Reforming the European Parliament
Author: admin | Date: 15 March 2010 | Please Comment!Peter Mair
European University Institute
Since the institution of direct elections in 1979, the European Parliament has grown in a variety of ways. It has grown first in terms of sheer size, in that, with 736 members, it is now one of the largest democratic parliaments in the world. Second, it has grown in terms of weight, in that it has now acquired substantial co-decision powers and has become jointly responsible for most of the decision-making that occurs at the European level. As Simon Hix et al put it some time ago, ‘the European Parliament has evolved from an elected consultative body to one of the most powerful elected assemblies in the world.’ Third, it has grown in terms of control, and has now quite a substantial say in the formation of the European executive, the Commission. Finally, it has grown in terms of coherence, in that the party groups have become stronger and more generously funded, and in that the MEPs are now almost all elected through a more or less uniform proportional procedure that privileges party representation. Perhaps ironically, however, this steady accumulation of these various powers and resources has been accompanied by a steady decline in its popular standing, support and legitimacy. In other words, more powers for the Parliament have been associated with more widespread popular disengagement from the Parliament.
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So what can be done to reverse this depressing trend? One option might be to assume some causality, and hence to reduce Parliament’s weight in order to lend it greater legitimacy. That is, powers could be taken away from the Parliament in the hope that this might encourage greater citizen engagement. Since the perception of the democratic deficit appears to have grown step by step with the growth in the weight given to the Parliament, one might even go so far as to abolish it altogether in the hope that this might reduce the deficit completely. But this is unlikely, and the causality assumption is in any case implausible.
The other option might be to try to shift the powers and their parameters in the hope of promoting a different and perhaps more tangible institution that might offer a better focus for citizen engagement and participation. This seems a more easily managed strategy, and it might begin with an adaptation of some of the specific growths indicated above.
First, for example, the size of the Parliament might be reduced. Having more than 700 members might facilitate full cross-national representation in the committees, but it makes for a clumsy, unmanageable and disparate plenary. It also overloads the parliament with anonymous MEPs. Why not reduce the number to 400 or even 300, making it a much more selective and also a leaner and meaner body, and one that might also allow a more focused presentation to the outside world. In this model, each member state would be entitled to a minimum of, say, two seats, and all remaining seats would be allocated across the European population as a whole in roder to ensure equality of representation.
Second, the powers of control over the appointment of the Commission might be reduced or even abolished. These powers could and perhaps should be left to the member state governments to defend, and in any case, for all the Parliament’s claims, the process is already effectively managed by these governments and their parties. Without this appointment oversight, the Parliament could concentrate on what it does best, which is legislation and policy-making. In other words, reform the institution in the direction of a proper legislature, which also means keeping or even strengthening the co-decision powers.
Third, push further towards a uniform voting procedure, but organize it through single member districts rather than list PR. Take power away from the national parties, which in any case often abuse both the electoral process and the election debates by playing the second-order game, and encourage instead a greater sense of territorial representation in, and identification with the Parliament. Each district in Europe – large districts, to be sure – would then have its own representative in the Parliament, and would have a direct and fully accountable channel to EU decision-making. Existing parties would of course also use these channels, but they would no longer enjoy an easy monopoly of the representative process, while other, newer, more European-wide parties might well emerge from the legislative coalitions formed by the individual legislators.
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Any reforms in this direction would, of course, bring the European Parliament closer to the model of the US House of Representatives. But that may not be a bad model for the Europeans, and in this case it would be based on a more meaningful 5-year electoral term. It might also lead to the emergence of more high-profile MEPs, and, possibly through that, to more electoral competition and to more citizen engagement.
23:56 on March 21st, 2010
I do not agree to two of your three points.
(1) It is a huge parliament, but these parliamentarians represent 500 million people and they are already to few to respond to the demands of citizens, as a fellow blogger could show earlier this year. Having less parliamentarians means having the parliament even further away from EU citizens.
(2) The appointment of the Commissioners is the only time when the European Parliament gets significant attention in all member states. Usually known national politicians have to show their competency in front of a European audience, they are judged differently than they are judged at home, based on European norms, ideas, and goals. This is significant, because the relevance of European ideas in national discourses can be of utmost importance for the legitimacy of the institution itself.
(3) I agree, although this would weaken the (still quite weak) Europarties. They could play an important role in the future European elections, bringing about a more unified election topics and maybe even common candidates for the European Commission President and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
(4) I think you miss the most important point regarding the disengagement of the European Parliament from the citizen: Communication. The EU and the Parliament have gained more and more policy responsibility over the last three decades, but the ability to communicate with those whom they are governing has not evolved at an equal pace. The new communication tools we dispose of have finally allowed a more targeted and at the same time more widespread communication with the public, creating debate and attention regarding European topics and decision-making problems. Yet the scope of these communicative efforts are not effective enough yet, and the MEPs and the institution have to work hard to be more present.
The blog of the European Parliament web editors is an example, and blogs, Twitter accounts and similar tools of MEPs are signs that the Parliament and those within the institution have understood that they can’t continue in their bubble as they have done until now.
Everything you propose is more or less institutional, but it won’t make the Parliament an institution coming closer to the citizens, more accepted as a body representing our ideas and interests. They have to prove this in practice by addressing us and our concerns. Institutional design adaption are moving around dead structures – but the Parliament has to be filled with life!
Julien Frisch, political scientist blogging at http://julienfrisch.blogspot.com
10:07 on March 22nd, 2010
Jon Worth
Political blogger
I have some sort of fondness for the European Parliament. It’s the EU institution that citizens should best be able to relate to, the people’s voice in Brussels. More able to command respect that the Commission and Council. Yet my views on the Parliament, often expressed on my blog, often exude a frustration at the way the European Parliament goes about its business.
In short, I agree with the need for reform expressed by Peter Mair, but I have a quite different view of how that should be done.
For me Schumpeter’s basic definition of a party political system is the best starting point when thinking about the future of the European Parliament. His four elements are as follows:
The way the European Parliament works at present does not even come close to that. The European political parties, pale shadows of their national counterparts, have largely failed to get EP candidates to agree common programmes before an election and then, once elected, the degree of compromise is so large in the European Parliament that any voter would be hard pressed to notice the difference between a Parliament dominated by the left or by the right. The approach of the mainstream political groups in the EP, so amusingly attacked by Dany Cohn-Bendit, are testimony to this approach.
I don’t deny that the European Parliament has gained more and more power, but the Parliament’s power and influence are very hard for everyday citizens to comprehend, to grasp.
The main way to address this issue (and here my view differs strongly from Peter Mair) is for each political party to present a candidate for President of the Commission before the European elections. That way there is a clear and demonstrable connection between the European Parliament elections and the composition of the EU’s executive, similar to that between national parliaments and national governments.
Another reform in a similar vein would be to grant the European Parliament limited powers to draft legislation, currently the unique preserve of the European Commission in most areas. Such a reform would make the Parliament’s role closer to that of the US House of Representatives and would further allow MEPs to demonstrate their impact to their electorates.
As for the size of the European Parliament and how it is elected I again think that Mair raises the right questions but proposes the wrong solutions. Any Parliament representing almost 500 million citizens is likely to be unwieldy, and the case for some reduction could be made, but could an individual MEP be expected to represent more than 1 million citizens?
It would also be important to address the degressive proportionality currently in place, where smaller states are over-represented in Parliament. The principle that every European’s vote counts equally would be the correct starting point.
Looking at the quality of the MEPs elected in 2009 it is clear there is a considerable divergence between the countries where party lists are open and those where lists are closed. In Netherlands voters can choose within party lists and the elections resulted in some excellent young, hard working candidates such as Marietje Schaake (D66), Judith Merkies (PvdA) and Jeanine Hennis (VVD) being elected. The contrast with the stodge from the UK’s closed lists could not be starker.
In summary the EP needs to more closely resemble a national parliament in terms of its party political dynamics, and the universal adoption of open lists could make a major difference to the quality of the MEPs elected. A small reduction in the Parliament’s size, and the introduction of legislative initiative would then complete my package of reforms.
02:11 on March 23rd, 2010
Peter Mair gets to the root of the European Parliament’s problem in the following sentence ‘more powers for the Parliament have been associated with more widespread popular disengagement from the Parliament’. And, the reason that the European Parliament has grown less popular as it has grown more powerful has to do with its democratic illegitimacy.
This democratic illegitimacy is far more dangerous for Europe than the illegitimacy of the Commission or the Council that make no pretence to represent European citizens in any conventional democratic sense. Indeed, calls to reform the Commission and the Council by federalists are based on the fact that these institutions are not satisfactory in democratic terms.
The European Parliament, on the other hand, seems democratic. It is, after all, elected by European citizens – if only they would trouble to vote… – and these elections employ a relatively uniform system and are overwhelmingly fair. So where is the cavil?
The problem is that a legislative body must be based on a community of interest. It is not enough to give half a billion people a ballot paper: this half a billion must feel like they are part of said community – ‘we belong to the land and we belong to each other’ to get teary-eyed about it.
In France a Norman or a Parisian would tolerate reverses to regional interests in the French legislature because they also perceive themselves as part of a nation. But a Greek or a Gael would hardly feel the same if an empowered European Parliament went against their ‘regional’ interests.
Imagine what would happen tomorrow on the streets of Athens if a ‘fully-functioning’, ‘legitimate’ (or let’s say ‘legitimised’) European Parliament forced on Greece (for so it would be perceived by the Greeks) some of the steps that its national government is presently and wretchedly stumbling towards…
So how does the EU get around this problem? Well, pace Julien Frisch, in his spirited comments, the answer is not communication. If European citizens knew what the European Parliament was getting up to the disillusionment and alarm would grow, not lessen! We return to PM’s original point.
I would offer two solutions: the first Euro-sceptic and the second Euro-realist (if you allow for a distinction between them).
The Euro-sceptic answer is simple and PM does, at least rhetorically consider this: the European Parliament has to be abolished.
The Euro-realist answer, on the other hand, is that the European Parliament should return to what it once was, a talk shop with rudimentary powers and it should only increase those powers as and if a European community of interest emerges over the next decades.
Only if we decided for the second of these two unsavoury solutions would it be worth talking about how many members or what voting systems. As neither will happen though, it is only right that political scientists should enjoy themselves…!
Good luck to your cafes and thanks for your interesting posts.
Bruxelle Delanda-Est
07:30 on March 24th, 2010
[...] EU interested people to comment and discuss. Our friend Julian Frisch got the ball rolling with a very stimulating comment. We just pass the word here. [...]
07:41 on March 24th, 2010
Hi Peter,
I am very sympathetic to your ideas. I have long thought that the EP is far too big. Around 400 or 500 would be much better, both in terms of identifiability from the point of view of the voters and in terms of organisation coherence in Brussels. I wonder what Taagapera’s cube-root rule for the size of an EU parliament would be?
I have also long felt that the EP should model its relationship with the Commission on the US model, since the EU is a separation of powers system of government. The selection of the Commission by QMV in the Council plus a simple majority in the EP effectively makes the EU a quasi-parliamentary system, since the same majority bicameral coalition can select the executive and adopt legislation. It would be much better if the Commission President were elected via a completely separate mechanism, either directly or indirectly (e.g. via a college of national parliamentarians) – as I have argued for about 15 years now!
However, the one issue I do disagree with you on is the question of single-member constituencies. I agree that the bond between national parties and MEPs should be broken. However, it is not the case that single-member constituencies will do this. SMDs are effectively a closed-party list system, with a district size of 1. In SMD systems, parties chose candidates, and the candidates are beholden to their parties – as is the case in the House of Commons, Australia, Canada, or India. The US House of Reps is only different because of local party primaries.
To break the control of national parties over their MEPs, and to force MEPs to engage directly with the voters, I believe that the EP should be elected in relatively small multi-member districts with some form of preferential voting: either STV or “open” party lists. This system forces politicians to compete WITHIN parties as well as between parties.
Where such a system is currently used for the EP (e.g. in Ireland, Malta, Finland, Estonia, and Denmark) there is plenty of evidence that many more voters know who their MEPs are, are contacted by their MEPs, and actually turn up to vote in EP elections.
Small multi-member districts would also be preferably to single-member districts because it would create a less disproportional outcome in the EP.
Finally, one issue you do not mention which I believe needs to be addressed is the way that power is allocated inside the EP. The current system of allocating all agenda-setting powers proportionally (e.g. committee chairs by d’Hondt) means that the outcome of an EP election has very little impact on “who gets what” inside the EP. I would be in favour of raising the stakes in EP elections considerably by giving a lot more internal power in the EP to the largest party or parties – e.g. by granting the largest party the first 5 committee chairs, 40% of all rapporteurships, and the president of the EP for a full five years. “Winning” an EP election would then really matter for politicians and the Euro parties!
A uniform electoral system with preferential voting is currently under discussion in the EP (the Duff Report), and I would urge all political scientists to get behind it.
Cheers,
Simon
12:21 on March 24th, 2010
I agree that Peter Mair has highlighted an important problem, namely that the evolution in the European Parliament’s powers has not been matched by a corresponding development in its popular support base.This is actually quite hard to measure, and even the continuing decline in turnout from EP election to election has to be put into perspective, firstly because the successive elections have included different countries on each occasion, and secondly because there have been sharp declines in turnout in other elections as well. And apart from turnout it is hard to know how “a steady decline in its popular standing, support and legitimacy” can actually be gauged in any meanngful sense. Having said all this, it is clear that the EP is often perceived as distant from voters, or it is unfairly condemned as a talking shop without real powers.
But if Peter Mair raises a real issue, all three of his proposed options for reforming the Parliament are unrealistic and would not help the situation.
(i)Reducing the size of the Parliament would be desirable in theory,and might make it easier to manage, but would almost certainly end up reducing the legitimacy of the EP even further. There are now far more small and medium sized Member States than ever before, and the increase in the size of the Parliament has permitted them to keep a minimum number of seats while allowing larger states to have far more seats under the principle of “degressive proportionality”. Reducing the smaller states entitlement to only 2 or 3 MEPs will certainly not help the legitimacy of the EP in those countries. And Peter’s solution of “equality of representation” would only work in a truly federal European Union where national identities would have disappeared. We are far from that at present, and even the attractive idea of complementing national MEPs with others elected in a Europe-wide constituency (which would give much more of a European flavour to EP elections campaigns)does not appear to have sufficient support.
(ii) Reducing or abolishing the EP powers of control over the appointment of the Commission would not only increase the democratic deficit and make the Commission less accountable, but also take away one of the most visible and dramatic EP powers, and one which makes the EP powers more tangible to citizens than the vital but less visible “sausage-making” powers of co-decision on legislation. The large amount of interest in Bulgaria in the confirmation hearing of Ms Jeleva brought this home visibly. Moreover, the EP hearings on the Commissioners has made the whole process far more open and transparent than it used to be when dependent entirely on patronage from national governments. Furthermore the confirmation hearings set the whole tone for the subsequent relationship between a Commissioner and their corresponding committee or committees in the European Parliament. It might be a good idea to have national parliamentary confirmation processes for national Commissioners as well, but the fact that the governments making the nominations enjoy parliamentary majorities mean that there would be likely to be less drama than in the US Congress or the European Parliament, where majorities have to be won on each occasion.
(iii) Finally, having single member districts rather than list pr goes against the one major reform that the Parliament was able to achieve as regards uniform electoral procedures after 20 years of struggle, namely to abolish single member constituencies because they were distorting the entire political balance within the Parliament, as shown in the 1979 and 1994 EP elections. Moreover, the UK system that prevailed until the mid 1990s, and which caused these distortions did not lead to any greater legitimacy for British MEPs.Allowing one MEP to represent a single district, especially if combined with Peter’s suggestion for a downsizing of the Parliament, would lead to giant constituencies, to large numbers of voters from other parties feeling excluded from the process (as UK Conservative voters felt in Labour districts, Labour voters in rural England, and Liberal Democrats everywhere!), and to a far worse gender balance than under more proportional list systems! The problem he raises is less related to lists “per se” than to whether the voter has an element of choice (as in STV,or open lists) or not, and the political cultures of the countries in question.
In short, Peter Mair has launched a really valuable debate on the European Parliament, but has shown how difficult it is to come up with the right reforms. A hard slog will be required rather than a quick fix!
Disclaimer: Francis Jacobs is participating in the debate in his personal capacity only.
12:26 on March 24th, 2010
My first reaction to reading much of Peter’s piece was — ‘huh?!’ Are you really serious that to increase the visibility of the EP we should reduce its powers? Do you really think that moving towards a non-proportional electoral system — and thereby excluding all but the large mainstream parties — would actually improve the quality of representation? I’m sure in my mind that what we need is the opposite of both those suggestions. That is, (1) we need a stronger parliament with more influence over the affairs of the EU (including the budget — the old adage about ‘following the money’ springs to mind); and (2) we need a PR system. I tend to agree with Simon Hix that what might work best in this regard would be low magnitude open list (e.g. the Finnish system).