The EU Parliament's Strengths, Weaknesses, and Unrealized Potential
ON MAY 30, 2024
By Guest Contributor - Opinion
ON MAY 30, 2024
By Guest Contributor - Opinion
Dick Roche
In the 45 years since the 1st direct elections, the European Parliament has been transformed from an appointed multilingual talking shop to a directly elected assembly. It is also a significantly larger assembly. The Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, and most significantly the Lisbon Treaty all enhanced its role. But ahead of the 10th election next month, former Irish Minister for Europe Dick Roche spoke at an EU Reporter event at the Brussels Press Club, warning that having significant legislative and executive oversight powers is one thing how it harnesses those powers is, however, another matter. Concerns that arise in both areas need to be addressed by the 10th Parliament
In the 45 years since the 1st direct elections, the European Parliament has been transformed from an appointed multilingual talking shop to a directly elected assembly. It is also a significantly larger assembly. The Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, and most significantly the Lisbon Treaty all enhanced its role. But ahead of the 10th election next month, former Irish Minister for Europe Dick Roche spoke at an EU Reporter event at the Brussels Press Club, warning that having significant legislative and executive oversight powers is one thing how it harnesses those powers is, however, another matter. Concerns that arise in both areas need to be addressed by the 10th Parliament
.
Dick Roche speaking at the Brussels Press Club
The Bureaucratization of the Parliament: More Powerful, Less Legitimate
In May 2009 the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) published a working document with the provocative title “The European Parliament - More powerful, less legitimate?”
The study reviewed the position of the parliament going into its 7th mandate. It concluded that the European Parliament had handled the increase in its membership very well.
It took the view that the disruption that some feared from the rapid expansion of the Parliament did not happen that EU expansion and the various treaty changes made the work of the Parliament “more intricate”, that the Parliament had “gained within the institutional triangle of EU institutions” and that “if the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified this trend will be considerably reinforced.”
The study closed with a concern regarding the Parliament’s capacity to capture the public’s interest and a warning that failing to do so would put its “institutional raison d’étre as the democratic pillar of the European Union” – in jeopardy.”
The Lisbon Treaty was ratified and came into effect on 1 December 2009 enhancing the role of the Parliament, changing the balance between consultation and co-decision, extending co-decision to agriculture, fisheries, energy, immigration, structural funds, and intellectual property, areas where Parliament previously had to be consulted, and created new areas where co-decision would apply.
Bureaucratization
CEPS noted that as the work of the Parliament extended and became more intricate the Parliament became more dependent on its committees, increasingly decisions were taken within the Parliament’s committees rather than in Plenary debates, with many decisions taken after only one reading in the Parliament. Post the Lisbon Treaty changes that process accelerated.
In today’s EU Parliament, the primary scrutinization of the legislative proposals received from the Commission takes place in committees. When a legislative proposal is passed to a committee a rapporteur - selected by a complicated ‘points system’ that reflects the size of the political groups in the Parliament - drafts a response that ultimately goes to the Parliament for approval. The political groups appoint ‘shadow rapporteurs’ to ensure their views are represented. The results of the Committee's deliberations in, the form of a resolution and amendments, move to plenary sessions where they are debated and voted on.
In addition to the work done in the Parliamentary Committees, interinstitutional discussions between the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission play a key role in the process. Meetings known as trilogues seek to establish a provisional agreement between the Council and the Parliament with the Commission “mediating” between the co-legislators to help ‘iron out differences. The Parliament is represented by the chair, rapporteur, and shadow rapporteurs of the Committee handling the draft legislation.
In purely administrative terms these arrangements make sense. They allow a diverse range of legislative work to be processed at any one time. They allow differences to be ironed out and compromises to be reached. This enables the Parliament to effectively pass proposals ‘on the nod’. The work has already been done before the plenary votes.
Administrative efficiency however comes with a series of downsides. While the debates of the Parliament and of its Committees are in public much of the detailed work of hammering out agreement is conducted away from the public view. Only a handful of MEPs are involved to any significant degree. Much of the process is opaque.
CEPS cautioned that the ‘bureaucratization’ of the legislative process undermines the Parliament’s role as a public forum and centre for debate and highlighted two potential problems.
First, as the composition of an individual committee may not be representative of the full Parliament, the decisions that come out of a committee will not always reflect the range of opinions and concerns in the parliament as a whole on any particular issue.
Second, when the plenary adopts a set of legislative proposals based on a compromise pre-negotiated in committee there is little chance of a real debate.
Truncating the level of open debate limits the chance of capturing public attention for the work in which the Parliament is engaged. What the public cannot see it does not appreciate.
The arrangements also mean that there is less chance of reflecting the full range of experience of MEPs and incorporating the concerns, aspirations, and wishes of the millions of EU citizens they represent in the legislation that passes the parliament’s scrutiny.
The opaqueness of the process also feeds into cynicism and suspicion about the Parliament.
All of this supports the CEPS concern that “in times of skepticism about further EU integration and growing voter apathy about European elections” the bureaucratization of the legislative “could be detrimental to the parliament and to European integration in the long run.”
Those observations made in May 2009 still apply in May 2024.
Relinquishing Control.
In addition to its role as a co-legislator, the EU Parliament is charged with the task of supervising the work of the Commission and other EU bodies.
The treaties provide that Parliament approves the appointment of the Commission President, approves and the European Commission, can censure the Commission and ultimately dismiss it.
The Commission is required to submit reports to the Parliament including an annual report on EU activities and the EU budget. The Commission President gives an annual State of the Union address to the Parliament.
The Commission can also be requested by the Parliament to initiate new policies; whether it chooses to do so is a matter for the Commission.
While this looks impressive on paper the amount of day-to-day control exercised by the Parliament over the Commission is limited. That control is further diminished by striking passivity towards the Commission. This point is demonstrated by the Parliament’s curious approach to Parliamentary Questions (PQs).
PQs are widely regarded as a device to hold governments and executive agencies to account on day-to-day issues. While other Parliaments robustly defend their PQ systems that is not the case with the EU Parliament.
Over the last decade, there has been an active attempt to suppress the PQ system in the EU parliament.
Three categories of parliamentary questions are taken in the EU Parliament: questions for oral answer with debate, oral questions taken in Question Time, and questions for written answer.
Questions for ‘oral answer with debate’ are dealt with in the Parliament’s plenary sessions. These questions must be submitted by a Parliament Committee, a political group, or by 40 MEPs.
Question time, so often the focus of public attention in national Parliaments is, in the case of the EU Parliament, a very constrained affair. A maximum of 90 minutes during Parliament plenary sessions is allocated to question time. During each question time PQs on “one or more specific horizontal themes” are taken. The themes on which questions will be taken are determined one month in advance of the part-session by the Parliament’s Conference of Presidents.
The text of oral questions that are cleared to go on the agenda must be given to the Commission at least one week before the sitting of the Parliament on which they are to be taken. For questions to the Council, the notice period is three weeks.
MEPs who are selected to participate in oral question time, have one minute to put their questions and are given 30 seconds for a supplementary question arising on the Commission’s response. The Commission has two minutes to reply to the question and a further two minutes to respond to any supplementary question.
The vast majority of questions handled in the EU Parliament are questions for written response.
Written questions may be placed by an individual or a group of MEPs. Questions are subject to screening within the Parliament itself before being submitted to the Commission for processing. MEPs may not raise issues on which “the Commission has already informed Parliament” on the subject matter of the question.
Members of the European Parliament are allowed to submit a maximum of 20 parliamentary questions, written or oral, over a “rolling three-month period”. One PQ per month may be designated for ‘priority’ answer Priority questions are supposed to be answered within three weeks. Non-priority questions are supposed to be answered in six weeks.
Slow and Slipshod Responses
While the submission of PQs is subject to a series of limitations, arrangements governing how the Commission deals with PQs are lax to the point of being virtually non-existent.
Replies to “priority questions” are supposed to be given within three weeks. This deadline is honoured in the breach than the observance, particularly where the subject matter is ‘embarrassing’ for the Commission.
A priority question submitted by four MEPs in July 2022 on the sensitive issue of text messages between Commission President von der Leyen Commission and the CEO of Pfizer was not answered until March 2023.
A priority question about suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement submitted by two Irish MEPs in November 2023 did not receive a response for almost six months.
Non-priority written questions are supposed to be answered in six weeks. It was recently calculated that as many as ninety percent of all such PQs are answered late.
In addition to a casual approach to meeting the deadlines for delivering responses to PQs, the Commission adopts a laissez-faire response to the content of replies. PQ responses are criticized as dodging the issues raised, as perfunctory, incomplete, misleading, dismissive, not infrequently bordering on disrespectful, and occasionally simply false.
All of these points were demonstrated in the Commission’s responses to a series of PQs lodged by MEPs from across the political spectrum concerning a report produced in March 2023 by the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, EIOPA discussed recently in an article in EU Reporter
Dick Roche speaking at the Brussels Press Club
The Bureaucratization of the Parliament: More Powerful, Less Legitimate
In May 2009 the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) published a working document with the provocative title “The European Parliament - More powerful, less legitimate?”
The study reviewed the position of the parliament going into its 7th mandate. It concluded that the European Parliament had handled the increase in its membership very well.
It took the view that the disruption that some feared from the rapid expansion of the Parliament did not happen that EU expansion and the various treaty changes made the work of the Parliament “more intricate”, that the Parliament had “gained within the institutional triangle of EU institutions” and that “if the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified this trend will be considerably reinforced.”
The study closed with a concern regarding the Parliament’s capacity to capture the public’s interest and a warning that failing to do so would put its “institutional raison d’étre as the democratic pillar of the European Union” – in jeopardy.”
The Lisbon Treaty was ratified and came into effect on 1 December 2009 enhancing the role of the Parliament, changing the balance between consultation and co-decision, extending co-decision to agriculture, fisheries, energy, immigration, structural funds, and intellectual property, areas where Parliament previously had to be consulted, and created new areas where co-decision would apply.
Bureaucratization
CEPS noted that as the work of the Parliament extended and became more intricate the Parliament became more dependent on its committees, increasingly decisions were taken within the Parliament’s committees rather than in Plenary debates, with many decisions taken after only one reading in the Parliament. Post the Lisbon Treaty changes that process accelerated.
In today’s EU Parliament, the primary scrutinization of the legislative proposals received from the Commission takes place in committees. When a legislative proposal is passed to a committee a rapporteur - selected by a complicated ‘points system’ that reflects the size of the political groups in the Parliament - drafts a response that ultimately goes to the Parliament for approval. The political groups appoint ‘shadow rapporteurs’ to ensure their views are represented. The results of the Committee's deliberations in, the form of a resolution and amendments, move to plenary sessions where they are debated and voted on.
In addition to the work done in the Parliamentary Committees, interinstitutional discussions between the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission play a key role in the process. Meetings known as trilogues seek to establish a provisional agreement between the Council and the Parliament with the Commission “mediating” between the co-legislators to help ‘iron out differences. The Parliament is represented by the chair, rapporteur, and shadow rapporteurs of the Committee handling the draft legislation.
In purely administrative terms these arrangements make sense. They allow a diverse range of legislative work to be processed at any one time. They allow differences to be ironed out and compromises to be reached. This enables the Parliament to effectively pass proposals ‘on the nod’. The work has already been done before the plenary votes.
Administrative efficiency however comes with a series of downsides. While the debates of the Parliament and of its Committees are in public much of the detailed work of hammering out agreement is conducted away from the public view. Only a handful of MEPs are involved to any significant degree. Much of the process is opaque.
CEPS cautioned that the ‘bureaucratization’ of the legislative process undermines the Parliament’s role as a public forum and centre for debate and highlighted two potential problems.
First, as the composition of an individual committee may not be representative of the full Parliament, the decisions that come out of a committee will not always reflect the range of opinions and concerns in the parliament as a whole on any particular issue.
Second, when the plenary adopts a set of legislative proposals based on a compromise pre-negotiated in committee there is little chance of a real debate.
Truncating the level of open debate limits the chance of capturing public attention for the work in which the Parliament is engaged. What the public cannot see it does not appreciate.
The arrangements also mean that there is less chance of reflecting the full range of experience of MEPs and incorporating the concerns, aspirations, and wishes of the millions of EU citizens they represent in the legislation that passes the parliament’s scrutiny.
The opaqueness of the process also feeds into cynicism and suspicion about the Parliament.
All of this supports the CEPS concern that “in times of skepticism about further EU integration and growing voter apathy about European elections” the bureaucratization of the legislative “could be detrimental to the parliament and to European integration in the long run.”
Those observations made in May 2009 still apply in May 2024.
Relinquishing Control.
In addition to its role as a co-legislator, the EU Parliament is charged with the task of supervising the work of the Commission and other EU bodies.
The treaties provide that Parliament approves the appointment of the Commission President, approves and the European Commission, can censure the Commission and ultimately dismiss it.
The Commission is required to submit reports to the Parliament including an annual report on EU activities and the EU budget. The Commission President gives an annual State of the Union address to the Parliament.
The Commission can also be requested by the Parliament to initiate new policies; whether it chooses to do so is a matter for the Commission.
While this looks impressive on paper the amount of day-to-day control exercised by the Parliament over the Commission is limited. That control is further diminished by striking passivity towards the Commission. This point is demonstrated by the Parliament’s curious approach to Parliamentary Questions (PQs).
PQs are widely regarded as a device to hold governments and executive agencies to account on day-to-day issues. While other Parliaments robustly defend their PQ systems that is not the case with the EU Parliament.
Over the last decade, there has been an active attempt to suppress the PQ system in the EU parliament.
Three categories of parliamentary questions are taken in the EU Parliament: questions for oral answer with debate, oral questions taken in Question Time, and questions for written answer.
Questions for ‘oral answer with debate’ are dealt with in the Parliament’s plenary sessions. These questions must be submitted by a Parliament Committee, a political group, or by 40 MEPs.
Question time, so often the focus of public attention in national Parliaments is, in the case of the EU Parliament, a very constrained affair. A maximum of 90 minutes during Parliament plenary sessions is allocated to question time. During each question time PQs on “one or more specific horizontal themes” are taken. The themes on which questions will be taken are determined one month in advance of the part-session by the Parliament’s Conference of Presidents.
The text of oral questions that are cleared to go on the agenda must be given to the Commission at least one week before the sitting of the Parliament on which they are to be taken. For questions to the Council, the notice period is three weeks.
MEPs who are selected to participate in oral question time, have one minute to put their questions and are given 30 seconds for a supplementary question arising on the Commission’s response. The Commission has two minutes to reply to the question and a further two minutes to respond to any supplementary question.
The vast majority of questions handled in the EU Parliament are questions for written response.
Written questions may be placed by an individual or a group of MEPs. Questions are subject to screening within the Parliament itself before being submitted to the Commission for processing. MEPs may not raise issues on which “the Commission has already informed Parliament” on the subject matter of the question.
Members of the European Parliament are allowed to submit a maximum of 20 parliamentary questions, written or oral, over a “rolling three-month period”. One PQ per month may be designated for ‘priority’ answer Priority questions are supposed to be answered within three weeks. Non-priority questions are supposed to be answered in six weeks.
Slow and Slipshod Responses
While the submission of PQs is subject to a series of limitations, arrangements governing how the Commission deals with PQs are lax to the point of being virtually non-existent.
Replies to “priority questions” are supposed to be given within three weeks. This deadline is honoured in the breach than the observance, particularly where the subject matter is ‘embarrassing’ for the Commission.
A priority question submitted by four MEPs in July 2022 on the sensitive issue of text messages between Commission President von der Leyen Commission and the CEO of Pfizer was not answered until March 2023.
A priority question about suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement submitted by two Irish MEPs in November 2023 did not receive a response for almost six months.
Non-priority written questions are supposed to be answered in six weeks. It was recently calculated that as many as ninety percent of all such PQs are answered late.
In addition to a casual approach to meeting the deadlines for delivering responses to PQs, the Commission adopts a laissez-faire response to the content of replies. PQ responses are criticized as dodging the issues raised, as perfunctory, incomplete, misleading, dismissive, not infrequently bordering on disrespectful, and occasionally simply false.
All of these points were demonstrated in the Commission’s responses to a series of PQs lodged by MEPs from across the political spectrum concerning a report produced in March 2023 by the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, EIOPA discussed recently in an article in EU Reporter
[ https://www.eureporter.co/world/romania/2024/01/25/keeping-the-european-parliament-in-the-dark-about-eiopa/
Between March 2023 and February 2024, the Commission answered twelve questions related to EIOPA. Other questions are understood to have been discouraged during the ‘vetting process’ on the basis that the issue had already been dealt with.
Virtually all the replies given on the issue failed to meet the six-week deadline. All the responses given could be described as inadequate. Links cited by the Commission in some of the PQ replies led to documents that were either ‘access denied’ or had key paragraphs redacted. Access to the EIOPA report itself was denied. The replies given were defensive, evasive, or both.
There can be little doubt that the tenor and content of the PQ responses given would not be tolerated in any national parliament.
Having fielded questions for months, the Commission confessed that it had not seen the EIOPA report. Replying to a question as to how it referenced concerns expressed in a report, that it had not seen, the Commission suggested that “it could be inferred that EIOPA” had concerns in the case. The details of those concerns or their basis were not communicated in any of the answers.
It is hard to imagine members of any national parliament having been stonewalled for months on questions about an executive agency accepting a response that a key report had not seen without some pushback.
A complaint was made to the Ombudsman about the Commission’s handling of PQs in this case. This got nowhere. The Ombudsman took the view that the way the Commission handles PQs is a political rather than an administrative matter and, therefore, not be the subject of an examination by the Ombudsman's office. In short, the Commission could prevaricate, mislead, or even lie in responding to a Parliamentary question and the Ombudsman could not examine the case.
The Decline of PQs
There has been a marked decline in the number of PQs in the EU Parliament over the last decade. That decline has been particularly steep during the mandate of the outgoing Parliament.
The number of PQs dealt with in the EU Parliament peaked at just under 15,500 in 2015. Through the mandates of the 8th and 9th Parliaments, the number of questions dealt with dropped precipitously. In 2023 only 3,703 questions were answered in the European Parliament.
In the four years 2020 to 2023, just under 20,500 Parliamentary Questions were dealt with in by the European Parliament. By way of comparison, between February 2020 and November 2023 over 200,000 parliamentary questions were dealt with in the Dail Eireann, the Irish Parliament.
Remarkably, the dramatic decline in PQs in the EU Parliament has attracted little public attention. More remarkably still it has not been the subject of any pushback in the EU Parliament itself.
While the extraordinary passivity within the EU Parliament to the decline of the PQ as a device for assuring executive answerability is striking, even more remarkable is the fact that part of the driving force for ‘killing off’ parliamentary questions has come from within the EU Parliament itself.
The Draft Rules of Procedure circulated in 2014 contained a reference to maintaining the overall volume of questions within “reasonable limits.”
An internal memo produced in the Parliament at the same time by a highly respected senior staff member of the parliament stressed the need to “reduce access” in some MEP activities, submitting written questions amongst them.
In April 2015 a parliamentary question tabled by a S&D Member who served as a shadow rapporteur on the 2016 EU budget referenced the fact that “the number of written questions submitted by MEPs to the Commission is constantly on the rise” and suggested that “the flood of written questions must be a huge burden on the Commission”. Rather bizarrely, the MEP recorded that he had “managed to persuade the main political groups to reach a consensus on the matter” of reducing the number of parliamentary questions. [ https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-8-2015-006180_EN.html].
Responding to the PQ Commissioner Timmermans referenced the “great importance” that the Commission attached to “the Parliament’s right of democratic scrutiny”. The Commissioner also referred to the “ever-increasing number of questions (some 13,100 in 2013, 10,800 in 2014, an election year and 6,000 in the first four months of 2015) does entail considerable costs for the Commission.”
Mr Timmermans put the cost per question in 2015 at €490 per PQ. He explained that because the Commission operated “on the basis of the principle of collegiality” the reply to each written question had to go “through a process of attribution, drafting, validation, inter-service coordination, collegiate endorsement, and finally translation.”
Based on each question costing €490 to answer the 15,489 questions tabled that year, would cost over €7.5 million a not inconsiderable figure but a small fraction of the cost of running the Commission.
The Democratic Cost.
The 2009 CEPS paper concluded that if the Treaty of Lisbon was ratified the Parliament would gain further ground within “the institutional triangle of EU institutions”.
Thanks to the Irish Referendum of 2 October 2009 the Treaty of Lisbon was ratified. It came into effect in December 2009.
As mentioned at the outset, the CEPS paper cautioned that if the Parliament - having gained ground with the ratification of the Lisbon - failed to capture the public’s interest at the same time its institutional raison d’être as the democratic pillar of the European Union would be in jeopardy.
Almost fifteen years after the Lisbon Treaty came into effect the dynamic between the Commission and the Parliament remains firmly tilted towards the former.
The process of bureaucratization within the Parliament has continued apace as has the evisceration of the Parliament’s capacity to call the Commission to account.
A neutered Parliament comes with a significant cost. All seven EU Parliament elections between 1984 and 2014 saw a decline in voter turnout.
When the first direct elections were held in 1979 the turnout of voters was 63%. Turnout dropped in each of the following seven elections bottoming out at under 43% in 2014. In 2019 that rose to almost 51%. While significant, the 2019 increase in turnout still meant that over 49% of voters did not cast their vote.
The Spring 2023 Eurobarometer recorded voters’ interest in European elections as limited. Only half of those polled believed that voting in EU parliament elections mattered, two-thirds believed that voting in national elections mattered. The Spring 2024 Eurobarometer provided more optimistic figures reporting that 71% of voters across the EU said that they are likely to vote in this June’s elections. If anythingapproaching that number turns out it will be a truly remarkable turnaround. We will know in just two weeks.
Europe faces a series of challenges over the next five years, the mandate of the incoming Parliament. If the EU is to preach about democracy it should be seen to practice it. A strong and vibrant European Parliament representing the diversity that is Europe will be an important message for European citizens and for the wider world.
Dick Roche is a former Irish Minister for European Affairs. In that role, he played a decisive role in the Irish referendum that ratified the Lisbon Treaty.
Between March 2023 and February 2024, the Commission answered twelve questions related to EIOPA. Other questions are understood to have been discouraged during the ‘vetting process’ on the basis that the issue had already been dealt with.
Virtually all the replies given on the issue failed to meet the six-week deadline. All the responses given could be described as inadequate. Links cited by the Commission in some of the PQ replies led to documents that were either ‘access denied’ or had key paragraphs redacted. Access to the EIOPA report itself was denied. The replies given were defensive, evasive, or both.
There can be little doubt that the tenor and content of the PQ responses given would not be tolerated in any national parliament.
Having fielded questions for months, the Commission confessed that it had not seen the EIOPA report. Replying to a question as to how it referenced concerns expressed in a report, that it had not seen, the Commission suggested that “it could be inferred that EIOPA” had concerns in the case. The details of those concerns or their basis were not communicated in any of the answers.
It is hard to imagine members of any national parliament having been stonewalled for months on questions about an executive agency accepting a response that a key report had not seen without some pushback.
A complaint was made to the Ombudsman about the Commission’s handling of PQs in this case. This got nowhere. The Ombudsman took the view that the way the Commission handles PQs is a political rather than an administrative matter and, therefore, not be the subject of an examination by the Ombudsman's office. In short, the Commission could prevaricate, mislead, or even lie in responding to a Parliamentary question and the Ombudsman could not examine the case.
The Decline of PQs
There has been a marked decline in the number of PQs in the EU Parliament over the last decade. That decline has been particularly steep during the mandate of the outgoing Parliament.
The number of PQs dealt with in the EU Parliament peaked at just under 15,500 in 2015. Through the mandates of the 8th and 9th Parliaments, the number of questions dealt with dropped precipitously. In 2023 only 3,703 questions were answered in the European Parliament.
In the four years 2020 to 2023, just under 20,500 Parliamentary Questions were dealt with in by the European Parliament. By way of comparison, between February 2020 and November 2023 over 200,000 parliamentary questions were dealt with in the Dail Eireann, the Irish Parliament.
Remarkably, the dramatic decline in PQs in the EU Parliament has attracted little public attention. More remarkably still it has not been the subject of any pushback in the EU Parliament itself.
While the extraordinary passivity within the EU Parliament to the decline of the PQ as a device for assuring executive answerability is striking, even more remarkable is the fact that part of the driving force for ‘killing off’ parliamentary questions has come from within the EU Parliament itself.
The Draft Rules of Procedure circulated in 2014 contained a reference to maintaining the overall volume of questions within “reasonable limits.”
An internal memo produced in the Parliament at the same time by a highly respected senior staff member of the parliament stressed the need to “reduce access” in some MEP activities, submitting written questions amongst them.
In April 2015 a parliamentary question tabled by a S&D Member who served as a shadow rapporteur on the 2016 EU budget referenced the fact that “the number of written questions submitted by MEPs to the Commission is constantly on the rise” and suggested that “the flood of written questions must be a huge burden on the Commission”. Rather bizarrely, the MEP recorded that he had “managed to persuade the main political groups to reach a consensus on the matter” of reducing the number of parliamentary questions. [ https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-8-2015-006180_EN.html].
Responding to the PQ Commissioner Timmermans referenced the “great importance” that the Commission attached to “the Parliament’s right of democratic scrutiny”. The Commissioner also referred to the “ever-increasing number of questions (some 13,100 in 2013, 10,800 in 2014, an election year and 6,000 in the first four months of 2015) does entail considerable costs for the Commission.”
Mr Timmermans put the cost per question in 2015 at €490 per PQ. He explained that because the Commission operated “on the basis of the principle of collegiality” the reply to each written question had to go “through a process of attribution, drafting, validation, inter-service coordination, collegiate endorsement, and finally translation.”
Based on each question costing €490 to answer the 15,489 questions tabled that year, would cost over €7.5 million a not inconsiderable figure but a small fraction of the cost of running the Commission.
The Democratic Cost.
The 2009 CEPS paper concluded that if the Treaty of Lisbon was ratified the Parliament would gain further ground within “the institutional triangle of EU institutions”.
Thanks to the Irish Referendum of 2 October 2009 the Treaty of Lisbon was ratified. It came into effect in December 2009.
As mentioned at the outset, the CEPS paper cautioned that if the Parliament - having gained ground with the ratification of the Lisbon - failed to capture the public’s interest at the same time its institutional raison d’être as the democratic pillar of the European Union would be in jeopardy.
Almost fifteen years after the Lisbon Treaty came into effect the dynamic between the Commission and the Parliament remains firmly tilted towards the former.
The process of bureaucratization within the Parliament has continued apace as has the evisceration of the Parliament’s capacity to call the Commission to account.
A neutered Parliament comes with a significant cost. All seven EU Parliament elections between 1984 and 2014 saw a decline in voter turnout.
When the first direct elections were held in 1979 the turnout of voters was 63%. Turnout dropped in each of the following seven elections bottoming out at under 43% in 2014. In 2019 that rose to almost 51%. While significant, the 2019 increase in turnout still meant that over 49% of voters did not cast their vote.
The Spring 2023 Eurobarometer recorded voters’ interest in European elections as limited. Only half of those polled believed that voting in EU parliament elections mattered, two-thirds believed that voting in national elections mattered. The Spring 2024 Eurobarometer provided more optimistic figures reporting that 71% of voters across the EU said that they are likely to vote in this June’s elections. If anythingapproaching that number turns out it will be a truly remarkable turnaround. We will know in just two weeks.
Europe faces a series of challenges over the next five years, the mandate of the incoming Parliament. If the EU is to preach about democracy it should be seen to practice it. A strong and vibrant European Parliament representing the diversity that is Europe will be an important message for European citizens and for the wider world.
Dick Roche is a former Irish Minister for European Affairs. In that role, he played a decisive role in the Irish referendum that ratified the Lisbon Treaty.
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