Will the new parliament witness a shake up? It will certainly have a harder time managing a huge budget and a few broken promises
Many things will change in Brussels and Strasbourg after the May elections. Although the opportunity for a ‘revolutionary’ transformation is being bandied about and artfully exaggerated by the anti-establishment forces of the international sovereigntist movement, there should in any case be a strong divergence from the past. Accelerating a transition process that is already underway towards a more politically driven European Parliament.
After 40 years of electoral history, less than 30 since it was granted co-legislator status and only 15 since the Union’s major eastward expansion, the Europarliament is still a relatively young institution, but it is also lacking in maturity from a political standpoint and with a degree of internal conflict that is still only latent.
The entire party system in recent years has been propped up by the agreement between the main groups represented in parliament, which, though guaranteeing the operation of the complex European decision-making system, have tended to water down political confrontation between opposing ideologies.
The real clash as a matter of fact is neither internal between parties, it is inter-institutional with the other arm of the European legislative process, the dominant EU Council that represents the wishes of the member states. The assembly’s political difficulties are the result of this mismatched balance of power with its own nemesis which has meant it has had to brush over its own internal conflicts in order to promote a forced collaboration between groups so that the elected institution could retain relevance within the EU system.
In other words, parliament is forced to be efficient if it doesn’t want to be sidelined, which also limits one of the assembly’s most incisive powers, its power to block proceedings. If we consider how persuasive the US Congress can be by deciding a shutdown or the blockade caused by Westminster on the Brexit withdrawal agreement, and compare this to the fact that in Strasbourg no one has ever managed to go beyond threatening to block the EU’s annual budget.
During the last legislation, the agreement between the European centre right (EPP), the Social Democrats (S&D) and the Liberals (ALDE) resulted in a historic European compromise in order to guarantee Parliament a more incisive role, without any real opposition by the Greens, the Conservative groups, the extremist factions on the left and right or any of the anti-establishment movements.
This highly collaborative arrangement will probably fall through in favour of a transition towards a more political confrontation between parliamentary groups. After all the historic European compromise had shown signs of wear during the last legislation, when the PPE took over all the top positions while essentially arranging to exclude the Social Democrats.
If, as expected, there will be great confusion on the floor, the situation will also be right for change to quote Zhou Enlai, a former foreign minister under Mao Zedong. The composition and weight of the various groups will decide the ‘revolutionary’ coefficient within the new parliament, but the results will in any case have to be analysed. More significantly, there are three factors that need to be monitored to establish the post-historic European compromise configuration of the various factions.
The first concerns the right wing factions, not so much as a result of their rise which could lead them to holding around 20% of consensus, well below a third of the representation. It is instead revealing trying to understand what the Pole Jarosław Kaczyński and the Italian Matteo Salvini are up to. While the first has taken over the helm of the European Conservatives (ECR) from the exiting Britons, opening the door to Giorgia Meloni’s Italian right wing nationalists, the second has ousted Marine Le Pen as the ideological leader of the International Sovereigntists (ENF).
The two leaders met in Poland in January, possibly to discuss a union between the Conservatives and right wing nationalists in a grouping that would include the Hungarian strong man Viktor Orban, who at the time was supposed to leave the EPP. But a merger was probably never their main purpose, when considering the similar weight – between 20 and 25 MEPs – that the League and the right wing Poles could secure in the next Parliament and which would make their impact null if they were placed within the same group. The more likely hypothesis is that each will lead its own front, and if the numbers allow it, enter an alliance with the EPP, which would take on the task of “normalising” the right wing factions.
A second factor that needs to be born in mind is the positioning of the parties without a political affiliation. These are post-ideological movements that have spread throughout Europe over the last decade, especially Macron’s La Republique en Marche (LREM) and the Italian 5 Star Movement (5SM). They have both voiced their resolve not to join a traditional party and instead aim to set up their own parliamentary group.
A project that was initially criticized owing to the difficulty to focus interest on parliamentary groups that haven’t yet been set up, but ultimately extremely worthwhile if it were to succeed. It it’s partly successful, the other factions would be weakened but the new groups would live on the fringes of the parliamentary debate, probably without holding any significant positions and no Commission chairs. If instead it succeeds, it could lead these groups to become the decisive prop for any coalition, thus tilting the balance and maximizing the impact of a limited number of MEPs (less than 20 for both LREM and 5SM) compared to what they might achieve if they were diluted within a broader traditional party.
The third and widely underestimated consideration concerns the participation of the United Kingdom to the European elections and the actual results. According to the latest polls, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour should secure 30 MEPs, changing the negotiating power of the European centre-left, which in recent months has been negligible. This may result in the Dutchman Frans Timmermans, Juncker’s right hand man and currently a deputy Commission president, moving his chattels directly onto the 13th floor of the Berlaymont Building, the most important of the European executive.
A positive result by the Socialists might rekindle a traditional alliance, stemming the sovereigntist and populist extremists, but the new majority would hinge on MEPs who are, theoretically, fated to leave and thus opening up an interesting debate on a legislation split into two halves.
Foreseeing the composition is not enough to understand what type of parliament we will be landed with, we also have to consider how it will operate. The last Euro-parliament has passed plenty of laws, but the addition of post-ideological parliamentary groups and the increased weight of the Euro-sceptical right wing factions could lead to a greater fragmentation, which could imperil the capacity to address the delicate legislative issues to be faced during the next legislation.
Much attention had been paid, owing to its exceptionality, to the cross-floor majority which last March approved the new rules on copyright. Although not in the same proportions, this could be a paradigmatic vote for the next term. Besides legislating less, a fragmented Parliament would also involve more ‘transient’ majorities that could form on the spur of the moment based on the issue, making the job of the reporters called on to negotiate between the Parliamentary positions and the EU Council much more complex.
The fragmentation could also be compounded by the high turnover rate for MEPs which is estimated will be between 40 and 60%. A highly inexperienced parliament, or worse still weighed down by euro-sceptics, could slow the decision making process even further.
And finally there are the issues that the next Parliament will have to address. A fair amount of the debate, at least until 2020, will revolve around the Multi-Year Financial Framework (MFF), the seven year plan that will decide the allocation of funds for the 2021 – 2027 period.
The funds allocated by the MFF will also hinge on very weighty dossiers such as the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), once the queen of all community policies but which is expected to be cut down to size. Among the other ‘hanging’ files that have to be negotiated with the Council, despite having been voted through during a plenary session, there is also the directive on drinking water, which could be the first European law stemming from an initiative put forward by European citizens who collected 1.8 million signatures, and the abolition of Daylight Saving Time.
Beyond these pending issues, the new Parliament’s true task will be to fully implement the programmatic decisions made by the previous legislation running up to 2030, such as the strategy on climate and the creation of a European defence industry, as well as the future challenges posed by artificial intelligence or batteries, central to electric mobility and energy decentralisation. But most of all, it will have to handle the failed promises of the last five year term and primarily the Dublin reform and the huge failure in the handling of the migratory crisis, along with the ordered exit of the United Kingdom, provided Brexit actually comes to completion during the next legislation, or at all.
@gerardofortuna
This article is also published in the May/June issue of eastwest.
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Will the new parliament witness a shake up? It will certainly have a harder time managing a huge budget and a few broken promises
