Why European Parliament Presidency is not a second-rate issue?

3 December 2016

Linka Toneva, PhD

Is the position of the President of a legislative body ceremonially-representative or influential and does it really matter who occupies it? The answer of this question is univocal. For example, the quality of the legislative process in the Bulgarian parliament is only marginally impacted by its presiding person. The core socio-political decisions in Bulgaria are taken at entirely different places and by rule, outside of the legislative body – emblematic restaurant circles, cabinets of prominent bankers, by sms messages. With all the negative effects on public trust in the representative institution and the quality of democracy in general.

Leadership in the decision-making process however has significant importance when the legislative body is the focal point of complex political interests and representation. This is exactly the case in the European Parliament where the interests of the individual Member States, party families and last but not least, the institutional interest of the EP in regard to the Council and the Commission constantly need to be in a subtle balance. This balance is related to the relationships between the political party groups in the EP. And that’s where the question of leadership comes to the fore.

Through this vantage point we can understand why the personal political decision taken by Martin Schulz to leave the European Parliament has far-reaching effects on the future of the entire Union. A few days ago the President of the European Parliament of the Socialists group announced his intention to return to German national politics and thus indirectly annulled the agreement for power sharing between the two largest party groups in the European Parliament – the so called “grand coalition” between the socialists and the representatives of the European People’s Party, agreed upon in 2014. What quickly followed were candidacies for the presidency position from various political directions and concerns that a long period of political instability is forthcoming in the EP and the decision-making process in the EU in general.

The importance of EP Presidency cannot be properly assessed if we do not take stock of the historical path of the European political process.

The historical circumstances in the eve of the EU integration process in the 50’s make it impossible to formulate the political foundations of the unification – integration, on the contrary, starts from sectoral policies in the heavy industry which cannot have a direct effect on the European publics and be a matter of salient political differences. The search for a genuine guarantee for European peace cannot be a hostage of party competition. Thus, the beginning is placed in the field of the economy. However, today the process, which once started in economic areas, has impacted the very foundations of societal life, the mechanisms of the political machinery, and therefore, it affects our understanding of democracy and of representative governance.

At the very beginning, the European integration is a private, narrow in its content, elitist process, which does not depend on the mass public support, because it only partially affected certain sectoral policies in the economy. But the success of sectoral integration ever more persistently enlarges the scope of collective action and enters deep into the field of societal relations, which are traditionally the prerogative of state sovereignty (for example, home affairs and justice). Moreover, the enlarged scope of implemented policies predetermines enlarged budgetary parameters, thus, increased importance of the European Parliament in the budgetary procedure. In time, EU policies have affected increasingly more and more European citizens of Member States as their addressees. And practically all European citizens as tax-payers. EU citizens are expected to be ever more engaged with the integration process not only as tax-payers, but also as addressees of interventions in the societal life performed by means of legislation. Particularly, since the specific of the limited EU budget which require that the EU is destined to integrate through regulation, rather than through re-distribution.

But nowadays the majority of Europeans do not share a common vision of the type of society they want to establish to support the already functioning institutional backbone in Brussels. Then how can we even think of democracy and political legitimacy in the EU in light of the well-known argument that democracy has the highest chance to succeed in societies with shared political objectives and practices –  when all or at least a large majority of participants in the political system share common political values (this argument is discussed in depth by the forefathers of the political scientific tradition like Alexis de Tocqueville, Gabriel Almond, among others). Thus we find the initial integration dilemma here – the stability of the EU has been based on the refusal to adopt a clear party-political orientation, which today leads to citizen disapproval of the integration policies, which has been noted already a decade ago by Simon Hix.

The notions of democracy are historically constructed and they determine how the democratic procedures and institutions function, but in turn, they are shaping the political practice – what the political tasks are and how policies are implemented to provide solutions to these tasks. The very existence of the EU shakes to certain degrees the concepts of democratic governance which function in the various domestic nation states (and are increasingly becoming an object of discussion themselves). It is precisely the unavoidable variation of national cases that makes a common European solution to the democratic legitimacy problem ever more problematic. EU decision-making is not based on a European demos. Moreover, a large part of the citizenry does not see itself represented by these decisions. (In other words, this is the problem of EU’s “democratic deficit”).

From that point of view, the question of representation within the primary legislative institution of the EU becomes especially important. This is not simply a question of political leadership, but rather a problem of guaranteeing representation of the interests of EU citizens and bearing political accountability for decisions taken in an ever more complex European and global political arena.

The cleavage within the Grand Coalition in the EP in the past days is yet another evidence that Europe urgently needs to rethink its decision-making model towards establishing clear mechanisms for political accountability. The political agenda in the EU today, particularly in the conditions of multi-dimensional crises and global challenges such as terrorism, migration, refugee pressure seem to negate the possibility of consensual politics know in the EU in the past decades. Withholding integration in Europe today calls for clear political responsibility for adopted decisions and real competition for political power among alternative visions for solving EU’s problems. Without such accountability Europeans will continue to see the cause for their common as well as their national problems in the EU, in Brussels. The dangers of such development are becoming increasingly visible today – political populisms, extremisms, impotence of traditional politics to counteract to the new threats for democracy on the continent. From this point of view, the question of the presidency within the European Parliament is hardly a second-rate issue. It is a question of utmost importance for guaranteeing accountable politics and trust in the democracy in the Union.