lThe European Commission has a head – Ursula von der Leyen – a direction – economic competitiveness with the rest of the world – and a roadmap directly inspired by the ambitious Letta and Draghi reports, and their vision of European sovereignty. All this should portend bold initiatives, in line with the turbulence to come. But this momentum could quickly be slowed down by political games, national rivalries and personal fights, which the Commission is becoming increasingly involved in.
Of the European institutions, it is, initially, the most original: it is not exactly a government, but much more than an administration. Jean Monnet, one of the initiators of European construction, who chaired the High Authority, the predecessor of the Commission, wanted it to be supranational, protected from partisan wars that would take it away from its noble mission: that is, to promote the“general interest of the Union”according to the article of the European treaty that defines it.
This machine for creating Europe has not escaped its own excesses: political blindness, bureaucratic zeal and legal dogmatism. Nor the very human passions that an organ of power arouses. It was therefore essential that the Commission should obtain democratic legitimacy, thanks in particular to the parliamentary hearings of future commissioners and the establishment of a vote of approval. But the Commission must not lose its independence: when he was president, Jacques Delors knew, for example, how to preserve it by remaining equidistant from the Heads of State and Government and the European Members of Parliament, whom he knew how to listen to and put pressure on.
A complex equation
This independence is threatened when the European Parliament, on the one hand, and the Twenty-Seven, on the other, want to form a Commission on their payroll. This is not new, but today the phenomenon has gone too far. There can be no “EPI Commission [Parti populaire européen] »As Manfred Weber, the chairman of this group that came first in the European elections, dared to say. A phrase that sounds like a provocation towards his coalition partners who support the von der Leyen II Commission and, above all, contrary to the spirit that must prevail in this institution that looks after the treaties and not partisan interests, as Nicolas Schmit, the head of the Commission, denounces. Social Democrats in the European elections and a talented outgoing commissioner, ousted in favour of a Luxembourg colleague from the EPP.
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