuclear option' - the power to sack the whole Commission.

Lest this all sounds too bloodthirsty, the name of the game is to reassure the public that somebody somewhere is responsible for running Europe. Those who brought about this crisis are the heads of national governments who failed to provide Mr Barroso with the best possible raw material with which to build a strong independent executive. The laziness of the European Council has had unintended consequences. The outcome is to make the government of the Union a lot more parliamentary and a lot less presidential.

Andrew Duff MEP is spokesman on constitutional affairs for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.