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The European Commission As a Strategic Agenda Setter: the Case of the Convention on the Future of Europe and the Ensuing Ratification Crisis

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The European Commission As a Strategic Agenda Setter: the Case of the Convention on the Future of Europe and the Ensuing Ratification Crisis CHAPTER 16 THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AS A STRATEGIC AGENDA SETTER: THE CASE OF THE CONVENTION ON THE FUTURE OF EUROPE AND THE ENSUING RATIFICATION CRISIS Edward Moxon-Browne INTRODUCTION: THE ROLE OF THE COMMISSION This chapter analyses the role of the European Commission as a strategic agenda setter during the Convention on the Future of Europe (2003), and its efforts to provide leadership for the EU during the ratification period that followed the signing of the subsequent Treaty. These events must be put in context. In the 1990s, the Commission had already begun its decline from the heady days of the Single Market Programme where it had played a prominent role in maximising synergies of opinion between leading EU governments as well as needs of major industrial firms within Europe. The Convention on the Future of Europe marks one milestone in this decline and our purpose here is to analyse the underlying fissures and failings that led to the Commission’s marginalisation. However, there were other milestones along the way. Although the first half of the Jacques Delors Presidency had been marked by major initiatives led by the Commission in fields of monetary union, and the negotiations for a new European Union, the second half (1990-1995) was less successful. In foreign policy, procedures were devised that assured control by national governments, at the expense of the Commission, and the rejection of the TEU by Denmark ushered in a decade during which public opinion in the EU was generally unwilling to extend the ‘permissive consensus’ that had underwritten European integration heretofore. After the visionary years of Delors, his successor was chosen as a ‘safe pair of hands.’ In fact, under Jacques Santer the Commission’s prestige declined further and ended ignominiously with the resignation of the entire College in the wake of a Committee Report (instigated by the European Parliament) alleging fraud, mismanagement and nepotism. Santer’s successor, Romano Prodi, can be credited with managing a talented team but his own failings as a political communicator led to the Commission being unable to coordinate itself. “The most charitable comments that could be made about Prodi himself were that he mostly avoided interference in the work of a highly competent College” (Peterson and Shackleton, 2006, 87). The Convention on the Future of Europe provided the most appropriate memorial for the Prodi Commission: some brilliant individual performances 344 EDWARD MOXON-BROWNE but, collectively, by the end of the Convention, the institution had been effectively marginalised. Leadership has been identified as a key component in determining the success or otherwise of a Commission. Commissioner behaviour is subjected to competing roles but in circumstances where leadership is lacking, portfolio loyalties will tend to win out over other attachments such as party political affiliations or national identity (Egeberg, 2005). In the context of the Convention, it is arguable that the two Commission representatives were called on to perform at least two roles: one involving promotion of the institutional interest; and the other chairing sectoral working parties. It is this episode that we examine here. A ‘PROTAGONIST OF THE COMMON INTEREST’? In an early and seminal analysis of the European Commission, it was argued that the institution ought to be partisan and a protagonist (Coombes, 1970, 78) in the cause of European integration. Obviously, this opens up the question of what type of integration is being sought and on whose behalf the Commission is, or ought to be, partisan. Before focusing on the role of the European Commission as strategic agenda setter, it is worth considering the broader context in which this unique institution was conceived. Among several key roles attributed to the Commission, ideas relating to it as ‘conscience’ of the European project, and the initiator of new policies seem most germane to our purpose. As ‘conscience,’ the Commission has assumed the task of looking above and beyond the narrowly-focused interests of the Member States towards a broader collective vision of where Europe ought to be heading. Linked to this view, is the idea that the Commission, often alone, is a protagonist for European integration especially at times when the process is endangered by either economic stagnation or national chauvinism. As initiator of new policies, we can usefully distinguish between the Commission’s duty to draft legislation for adoption by the Council and Parliament within fairly narrow legislative constraints set out by the Treaties. More broadly, however, the Commission can also be a type of think tank that periodically generates grand visions such as the single market or a common currency. That these grand designs are often the product of multiple inspirations stretching well beyond the Berlaymont building matters little: what does matter is that the Commission is the cauldron within which new ideas are brewed. What links the Commission’s role as policy initiator with that of ‘conscience’ is perhaps the idea of consensus. A key objective of the Commission, if its ideas are to be taken seriously, is to craft consensus. This consensus is best built at the interface between national preferences and an ideal-type project couched by the Commission in the language of compromise and creativity. Sometimes, the great visionary ideas that the .
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