Closing remarks by Klaus Welle at the EP-EUI Policy Roundtable
upon the "The institutional significance of 2014 in the EU - the
European elections, Spitzenkandidaten and Juncker Commission"
Describing the achievement of a year such as 2014 doesn't make it very easy to be
short. If I had to have to comment on 2013 it would have been easier, maybe 2015
will be easier as well, but 2014... I think really it is a challenge. And I would say - as
a general introduction - that this year 2014, to me, has been a watershed moment in
the institutional development of the European Union. This is why I would like to make
12 remarks, which is a break with my own tradition, because usually I make 10
remarks only. So today, concerning that very special year 2014, I would like to make
12 remarks on 12 points which I think are all important changes.
First, I think, we have all seen very important changes which are linked to the
introduction of lead candidates. The many developments which we have seen
happening with the lead candidates all point out to a specific method. And this specific
method is to focus on the unused potential of the Treaties.
What does it mean? - It is very easy to focus on Treaty change because it allows us
basically to say: "For the moment we can do nothing, we can say nothing, because
we cannot change the Treaties at this juncture..." The other method which I am
referring to takes a different approach. According to this method, one would say: "It
is difficult to change the Treaties, we know it; but what we can do is to try to identify
the unused potential under the Treaties".
This approach is especially successful if it is done by non-legal experts, because nonlegal experts are reading the Treaties with fresher eyes. Here is one example: when,
a few years ago, I had to help establish a 'regulatory procedure with scrutiny' all the
legal experts I knew kept telling me that it was impossible. But as I didn't understand
anything about it, we nonetheless took the chance and we finally found something to
make it work. So -sometimes- it is very useful to read these texts with an amateur's
eye.
And speaking of the unused potential under the Treaties may sound for us a little bit
strange but, if you think of it, this is the very way the United States of America have
developed their own institutional system. This is an institutional system where you
can still count not Treaties but individual amendments to the original Treaty. An
American citizen will be able to say what the Seventh Amendment to the Treaty is. He
or she will be able to recall not the 'seventh Treaty', but the Seventh Amendment to
the initial Treaty. As an example, the Americans were all able - over a long period of
time - to transform the role of the President of the United States, which was designed
to remain especially weak because they didn't want to have another Georgian king into the one of the most powerful leader of the Western world, and this without a
change of Constitution. I am not advocating that we should go that far or claiming
that we could go that far, but I think we should take this American example as an
encouragement to understand that there is always much more possible under the
Treaties than what we think, if we are using our creativity. And the German
expression for this is Verfassungswirklichkeit. The lead candidate concept has clearly
been an exercise in Verfassungswirklichkeit.
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You may ask: "Why are there always remaining possibilities under a Treaty which a
determined creativity can use?" - Because new Treaties, such as the Lisbon Treaties
always consist of two parts, if one accepts to simplify it a little bit. The first part is the
part in which the new Treaties codify what in reality has already been changed in
practice. Usually, Member States are ready to accept this first part, because, in
reality, it is already different. Then there is a second part in the new Treaties, which
has been accepted too but which usually nobody wants to apply because it is so new.
So the first part is just codification. And the second part only is really establishing
something new. But you meet a lot of resistance to put it into practice. And that is
how I feel about the Lisbon Treaties. They have been a mix of codification and of
interesting new things. And concerning those last ones, there is no surprise that one
often gets the following comment: "Have we really agreed on this? Had we really had
to agree on this? And now, do we really have to implement this?" Of course the
answer is: - "Yes, we have". And this is a daily challenge to do it well.
My second point. I think it is absolutely fundamental to realize that now the
Commission's President emerges from a parliamentary majority. That goes
beyond the issue: "Is he voted in the Parliament?" Yes, he is voted in the Parliament.
He was voted before in the Parliament, of course with different legal base. But now,
this Commission President has emerged from a parliamentary majority, because the
day after the elections a number of Group leaders in the European Parliament,
representing sufficient number of votes in this House sat together and said: "This is
our candidate". This was basically meaning: "Nobody else will have a parliamentary
majority". So, this Commission President emerged from a parliamentary majority.
The third point which I regard as important is that now citizens decide on both the
composition of Parliament and on the leadership of the European Executive. This
would be completely normal in a national setting. There, you vote for a certain
composition of Parliament and the result is that somebody then gets the right to lead
the Executive, as a direct consequence. This is creating one of the reasons for
participation in national elections because people want to vote their national member
of Parliament, their local member of Parliament, but they are also very interested in
the person who will be running the Executive as a consequence. And if the European
Parliament elections would just be about the composition of the European Parliament
- as they were in the past, then, in the eyes of the citizens in many Member States,
they would retain the character of mid-term elections, in which participation is usually
lower. So, by giving to the European citizens the possibility not only to decide on the
composition of the European Parliament but also to decide on who should be running
the European Executive, a way has been found to address the issue of European
elections, seen in the past as a kind of mid-term elections, with all the drawbacks this
perception entailed. We now have figures which show that in the countries where
there was huge media coverage on the lead candidates - with television shows and so
on (basically Germany, Austria and Luxembourg) - 12% of the voters are saying: "For
me it was decisive that I could decide on who should be running the Commission in
the future". The other extreme is Great Britain, where 1% said that it was decisive
because basically all the lead candidates were banned from entry into the country...
well, at least, definitively from entry into the media. So, we see there is a potential
there which has been used for the first time and which could be further exploited.
My fourth point is that a Commission President who comes from this procedure is
impacted by the exposure he had to the voters during the campaign. If you come into
the office as a Commission President just after having been chosen by the heads of
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State and the government, it is something else than if you have been campaigning for
months and you have been confronted to the citizens who were making their point,
and you had to reply and justify. And I feel this very strongly with the new President
Juncker when I see what he is doing now. He went through this process. And this has
changed things because he has now a very clear focus on delivery, on outcome.
Traditionally, in the European Union, we are fascinated by process between the
institutions and by mechanisms. But process is very fascinating for everybody except
for the citizens because they don't profit from process. Citizens are only interested in
outcomes. They are not interested in process. They don't wish to be told about
process. They wish to see result. My impression in that President Juncker clearly
understood from his exposure to European citizens during the campaign they are not
expecting process from us but outcomes. So what has the new President done with
the European Commission? He has re-thought the European Commission as a project
management organisation. He has re-organised it like you would do if you were in a
company and you were dealing with complex project management under a strong
pressure from many different clients. What do you have to do when you are running a
large company in such a situation? You have to establish a matrix organisation. You
don't divide the cake into 28 separate pieces and then everybody does what he wants
or what he likes. The new President has established project teams. And the project
teams are here to deliver. They are not designed to organise or improve the process,
they are here to deliver precise outcomes, and, once the outcomes have been
delivered, they can be dissolved or be re-arranged for other purposes. There is now a
clear focus on delivery. And I also believe that the idea to act big on big issues and
small on small issues (of course one has to know how one decides what is big and
what is small, how the political choice is being made), this other idea of the new
President has also been derived from his direct confrontation with European citizens
who are interested in problems solving.
My fifth point is that the Commission, in its restructuring around delivery and
outcomes, has also solved what I call the "problem of 28". The "problem of 28" is not
that we have 28 Member States and then 28 Commissioners. The problem of 28 is
when you are 28 you need to organise differently than when you were 15. Because
we know very well that the optimum group-size for a team is not 28. Optimum groupsize is something like 7 or 8. Not 28. Because if you have 28, 28 want to talk, 28
want to exchange and you are basically going from discussion to statements. You are
not building something together, you have statements. So how has the new
Commission President solved it ? He has solved it by creating a core-cabinet: the
President plus 7 Vice-Presidents. One plus seven is eight : this is the optimum groupsize. If you add to that core the Secretary General of the Commission, you end up
with 9 and this is still an optimum group-size. This also means that the 20 other
Commissioners can have decent dossiers. No Commissioner is anymore responsible
for multilingualism which should be a managerial function. Also, there is now one
spokesperson of the Commission, not 28 spokespersons of the Commission. One
spokesperson of the Commission plus a deputy spokesperson of the Commission and
then of course people who are supporting the press activities. So, you do not have 28
different lines of communication from and to the European Commission, you have
one. By creating a core-team of one plus seven Vice-Presidents responsible for policy
coordination plus the Secretary General, policy planning, policy design and strategy
becomes what it should be - a political function. So, it moves away from the
Secretary General of the European Commission to a core-team of politicians elected
as Commissioners. They are taking over the policy planning and the strategic
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development functions as one team and they are bringing them into a political
process. This makes a significant difference in terms of legitimacy. I know that I am
speaking here now against my own profession of Secretary-general but nevertheless I
think the argument is right.
My sixth point is that, if the Commission is now based on a parliamentary majority,
then we may have what we call traditionally 'parliamentary democracy' in the
European Union. That is not a small thing. That is not a small thing at all. So, it may
well be that with this new Commission based on parliamentary majority we are just
starting the transition towards parliamentary democracy in the European Union.
My seventh point is that with parliamentary majority we are also likely to have the
other side of coin. If there is a parliamentary majority, then there is also very likely
that there is an opposition. So the new functioning is not only creating a
parliamentary majority backing the Commission which is basically composed of these
who brought the Commission President and the Commissioners College into office,
because they say they gave them their trust ; the new functioning is also creating an
opposition. This means that for our own House we could logically expect to see very
different kinds of behaviours towards the new Commission, dependent on whether
you belong to the parliamentary majority or whether you belong to the opposition.
My eighth point is that one of the outcomes of this election is that it has clarified
that the European Commission is the European Executive. It has solved what could be
called the "post-Santer Commission trauma" from which the Commission has suffered
for the last 16 years, because after the downfall of the Santer Commission they didn't
know anymore who they were. They were asking themselves: "Are we an agency? are
we an expertise body? Are we a fantastic secretariat for the member States?" And
during that time, you didn't get a straight answer from the leadership of the
Commission about who they were. And it is very difficult to progress if you don't know
who you are. So, I think that, with this election, the European Commission and
President Juncker and Vice-President Timmermans have no difficulty anymore to
describe who they are because they are the European Executive.
My ninth point would be that if this interpretation which I propose of what we are
now seeing in this early phase of the new Commission happens to be correct and
confirmed, then one will also need a different organisation. What does it mean? It
means that you need completely different structures for cooperation and also
coordination. It means that new forms of cooperation and coordination will be needed
within the House. It also means that new forms of cooperation and coordination will
be needed between the parliamentary majority supporting the European Commission
and the leadership of the European Commission. And probably you will all have read
with a lot of interest the article published recently in Le Soir about new cooperation
mechanisms starting to be established.
My tenth point would be that of course, if this is parliamentary democracy and if
there is a parliamentary majority supporting the European Commission, then one also
needs more discipline around it the European Parliament. And I think there are some
indications that this is already happening. If you remember, in the past, often we
were in a situation that we got the names for the Commissioner nominees from the
Members States before the summer but still Parliament finished the whole process in
January or February only. The Parliament took its time because Members said that we
had nothing to do with these people proposed by Member States. This time the
Member States gave the candidates at the end of August and still Parliament finalised
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the procedure on 1 November, which I take as an indication that the new Parliament
regards this new Commission as its own Commission - which doesn't mean that they
wouldn't be critical in debates or on personalities - but still we have seen a very
strong willingness to support the Commission so that it succeeds.
My eleventh point, you see that I am coming closely to the end. My eleventh point
is that of course if it is true that we had a kind of constitutional revolution through the
lead candidate process, which I believe, then the question is: "is this only about
people at the top or is this also about content?" Therefore I am not surprised that
finally after many years when we have been asking for it, the European Commission
has now been offering both to the European Parliament and to the Council to use a
phrase in article 17 of the Treaty which I have been citing many times over past
years, which starts: "The European Commission initiates the annual and multiannual
programming of the Union..." and it continues: "with a view to reach interinstitutional
agreement". So, now the European Commission is citing that article and is inviting
both the Council and the European Parliament for a dialogue on annual and
multiannual programming of the Union. We are in the middle of this process, today
President Juncker and Vice-President Timmermans were in the Conference of the
Presidents to discuss it. We will see how Parliament will react next week, but you can
see that this is a process which is showing that this is not just about getting people
into the office but also about agreeing on a political work programme. And again this
has a lot to do with the question of delivery and of providing outcome rather than
process.
My twelfth and last point is that this process of the changed relationship between
the Parliament and the European Commission and the reform of the European
Commission itself under the new Juncker Commission will also put pressure on the
Council to reform. The Council since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty basically
has split into three entities: the area of security and defence has been separated out
from the rest, building on the development of the European External Action Service.
Of course in this area the Council retains a more executive character. The European
Council became a separate institution in its own right and you could also argue that
the European Council has more of an executive character; at least, everyone agrees
that it shouldn't have a legislative character. So, basically what is left in the Council
proper is legislative in nature. 90% of what the Council of Ministers is doing or should
be doing now is legislative in nature. So, the Council one day will also have to address
the question how to organise effectively as a legislative body for this now dominant
part of its task.
And this raises a number of issues. But I don't want to go into details. And anyhow it
is the responsibility of the Council itself to address these issues. Just to mention a few
of them: the first is expertise - if you are an institution and not just a secretariat for
28 Member States you may want to have some central expertise available. Secondly,
if the European Commission has addressed, I believe successfully so, the challenge of
28, the Council remains confronted exactly with the same challenge of 28. How can
they have successful, efficient, effective Council meetings avoiding getting into a
culture of statements? And the next question is the question of legitimacy: if the
Council is a legislative body who should actually be allowed to legislate there?
Thank you very much!
Klaus Welle
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