Why not shrink the European Commission?

The online edition of German weekly Der Spiegel reports on "secret" plans by EU heads of state and government to stick to the 'one country, one EU Commissioner' principle, despite the number of Commissioners being set to rise to 28 following Croatia's entry in July.

Under the Lisbon Treaty, from November 2014, the number of Commissioners is supposed to correspond to two-thirds of member states, but national governments can agree to keep things as they are by unanimous decision. Der Spiegel estimates that keeping 28 Commissioners instead of 19 would come at an extra cost to European taxpayers of at least €13.5 million a year. So why, the article asks, are Germany, France and the UK keen to keep one Commissioner per country?

A couple of points need to be made here.

• The plans are hardly a secret. Going back to the days of the second Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, Ireland was given reassurances that the 'one country, one EU Commissioner' principle would stay (see the conclusions of the June 2009 European Council summit). Also, a European Council decision on the subject was drafted last October - and only needs to be rubber-stamped by EU leaders (see here).

• In the UK, Parliament has already cleared the draft decision for approval via the European Union (Approvals) Act 2013.

That being said it is increasingly hard to defend the growing size of the EU Commission, not least because it gets increasingly difficult to find a credible portfolio for everyone. To accommodate for Croatia's entry, for instance, the Health and Consumer Protection portfolio will be split into two separate posts.

The big question is, would it be so bad if the number of Commissioners was reduced and the proliferation of Commission DGs slim-lined into more rational departments?

True, smaller memebr states may take offence (larger ones like the UK would virtually be guaranteed a Commissioner). However, member states without a Commissioner for one rotation period could be given deputy Commissioners instead. Surely, there would be more influence to be had as Deputy Commissioner for Internal Market than as Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth?

Nevertheless, EU leaders look set to rubber-stamp the 'one country, one Commissioner' decision - so we'll continue to have 28 EU Commissioners after 2014. At the very least, if we are going to have an extra Commissioner, the European Commission should be obliged to find savings so net spending does not increase. Our report on reforming the EU budget from last June included some suggestions. 

Quango unchained: The EU's subculture you've probably never heard of (but that thinks it embodies your expectations)

EU 'grassroots' engagement

Beyond the spotlight of high-profile crisis meetings of EU leaders exists a very different community. A group that can almost be likened to a sub-culture. They meet in over-sized buildings in Brussels or at conferences and hotels around Europe. You will almost certainly never have heard of them. These are the EU's committees and quangos. Some useful, some completely irrelevant.

Topping this group is the European Economic and Social Committee. If you've never come across it, don't worry - you're in an overwhelming majority and haven't really missed out on anything. The EESC exists in order to act as "a bridge between Europe and organised civil society" by acting as a point of consultation for the EU by bringing together 'representatives of civil society' - 344 from across the whole EU. In practice the majority of these are representatives of trade unions, the third sector and academia, although business people are also represented.

There's only one problem: no one actually quite knows that the EESC actually does. In recent memory, we have yet to see evidence of it actually having had a measurable effect on a single piece of EU policy. The areas it is involved with are well covered by national authorities, the Commission and the European Parliament - which for better or worse actually has some powers.

It's not that the EESC makes "bad" decisions or is actively harmful. The body - much like its cousin the Committee of the Regions - is simply completely irrelevant in terms of what is happening in the real world. And yet, it has a budget of around €130m a year.

The absence of any meaningful impact of a body like the EESC on the multiple crises plaguing the eurozone borders on being comical. We learned today that EESC has appointed a new President, Henri Malosse. He clearly has grand plans for his tenure:

"Henri Malosse is keenly aware of the disconnect between Europe and its citizens, a fact again brought home by the Greek and Cyprus crises. Convinced that one of the answers lies in a rebalancing of forces in Brussels, he wants the European Union's second assembly to do more to embody people's real expectations in areas such as job creation, combating youth alienation, protection of savings and access to health care."

Makes sense. If only the EESC got a bit more power, than we're sure that the collapsed interbank lending market would be restored over-night. A few more EESC conferences would do wonders to bring down unsustainable debt levels in the eurozone. Meanwhile, hire a few more EESC staff and the 27.2% record unemployment rate in Spain would be immediately reversed. If only the EESC could be given enough cash to  embody "real people's expectations", the EU's democratic deficit would practically be closed already. 

Some of Malousse's tweets are also something else:

@citizen_e @euromeet I support This excellent initiative to create a common european identy thanks to education ! #EESC #Windofchange 18/04
— Henri Malosse (@MalosseHenri) April 9, 2013

It's really time to put the #citizen in the engine of #UE and bring#Europe on the right tracks ! #EESC #18april #WindofChange
— Henri Malosse (@MalosseHenri) April 7, 2013

Our point? The EESC is emblematic of the EU's Achilles heel: its incredible difficulty in adapting to changing economic and political circumstances. Everyone knows that the EESC and Committee of the Regions - which together cost taxpayers around €215m - are pointless bodies. They're by-products of a long bygone era, premised on the odd principle that in order for "civil society" and "the regions" to have influence, they need their own dedicated institutions in Brussels. In spite of all of this, they remain in place, partly because they're enshrined in the EU Treaties and it therefore requires unanimity to scrap them.

As we pointed out in our dedicated report on EU quangos, several of the EU's 52 agencies suffer from similar flaws. Scrapping 10 of the least useful, and imposing efficiency savings on the rest, would save taxpayers a total of around €668m.

Not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of things, but the symbolic value of Europe's failure to address even the most obvious examples of waste and bureaucratic inertia, speaks volumes.

Every little helps: The reintroduction of EU civil servants' "special levy" is small step in right direction

The reintroduction of the EU's special levy tax is good news

In all the discussion of the EU budget for 2014 - 2020 there is one small item that has been overlooked - the welcome reintroduction of the special tax levy on EU officials' pay. In 2012 this was set at a rate of 5.5% on post taxed income but this lapsed in 2013. It will now reappear in 2014 as a part of measures that are hoped will keep the costs of the EU's bureaucracy under control.

 

The European Council Conclusions here say that "the new solidarity levy will be reintroduced at a level of 6% as part of the reform of the salary method. These measures will have a significant impact on the cost for pensions in the mid- and long-term."

This is welcome news, although, even with the reintroduction of the tax, EU civil servants will still pay far less tax than the EU citizens they serve. Let us hope that MEPs do not seek to show their own type of solidarity by attempting to remove it. Over to you Mr Schulz.

Hail a true European

On 4 July 2011, a well-known European passed away.

Otto von Habsburg, the oldest son of Austria's last Emperor and the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary was praised by European Commission President José Manuel Barroso as "a great European" which "has given important stimulation to European integration".

That is certainly true, but deserves some clarification of which kind of European integration von Habsburg was pushing for.

He was a great proponent of decentralisation, and at the same time did not see this as contrary to the European idea - something which is not always the case with EU officials or certain politicians. In a speech back in 1999, von Habsburg, who was also a Member of European Parliament, recalled how during the European elections in 1994, buses were sent by the European Commission to all over Europe to explain to voters the issues at stake. In Munich, he looked for an hour for such a bus, only to find it somewhere where nobody would pass by.

This small anecdote, according to him, was a good example of the inefficiency of remote bureaucratic institutions. He explained:

"The closer you bring a decision to those it affects, the greater the likelihood that the decision will be good. This centralization is leading also to the new feudalism now being created in the name of efficiency. Bureaucracy is today the cancer of political institutions, and seems to be on the move towards ever greater expansion. If successive governments come with the promise of reducing bureaucratic services, only very few of them are successful. In the end, under the pretext of efficiency, new bureaucracies are being established. (...) The greater our states become, the less efficient and the more expensive they are.”

His words have only become more relevant since 1999. His passing should remind us that the true European idea and also the reason why Europe has been historically successful, is decentralisation, and not centralisation.