Memorandum submitted by The Federal Trust (APS11)

 

1. The European Commission's Annual Policy Strategy (APS) cannot properly be compared to a draft legislative and political programme put forward by a national government at the beginning of a new parliamentary period. The great majority of the initiatives envisaged by the Commission for 2008 can only be carried out in collaboration with the Council and European Parliament. Where new legislation is in prospect, decision-making is exclusively in the hands of the Council and Parliament, which may delay, amend or reject any proposals coming from the Commission. In consequence, much of the APS can do little more than point towards areas in which the Commission intends to be active. What, if any, will be the precise result of this activity is therefore only to a very limited degree within the Commission's power to decide or even predict. The Commission is emphatically not in the position of a government enjoying a stable parliamentary majority on which it can call for the implementation of its legislative programme. Although it can reasonably be expected that the APS will provide an important roadmap for the Commission's activities over the coming eighteen months, external events and the Commission's interchanges with the European Parliament and member state governments will inevitably refine the picture on a constantly changing basis.

 

2. Two aspects of the Commission's APS for 2008 are, however, worthy of particular comment. On the one hand, the Strategy presents in a relatively comprehensive form the policy fields on which the Commission intends to concentrate in the near future. It also gives at least some indication of the policy measures it intends to bring forward in these policy fields. This overview will be of particular use to national parliaments, who are thereby given notice of the European discussions and decisions to which their national governments will in the near future be contributing. Specialist committees of national parliaments above all will have as a result of this document the opportunity to scrutinise from a very early stage of the process the conduct of their own national governments in regard to evolving European legislation within their sphere of interest. On the other hand, and just as usefully, the Commission's APS also gives in its general tone and structure an up to date reflection of how the current Commission sees its own role within the overall institutional structure of the European Union. This particular Strategy clearly reflects the political analysis and preferred rhetoric of Mr. Barroso's Commission.

 

3. In the introductory two pages of the Strategy, the word "delivery" and its cognates figure no fewer than six times. In a number of widely-reported speeches in London and elsewhere, Mr. Barroso has repeatedly emphasized over the past year his view that an important way to improve the standing of the European Union in general and the Commission in particular is to demonstrate to groups and individuals within the Union that their personal and material circumstances are directly improved by those actions of the Union which "deliver" beneficial results. This argument is often associated by Mr. Barroso and other members of the European Commission with the further proposition that institutional change within the European Union, along for instance the lines suggested by the European Constitutional Treaty, will become politically more acceptable to public opinion throughout the European Union if the European institutions enjoy the popular prestige and sympathy arising from the "delivery" of successful policies. This analysis is consistently reflected in the Strategy for 2008. Although it is in many ways an attractive analysis, notably to a British audience, it is one not without difficulties, difficulties which are only partly reflected in the document under consideration. For a number of separate but related reasons, the European Union is frequently not in a position to "deliver" by its own efforts the goals which it claims to have set itself. In most cases, the Union can at best contribute to the realisation of those goals by national or local governments and other economic actors. Moreover, when the goals in question are or may have been realised, governments and other national economic actors are not always eager to stress even the facilitating role that the European Union has played in the progress achieved.

 

4. The greatest gap between the rhetoric of "delivery" and political reality is to be found in the conception and execution of the so-called "Lisbon agenda." This programme, essentially one of economic reform and modernisation, is one which is to be carried out overwhelmingly at the national level, rightly reflecting the different circumstances and needs of the different member states of the Union. These member states have been predictably unwilling to confide to the European Union's central institutions the powers and resources necessary for action by the European Union to realise the ambitious goals of the Lisbon Agenda. The member states have preferred to pursue, more or less successfully and largely on their own account, their national policies of economic modernisation, with national governments seeking and sometimes succeeding in reaping the electoral benefit of economic success in their respective countries. It is difficult to think of any country in which the standing of the European Union and its institutions has been substantially enhanced by the Lisbon Agenda. More importantly, it is anyway difficult to conceive of the circumstances in which that might have been the case. There is a systematic danger in the "delivery agenda" that its rhetoric will generate optimistic headlines in the short term, but disillusionment in the longer term when unrealistic goals cannot be achieved.

 

5. None of this is to say that the Commission should eschew efforts to "deliver" demonstrable improvements in the standard and manner of living of ordinary Europeans. It should, however, avoid awakening exaggerated expectations as to its own room for manoeuvre in this respect. In particular, the Commission should not harbour the illusion that its agenda of "delivery' will of itself be sufficient to resolve the political crisis brought upon the European Union by the referendums of 2005 in France and the Netherlands. It is unimaginable that the "delivery" agenda will bring about sufficient demonstrable advantages for European workers and consumers sufficiently quickly to make the case for the sort of institutional reforms proposed in the European Constitutional Treaty and which have been restored to the European Union's agenda by the current German Presidency. The case for or against these reforms will need to be considered on their current merits, not on the basis of future benefits "delivered" by the European Union to a grateful population. It is in any event one argument deployed by those favourable to the European Constitutional Treaty's provisions that these provisions will make it easier, in an enlarged European Union, to "deliver" the benefits to which the present Commission aspires. The political challenges manifested by the public debate surrounding the French and Dutch referendums cut deeper than the benefits conferred upon travelling Europeans by lower "roaming" charges, desirable thought these benefits are in themselves.

 

6. Academic commentators sometimes use the concept of "output legitimacy" to describe the acceptance which a political organisation can enjoy among its membership if it produces results which are demonstrably advantageous to those who participate in it. The current European Commission clearly aspires to achieve such "output legitimacy" by its stress on the "delivery" of tangible benefits to European workers and consumers. Historically, it has certainly been true that the popularity of the European Union has increased in times of European economic prosperity. Economic stagnation traditionally leads, in Europe and elsewhere, to dissatisfaction with political institutions, both national and supranational. Better economic performance over the next five years in France, for instance, might well soften the fear of globalisation which was an important contribution to the rejection of the European Constitutional Treaty by the French voters in 2005.

 

7. The concept of "output legitimacy" is, however, itself a controversial one, particularly in its application to the European Union. For reasons discussed above, it is not always easy to establish what are the specific "outputs" of the European Union, particularly if these outputs are conceived primarily in material and economic terms. Nor will economically significant "outputs" always confer of themselves "legitimacy" on the institution supposedly achieving these economic advances. The European Commission is certainly not wrong in believing that a part of the answer to the European Union's current malaise lies in the demonstration that specific economic benefits arise from the Union's activities. But this "delivery" of economic benefits needs to be complemented by (and cannot replace) a broader political account of what the European Union is for and what its future direction should be. Previous Commissions have seen it as part of their duty to contribute to that account. It is not necessarily an improvement that this present Commission is so reticent in this regard. In the Annual Policy Strategy, there are admittedly important signposts towards a more politically compelling account of the European Union's future development, such as the emphasis on environmental questions, the European Union's external policies and internal security. These are all areas of the Union's activity which correspond to deep concerns of ordinary Europeans and where an unambiguous case for unified European action is relatively easy to expound. It is a commonplace to say that with the disappearance of the threat of internecine war in Europe, the European Union needs a new "narrative" to justify its further integration, or perhaps even continued existence. The present European Commission appears to believe that a central element in that new "narrative" will be its "delivery agenda," a view reflected in its APS for 2008. The central thesis of this note is that the Commission's concentration on its "delivery agenda" at best runs the risk of being an inadequate approach and may even in some circumstances be counter-productive.

 

 

 

 

Brendan Donnelly, Director, Federal Trust

1 May 2007