Still fighting to earn respect

Power house: one of the most striking changes of the past five years has been the growth in influence of Parliament's committees as opposed to its plenary. Photograph: Reuters

The European Parliament cab be, and is, accused of many sins. Inactivity is not one of them.

Among the numerous measures the legislature has approved over the past five years are a prohibition on new mercury thermometers and barometers from next October, obligatory identity checks at casinos on any customer gambling more than €2,000, and the introduction of a single European Union driving licence for train drivers.

Whether this unquenchable zest for lawmaking has turned the European Parliament into a more mature, responsible institution than it was at the time of the 2004 election is another matter. For large numbers of Europeans, it remains at best an irrelevance, at worst a public disgrace – a gravy-train-cum-talking-shop full of pompous political has-beens and never-weres on fat expense accounts.

Moreover, the perception – misplaced though it may be – that real power in the EU lies with national governments and parliaments, as well as with the European Commission, goes a long way to explaining the ever lower turnouts at European Parliament elections. So, too, does the impression among many voters that, in contrast to national political contests, there is not a great deal of difference at EU level between centre-right candidates, liberals and socialists.

Not surprisingly, politicians who sit in the EU’s only directly elected institution vigorously contest the view that the Parliament lacks stature. Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister and president of the Party of European Socialists, says: “Without any doubt you can say it’s become more influential and visible in recent years.”

He points to the fact that the EU’s highest-level policymakers – including the leaders of the countries that hold the EU’s rotating presidency, assorted European commissioners and Jean-Claude Trichet, the European Central Bank president – all give frequent testimony to parliamentary committees.

“Trichet goes to the economic committees eight to ten times a year. He uses his appearances to send signals to Europe. True, the hearings with commissioners could be more challenging,” Rasmussen concedes. “But this is the European style. You give a commissioner a chance to respond properly. Still, the commissioner needs to know his brief. This is absolutely new, if you compare the past five years with before.”

Claude Turmes, a Green MEP from Luxembourg, does not entirely buy this argument. He says much depends on the politicians who chair the committees. “If you have a chairman from what I call a British-type parliamentary tradition, then it works well because it’s like ‘Question Time’. But in some committees the proceedings are soft, and for the person giving testimony it’s more like ‘Propaganda Time’ than ‘Question Time’.”

MEPs and political scientists alike agree that the increasing influence over legislation of the committees, as opposed to the Parliament’s plenary sessions, is one of the most striking changes of the past five years. The committees have evolved into forums where political deals are cut that permit a proposal to be converted into law, says Sara Hagemann, an analyst at the European Policy Centre think-tank. “Sometimes plenary votes do overturn committee votes, but broadly speaking the trend is in the other direction. This has raised concerns about whether the committees are truly representative vis-à-vis the plenary,” she says.

Turmes, however, is a supporter of the “strong committee” system. “The power and the power structures in this house are the committees. Personally, I regard this as a guarantee that we get decisions based on hard facts and substance, rather than last-minute deals between political elephants,” he says.

He contends that, as a rule, the European Parliament produces high-quality legislation, partly because of the technical expertise of the committees and partly because the legislature – unlike most national assemblies – is not neatly divided into a majority and an opposition. “Every new proposal on a directive may win approval thanks to a different political majority. You could have a ‘grand coalition’ centre right-social democrat majority. You could have a majority coalition based on the centre-right, or one based on the centre-left. Because the choice exists, I think this improves the quality of the legislation,” Turmes says.

Perhaps the most obvious change of the past five years is that the Parliament is home now to MEPs from 12 new EU member states, mostly former communist countries in central and eastern Europe. Some of these legislators, such as Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a Polish liberal who was once a leading activist in the independent trade union Solidarity, earned their political spurs in the anti-communist struggle. This has a strong influence on their behaviour in today’s European Parliament.

“In terms of foreign policy, the representatives of the new member states have changed things in the Parliament in four respects,” says Onyszkiewicz, who serves as vice-chairman of the legislature’s foreign affairs committee. “They have helped shape a more realistic view of Russia. They have increased awareness of the need for a new policy towards the countries that lie between the EU and Russia, such as Ukraine and Belarus. They have contributed a much greater awareness of the need to improve transatlantic relations. Finally, the Parliament now is much more ready to discuss human rights issues.”

As Onyszkiewicz acknowledges, the European Parliament’s influence must not be overstated. The conduct of EU foreign policy lies firmly in the hands of national governments, grouped in the European Council. But he says: “The views of the Parliament are taken into account by the Council.”

All the MEPs interviewed for this article recalled an October 2004 battle involving Rocco Buttiglione, an Italian conservative, as a landmark in the European Parliament’s development. Commission President José Manuel Barroso had picked Buttiglione to be his commissioner for justice, freedom and security affairs, but the nomination turned sour during the parliamentary committee confirmation hearings, when Buttiglione defended his strict Roman Catholic beliefs on homosexuality and the role of women.

The committee’s vote against Buttiglione, combined with the implicit threat that the Parliament might even reject Barroso’s Commission in its entirety, was enough to persuade the Italian government to withdraw Buttiglione’s name. “These were very dramatic circumstances,” remembers Rasmussen. “If you look at the past five years, this was one of the highlights.”

It remains to be seen if the Parliament will flex its muscles in the same way when prospective members of the next Commission appear for their confirmation hearings later this year. But in a sense the crucial victory has already been achieved, says Hagemann. “The Commission now is careful to invest a lot of time and energy in its relations with the Parliament.”

This does not mean, however, that the European Parliament resembles a legislature in a nation state – or that it ever will.

A Brussels-based European ambassador recalls: “I remember how happy everyone was to have direct elections for the first time in 1979. We thought it was a decision that would fundamentally change the EU’s direction. If it didn’t achieve that, it’s because European Union construction is still, in its essence, based on an intergovernmental treaty among 27 sovereign states that have decided in some areas to pool their sovereignty.”

He adds: “But the European Parliament is one of the institutions that has developed the most over the years. By contrast, we’ve seen the Commission’s role diminish, both in relation to the Parliament and to the national governments.”