Extending the legislative powers of the European Parliament - now or never?

The European Parliament (EP), the European Council as representative of the national states and the European Commission as genuine representative of the EU formed the original institutional triangle of the EU. During the early years of the European Community (EC), legislative and executive competences were distributed unequally. This mirrored the political reality in Europe. The will of the people was defined by national context and political participation took place on a local, regional and national, but hardly ever on the European level. State representatives gathered with their European colleagues in order to solve problems they could only solve by cooperating. In the beginning, there was the issue of securing peace in Europe. Later, the regulation of the European Single Market became an important matter. By now, it has come to a point where an ever growing number of issues directly linked to each other need to be discussed.

Extending competences – right intention, wrong result

Experts of the national governments and their colleagues within the European commission have always been the crucial actors in these situations. The EP, while directly representing the interests of the European citizens, at the same time struggles to get more power. Until this day, however, there has been a structural division between the EP and the citizens it represents. Therefore, giving additional institutional powers to the Parliament is the wrong step as it would clearly miss its target: to strengthen democracy.

Taking into account the needs of society, it is up to the members of the EP to establish a policy which is capable of addressing a majority in all of Europe. In order to achieve this, they are depending upon the expert knowledge of others. However, civil participation on the European stage remains low. Also, certain political groups manage to communicate and put into effect their interests far more effectively than others. Therefore, increasing the power of the EP would result in the disproportionate influence of a few lobbies on European legislature. The legislative measures resulting from this would benefit the interests of a few and weaken the general European welfare. As long as political participation of our civil society and participation in European elections remain at a low, increasing the power of the EP is the wrong step.

Which approaches are at hand?

A solution to the democratic deficit within the EU is to not increase the competences of the EP, but the possibilities for the citizens to participate. Expressing and forming political ideas in Europe will need to take place on a European level more often and no longer on a national level only. Increasing the transparency of political processes as well as retransmitting popular debates on the European level through mutually accepted personalities and programs need to be the bases of this solution. Keeping in mind the domination of the EP by national political parties, one will realize that this is still far from being reality in Europe. Political parties are still elected via national lists. Also, they still represent national instead of European interests. Therefore, they are unable to change the status quo of nationally defined prejudices and barriers which were once shaped in the old nation states.

What matters is the political culture of Europe

In the EU is many different national concepts of how politics are to be comprehended and how these ideas are to be implemented meet and interact. If the current European political system is to be turned into a real political space, there is one thing it needs more than anything else: time. Only the identification of political issues which require a discussion on a European level (such as energy or environmental issues, immigration policies, defense, employment policies, financial and economic policies…) can lead to the establishment of politics not defined by national bias and differences, but by social criteria. Without this process, it will be impossible to create a European political culture, which in turn is absolutely necessary to form a real European parliamentary democracy. If this can be achieved, the European Parliament will find its role in a natural political way instead of being forced constitutionally.