International

This week a report was issued by the European Commission, under its president Jose Barroso, on the deepening of the Economic and Monetary Union. The timing is in no sense coincidental, because the European Council, the direct representative of the member state governments, will also be publishing a report during this month, a statement which in the first instance will be presented by its president, Herman van Rompuy, whose proposals have already been published in an interim report, of which this will be a revised version. The fight between these two gentlemen has now begun in earnest.

The difference between the reports is that in Barroso’s the position of the Commission and the European Parliament is central, while Van Rompuy proceeds on the basis of agreements between the leaders of the member state governments. The average person in the Netherlands probably couldn’t care less about this, but the distinction is not without importance. Are we heading for a situation in which the Commission will become a kind of European government, monitored by a European Parliament (EP)? Or will the emphasis be on cooperation between member states, in which it is principally the national parliaments who must provide a means of democratic control? As the SP, we want to see the latter.

Traditionally there is talk of an alliance between Commission and Parliament, and the Commission strengthens its position by arguing that it is under the democratic control of the latter body, and that they would be further strengthened were the political groups in the EP able to nominate their own candidates for the Commission presidency. We would then get people travelling all over Europe calling on people to vote, for example, for the liberals in order that their candidate might succeed Barroso. No wonder that Van Rompuy is against this idea. He wants the appointment of the Commission president left entirely to the member states and sees no need for such a recommendation.

For the SP, what’s most important in this debate is that we want as much power as possible to be left in the hands of the national parliaments, the institutions which are closest to the people. Because we don’t want a federal Europe, we are also not in favour of the Commission developing into a European government. That’s why in the battle between Barroso and Van Rompuy we are inclined to take the latter’s side. Pity that in the end Van Rompuy is also a federalist, but as long as he lays emphasis on the role of the leaders of national governments and on that of national parliaments, it doesn't really matter what his long term goal is. As far as this concerns the European Parliament, as long as the national parliaments aren’t weakened as a result, it’s a good idea to give the EP more control. A double check is better than one single check. But Van Rompuy must not think that he can transform himself into a real European President and that the EP can simply take over the role of the national parliaments. Both will then get a rude shock, because the people of Europe do not want this and will not accept it.

PS: Perhaps because it was somewhat buried within a report of some forty pages from Barroso, it received little attention from the media, yet he wrote that if a member state should exceed temporarily the 3% budget deficit norm, if this was a result of public investments which contribute to economic growth in times of recession, it might be permissible. In other words, if the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister had only listened to SP leader Emile Roemer, then such investments would have been prioritised and unemployment could have fallen a little. And all of that could have been done with the agreement of Brussels. Pity that Labour leader and deputy Prime Minister Diederik Samsom has gone along with the Liberal Prime Minister’s budget fetishism.