Is this Democracy?
Democracy in Europe returned from its summer holidays this week. The MEPs elected to the European Parliament last June have gone back to work. First up on the order of business is a brief encounter with actually exercising their power.
On the one side, you have the 20 EU commissioners nominated by their member state governments for their tax free £140,000-a-year-plus posts. Together, they constitute one of the world's most powerful decision making bodies.
On the other side, you have the 500-plus MEPs who, for this week, will interview and grill the commissioner designates on their fitness to hold office.
The 20 commissioners have spent weeks preparing for the public interviews. Chief on their study list has been the video tapes of the interviews of the previous commissioners five years ago.
Then, many of the commissioner designates appeared arrogant and dismissive when questioned by the elected representatives who actually have the power to ratify their posts.
Now, in the aftermath of the mass resignation of the Commission earlier this year, the new commissioners are treading more carefully. The great step forward for democracy is that this time around they will not be arrogant or dismissive.
No, respectful is the watchword. Hans Gert Pottering leader of the European's People's Party , the parliament's largest political grouping, has warned that the commissioners have to ``go into hearings with great attention and respect''. Pottering wants the commissioners to accept ``that parliament is the institution to which they are accountable''. He wants to exert strong control over EU Commission president Romano Prodi and his 19 commissioners.
Pottering has said: ``We aim to exert strong control over the Commission and over bureaucratic arrogance''. However the EU Parliament's ability to actually do this is very limited. Apart from forcing the commissioners to endure a rare bout of public scrutiny before they disappear into the commission web and having the power to sack the commission en masse, the parliament is quite limited in what it can actually do.
Pottering and the other MEPs have to face up to the fact that they are for the moment a toothless tiger. The only way they can curb the power of the EU Commission is by either returning power to the individual EU member states or by taking some of the Commission's powers into the remit of the Parliament. Now that would be a real step towards democracy in the EU.
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