With voting starting yesterday in the Netherlands to elect the new European Parliament (EP), to last until Sunday (France, Germany, Italy etc.), some 450 million citizens of the 27 should, in principle, express their political will. It’s more like 400 million, actually, abstention being usually higher than in national elections, which tells its own story. And the likelihood is that even with a projected rise of Right-wing parties, the full makeup of the EP won’t change much. So are the Euro-elections any use at all, apart from producing life-size polls on the (un)popularity of each national government?
“The body we now call a Parliament was never intended by the founding fathers to mimic an actual legislative branch of a non-existent government of Europe,” recalls Catherine Rouvier, a French constitutional law professor, who, 45 years ago, was a witness to the major political changes pushed by the then French president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. “There was a consultative assembly, to which EEC nations sent national MPs. They discussed proposed regulations from the point of view of different national legislative traditions, in order to come to positions acceptable by all.” This, she explains, is why the European Parliament cannot to this day initiate legislation: it was never meant to.
Similarly, the forerunner to today’s bloated Commission was initially small and restrained. Governments sent recognised national experts depending on the topic under discussion, only concerned with harmonisation between specific practices. It was, she remembers, “extraordinary civilised, with remarkable people who came to offer help and then went again.” How very different from the life of Ms von der Leyen, you might say. Of the two bodies, it’s the Commission that achieved the biggest mission creep, initiating now vast regulatory sweeps intended to curb national and international policies.
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a man enamoured with his own cleverness (Professor Rouvier calls him “Macron times ten”) and, abetted by his friend Helmut Schmidt, the German chancellor at a time when West Germany was still lagging under the weight of history, decided to build up European institutions with a view to, one day, becoming President of Europe.
Giscard created a series of permanent institutions, adding to the informal (then) Council of Ministers (which met ad hoc when decisions had to be pondered), another body of almost the same name, the European Council (of European leaders, PMs and presidents). This met twice a year, a grandiose travelling talking shop with photo-opportunities galore, while the newly-evolved process created permanent commissioners which had to be confirmed by the Parliament. This, Giscard decided, would have to be elected, giving it legitimacy (or the look of it).
The learned amateurs were soon replaced by professional civil servants, while parliamentary candidates became political. The first crop, sent by France, were prestigious, like Simone Veil, France’s former conservative minister for justice, an Auschwitz survivor who became the first president of the European Parliament: everyone applauded the symbolism of her election. Similarly, François Mitterrand nominated Jacques Delors, his former finance minister, to be the first president of the revamped Commission. This was the last time such people were picked: wary of giving stature to potential rivals, most governments then sent mediocre personalities to pasture in Brussels, from Neil Kinnock to Edith Cresson.
As for the European Parliament, it is kept busy by the mountain of overreaching legislation sent by the Commission, always watched by the European Council with which it shares that oversight. It is also tasked with providing its “advice” on treaties, laws, decisions – but it still cannot initiate any of them. It is, in many ways, a very elaborate mood board. Not useless, but with less power than its beautiful name implies.