Many scholars would agree that the European Parliament (EP) is “one of the world’s more powerful elected chambers” . Indeed, the EP has increased greatly in power since it was originally created as a result of the treaty of Rome in 1957. The EP has evolved from a purely consultative body into “the most powerful interstate assembly in history” . It has been suggested by academics such as Simon Hix, and Roger Scully that there has been a “steady increase in the powers of the EP” . They claim that the steady increase started ever since it became an elected institution in 1979, and especially after the EP gained veto power against the entry of new incoming member states with the Single European Act (SEA). Even though it has had a phenomenal enhancement of power, it does “tend to win in some areas but not in others”, and after the SEA, arguably not all treaties have increased its power to the same extent. In this post I will discuss the advancement of the EP’s power as a result of the treaties after the SEA: looking closely at the Maastricht Treaty, the Treaty of Amsterdam, The Treaty of Nice, and the recent Lisbon Treaty. The extent of power gained at each treaty will be analyzed in order to conclude on whether the EP has been a consistent winner after the SEA. It will become apparent that even though the EP has evolved tremendously since the SEA, the increase is not exactly “consistent”.
Before the discussion can be commenced, it is important to briefly explain what I recognize as the EP “winning”. The EP has been an institution with limited powers. Even today, it is a legislative institution without the ability to propose legislation. It has shown “high demand for an increase of influence” , and therefore, “winning” will be defined as the increase of power.
The first treaty to be discussed is the Maastricht Treaty, which was signed on February the 7th in 1992. The treaty indentifies “enhancing the democratic functioning of the institutions of the European Union as one of its objectives” . Since the EP was the only directly elected body of the European Union, this meant that consequentially it was to be emancipated. Article 138 of the treaty explains that a “right of initiative was created, committees of inquiry were reinforced, the right of petition was recognized, and Ombudsman was created” . However, arguably the most important evolvement was the addition of a further legislative procedure. The Treaty of Rome introduced the consultation procedure, which implied that the EP had to be consulted on most legislation by other European institutions, although they could ignore it at their discretion . A second procedure, the so-called co-operation procedure, was introduced in the SEA under article 252 which allowed the EP to have two readings of Legislation, however, “ultimately allowed the commission and the Council a final say” . The Maastricht Treaty however, established a third procedure which to a great extent increased the powers of the EP. The third legislative procedure is the co-decision procedure (I), which “gives the European Parliament a much stronger role than it had hitherto” . Under co-decision (which acts like an extension of cooperation), if the Council and the EP do not agree after two readings, a conciliation committee would be summoned, “where an equal number of representatives from the EP and Council would try to reconcile their differences.” If differences couldn’t be reconciled, then the Council would make an offer to the EP, which could be either accepted or rejected. This meant that the EP had gained more powers, however, on the other hand, “the Maastricht version of this procedure still allowed the council to control the final stages of the legislative game” . Additionally, this procedure would only apply to a limited set of policy areas. Deidre Curtin has hence found that “the co-decision procedure is formally one of co-decision but with the effective balance of power indisputably weighed towards the council” . Arguably, the EP has also developed indirect powers from the treaty. Since the contracts were incomplete , it was able to interpret the treaty to its advantage and “threaten not to cooperate with the governments unless they accepted the EPs interpretations” . Because the EP had the capability to manipulate the other institutions with its interpretations, Simon Hix suggests that this led “EU governments to institutionalize these practices with the Treaty of Amsterdam.” Overall, there is definite increase of the powers of the EP with the Maastricht treaty.
The second treaty to be analyzed is the Treaty of Amsterdam which was signed on the second of October 1997. The treaty made significant changes to the Maastricht Treaty and made a special emphasis on increasing further the power of the EP. It has been argued by many that the EP gained greatly from this treaty. Philip Lynch is of the opinion that “the EP has been portrayed as one of the ‘winners’ as a result of the Amsterdam Treaty” . Similarly, Simon Hix created a model in 2002 which shows a distinct increase in power from the Treaty of Maastricht to the Treaty of Amsterdam . Firstly, legislative procedures have been significantly simplified with the near elimination of the cooperation procedure. The cooperation procedure would only be used for a few cases. Secondly, the co-decision procedure has been balanced and simplified. With the new co-decision procedure (II), processes have been made simpler: A parliament can “directly reject a proposal rather than having to go through the cumbersome intension-to-reject stage” . Also, the ability of the Council to enforce a common position, when there is a lack of agreement between the Council and the EP , has been abolished. Moreover, the co-decision procedure was changed in the treaty in order to provide further balance between the Council and the EP:
“Where the conciliation committee does not approve a joint text, the proposed act shall be deemed not to have been adopted” .
This change makes the final stage of the procedure the conciliation committee and in turn the “EP and the Council are genuine ‘co-legislators’” . The further balance between the Council and the EP has additionally been achieved by the extension of policy areas of co-decision. The policy areas include the employment policy, the internal market and social policy among others. A third development of the Amsterdam Treaty regards the EP’s role in Commission President Nominations. It is not longer simply consulted on the nominee for president, “the Parliament must now formally give its approval” . This is arguably one of the most successful advancements of the treaty, as it allows for direct Scrutiny of the Commission. . Lastly, the EP has also been granted more power of assent and a further extension of the consultation procedure. On the whole, there seems to be a considerable increase in power which has been delegated to the EP, and one could suggest that they have gained further recognition. However, the increased status and powers of the EP fall “short of the European Parliaments Proposal that co-decision become the normal legislative procedure.” Indeed, many important policy areas such as fiscal harmonization and agriculture do not fall under co-decision, but rather under the consultation procedure. Additionally, no serious debate took place in the treaty about the EP’s demands in the budgetary arena . Even though the EP would have wanted more power and responsibility, it gained considerably from the Treaty of Amsterdam.
The Treaty of Nice has been commended for bringing the EP closer to its national counterparts. Even though this is true, if compared to how much was achieved by the Treaty of Maastricht, and especially by the Amsterdam Treaty, the Treaty of Nice has achieved far less. This is probably due to the fact that the treaty concentrated predominately on EU enlargement, rather than tackling the democratic deficit. One of the few positive developments was that the EP was being “placed on an equal footing as the commission, the council and the member states with regard to the right to bring actions for judicial review of community acts by the court of justice.” This is not an outstanding ‘right’; nevertheless, the status of equality with the other governing EU institutions does upgrade its recognition. Moreover, “the treaty of Nice does not specifically address changes to the co-decision procedures” ; nevertheless, the treaty of Nice makes the list of policy areas, which fall under co-decision, even longer under article 137. Nonetheless, only five new policy areas were to be used under co-decision, which is comparatively lower than the fifteen to thirty-eight increase from Maastricht to Amsterdam. The third development of the EP’s powers was that it had further “control over its own role in the Union” for it had increased power over the “passage of the statute on the creation of European Parties” . Finally, the last development was on the increase of public interest which in turn would hopefully result on the increase of powers in later treaties. However, this last evolvement was only a minor one. In fact, the whole treaty was marked by minor developments and disappointment to the EP, for not nearly as many powers were pooled to it as had been done in the previous two treaties. Having covered the Treaty of Nice we can now turn to the Lisbon Treaty.
The Lisbon treaty which was ratified in 2009 gave the EU governments more legal independence. Because of the increase in EU executive power, it was necessary to consequentially increase the powers of the EP for more accountability and EU legitimacy. Hence, the Lisbon Treaty has placed the EP “on an equal footing as lawmaker with the Council” , with only a few exceptions. It is now more powerful in terms of lawmaking, political control and budget. Firstly, the EP plays a larger role in the decision making process because of the new policy areas which were extended to the EP under co-decision. These new areas consist of agriculture policy, justice and home affairs. These extensions can easily be underestimated by Member States, however, they are extremely important policy areas. Indeed, agricultural policy “counts for 40% of the total EU budget” . Moreover, not only has there been an extension of policy areas which will be under co-decision, the Treaty of Lisbon includes an “affirmation of the codecision rule between the European parliament and the Council of Ministers as the ordinary legislative procedure” . Secondly, the EP has more political control. This is because under the treaty, the EP’s assent is necessary for all international accords “in fields governed by the ordinary legislative procedure” . Thirdly, and very importantly, the commission’s budget will be reviewed by the parliament and must be approved in its entirety. Because of these extraordinary advancements to the EP many national leaders such as Romano Prodi and even Gordon Brown have applauded the Lisbon Treaty. Indeed, Andrew Duff said about the Lisbon treaty:
“Today the European Union is turning an important page in its history. This is the birth of a truly parliamentary Europe…the European Parliament itself gains very significant legislative, budgetary and scrutiny powers”.
The Lisbon treaty greatly increases the powers of the EP, especially more than the Treaty of Nice. However, in order for it to reassemble its national counterparts more closely, many more developments need to be made. For instance, the EP at the present moment cannot initiate legislation directly.
Has the European Parliament come out a consistent ‘winner’ from the treaty negotiations following the Single European Act? Discussing the Maastricht Treaty, treaty of Amsterdam, Treaty of Nice and the Lisbon Treaty has shown that overall there is a tremendous increase in EP powers from the SEA up to the Lisbon treaty. Hence one could definitely characterize the EP as a ‘winner’. However, the EP gained more powers in some treaties than in others. The Treaty of Nice was the treaty with more disappointments for a parliament that “has been something of an underdog fighting for recognition” .One could characterize the treaty as quite anticlimactic for the parliament, as the increase in power didn’t match the prior treaties. What this interestingly demonstrates is that a treaty which aimed to tackle enlargement rather than the extension of power to the EU, barely touched the issue of increasing democratic practices and hence found less need to emancipate the EP. Apart from the Treaty of Nice, the other treaties which were discussed showed great signs of ´consistent´ success for the EP.
