International

It hasn’t received much media attention but this spring the Commission revealed its plans for the development of a European statute book. In practice this concerns private law, trade law, consumer law and criminal law. If it’s left to the Commission, these statute books will in time make large parts of national law redundant. What you will have then, as a matter of course, is ‘federal’ administration of justice. I’m curious to know whether Minister of Foreign Affairs Frans Timmermans sees this as something ‘big’ where Europe should be big or whether he will reject the plans as an unnecessary smash-and-grab on the member states.

Just occasionally the European hunger for power is transparent. The eurocrisis was used straight away as an excuse for the European Commission to stick its nose into the details of the member states’ budgetary policy. More often the transfer of powers is done more surreptitiously, a process known as ‘competence creep’. Treaties are for the most part vague, giving the Commission the power as the years pass to interpret them more broadly. The Commission can do this itself, but if not the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg will lend it a hand.

In relation to harmonisation of the above-mentioned areas of law can be seen a creeping transfer of powers. We have, for example, deliberately chosen to anchor better protection for consumers in national law than is the case in the common European rules. This is known as ‘minimum harmonisation. Big corporations as well as the Commission want to see the back of it. It’s burdensome for firms to have to contend with rules which vary in different member states. So we have to have a European statute book in which all consumer law is codified. Economically this might be handy, but it means that our own national parliament would no longer be able unilaterally to improve consumer law, as from then on amendments could only be agreed in Brussels. Consumers in the Netherlands would surely see this as a transfer of powers, despite this not being provided for in the EU Treaty.

We will also have to deal with a European statute book of private law and even with a European statute book of criminal law. I predict that as soon as there are such statute books and member states have ever less space for complementary national legislation, the Commission will bring forward proposals for a European court, not like the existing European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, but in every member state, just as the Commission has itself proposed in the case of officers of justice. The Commission has learnt nothing from the recent European elections, in which a record percentage of voters stayed at home while those who did vote gave a great deal of support to EU-critical parties.

What I also don’t like about the Commission’s plans is the enormous emphasis that they place on the law’s economic value. They even refer to the law as the motor of economic growth, as if law isn’t designed precisely to protect the weak and to deliver justice. I don’t even want to think about a situation in which the law is governed by the market.

All in all a hard nut for Frans Timmermans to crack if as a European Commissioner he has to look into how to improve legislation. As he himself has repeatedly said, ‘Europe must be big where it’s big and small where it’s small.’ Now the law is a very bgs issue, but it would be a fine thing if he in this matter could make the Commission a tad smaller. I’m curious as to whether he will succeed in this, or indeed whether he in any event wants to.