Continuing from a post of a week ago where I set up the discussion of renewed European Union institiutions, including a limited from of EU government replacing the Commissioners and the Council of Ministers, composed of a Council of Europe appointed by the European Parliament according to the strength of political groups, and a Council of Nations composed of the government leaders of member nations of the European Union.
The Parliament should share the right of initiating legislation with the Council of Europe-Council of Nations. There should be a focus on monitoring the working of EU institutions, holding the Council of Europe-Council of Nations accountable, and debating issues of concern to public opinion in the EU. Legislation should have majority support from both the Parliament and the dual Council. As well as blocking legislation through referendum, national parliaments should be able to block legislation where they jointly represented half the population or half the member states of the European Union.
Some ‘federalists’ will no doubt baulk at so many blocking mechanisms, but the debacle of the Euro, the poor voting rates for the European Parliament, and the results of referenda on treaties and the abortive Lisbon Constitution, do not suggest either that EU institutions, and those national governments most sympathetic to integration, should be left alone to get on with major innovations and changes, or that European public opinion has been at all engaged or impressed by their efforts. Anyway, federalism should be just as much about restraining the power of the centre, or any one part of the centre, as about creating a centre.
The problems are the obvious, steaming ahead regardless with integrationist has been shown to be a poor solution. The Lisbon Treaty already marked a shift towards inter-governmentalism through the Council of Ministers, but not in a manner that could easily be understood by public opinion, or that contributes to a stable long term structure. There has been an additional de facto falling back on Germany as the stabilising and policy making centre of the European Union, and while Angela Merkel has largely handled the situation well, it cannot be a long term solution, and would not work under a leader with less mastery of quiet compromising, and conciliating, politics than that possessed by Merkel so far.
Even Merkel has recently run into complications dealing with the wish of the UK government (quietly supported by a few other governments) that the new President of the Commission should not be the candidates announced by the largest political group in the European Parliament before the recent parliamentary elections, together with the wish of the two largest parties in Germany that the system of appointing the candidate of the largest EP political group. At the time of writing, it seems that the EP's wish will be followed and that Jean-Claude Juncker the candidate of the European People's Party (centre-right), will be appointed.
The situation is clearly a mess all round. The UK Prime Minister is presenting the argument as his struggle against 'federalism', but the President of the Commission, whoever it is, will be a 'federalist' with more centralist and harmonising tendencies than David Cameron. Cameron has presented this as a struggle against unaccountable Brussels deal making, but wants the President of the Commission to be appointed by deal making between national governments. The European Parliament is defending the democracy of appointing a President of the Commission who is not known beyond a tiny percentage of the EU electorate, who did not vote on the grounds of which official candidate for the Presidency had been nominated by the EU political 'parties' (alliances of national parties referred to as EU parties). There is nothing impressive about the approach of either side, neither of which have a workable long terms structure to propose.
The European Court of Justice should become an explicit Supreme Court of the European Union, enforcing a Charter with the European Convention on Human Rights at its core. The Convention is of course something pertaining to the Council of Europe, which unites all European democracies and 'democracies'. The ECJ's current work on the more administrative and regulatory aspects of the European Union could be addressed by a division within the new ECJ, or some kind of distinct administrative court. The quality of judges and the consistency of their decisions should be improved. While I am no expert on these matters I am led to understand there are serious deficiencies here,which should be remedied with more emphasis on the expertise and competence of judges, and less on appointing by national quota, and in general on building up a body of coherent binding case law in a more effective form than at present, interpreted by some of the best legal minds in Europe.
One simple institutional measure, which would signal a new attitude and the right kind of reformist wind would be for the Parliament to stop meeting in both Brussels and Strasbourg with separate administrative offices for the Secretariat in the city of Luxembourg. Brussels is accepted as the capital of the European Union and should therefore be where all Parliamentary sessions and administrative offices are based. Issues of French national pride in the matter could be compensated by using Strasbourg as the default location for European Union meetings and agencies that do not require regular and immediate access to Members of the EP and the EP's administrative resources, something secondary role of that kind should apply to Luxembourg in return for relocating the Parliament's Secretariat.
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