EUROPEAN DIARY:Lisbon gave MEPs a much greater say over EU finances. With cash scarce, this will be a bruising battleground, writes ARTHUR BEESLEY
BELGIUM’S NEWLY installed rotating presidency of the EU is bracing for a scuffle with MEPs over the EU’s 2011 budget. Take note. The looming confrontation is but the latest illustration of the European Parliament’s growing might.
At issue are new powers in the Lisbon Treaty which give MEPs a much greater say over the formulation of EU finances. For the first time, the parliament will decide with member states on the entire EU budget. With money scarce, this is going be a bruising battleground.
The €142.6 billion proposal for 2011 was tabled in April by the European Commission. It embraces a 5.3 per cent increase from this year’s budget, something EU governments can ill afford amid a continental austerity drive. Member states already want to cut the increase to some 2.8 per cent, yet the parliament wants a higher figure.
In the middle stands Belgium’s caretaker government, charged with bringing the sides together.
Sources in Belgian government circles have already expressed fear that it might not be possible to reach agreement on the budget by the year-end, leaving the EU with a no-change budget going into 2011. This would have implications for the EU’s nascent diplomatic corps and for the union’s response to the financial crisis. It would also send out a negative signal: after all, Lisbon was designed to make the union work more efficiently.
Hard talk over cash is nothing new in the EU, of course. But the Belgians expect a strident approach from MEPs, particularly as the 2011 talks come shortly before a wider debate on a medium-term financial plan for the years between 2014 and 2021.
MEPs are inclined to agree. “There will be a laying down of markers,” says one.
The 2014-2021 plan, which is already exercising minds in Brussels, will determine how much money the EU spends on agriculture and myriad other policies. Given the parliament’s recent form, there is every reason to expect MEPs to seek a stronger footing in this debate by playing a strategic hand over the 2011 plan.
Time was when the parliament was dismissed as a vacuous talking shop with little real power. Successive treaties, however, have hugely increased its legislative remit. Under Lisbon, the parliament’s power of “co-decision” in the formation of EU law expands to the extent that it is now standardised as “ordinary legislative procedure”.
MEPs have taken every opportunity to bask in their increasing influence. At their plenary session this week in Strasbourg, they are expected to back a new deal on the transfer of European bank account data to US intelligence agents and endorse the structure of the new diplomatic corps.
This is significant because they rejected a prior data-transfer agreement, leading to concessions from the authorities in Washington and a charm offensive on the floor of the parliament from US vice-president Joe Biden. Similarly, the parliament’s main political factions aligned to seek changes from foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to the original plan for the diplomatic corps.
On these questions MEPs were seen to exercise raw power, as they did last winter when rejecting Bulgaria’s first candidate for the incoming European Commission. Likewise, their rejection last month of “traffic light” food labelling to help counter obesity was no small thing. That this vote was seen as a triumph for food industry lobbying may not reflect well on MEPs, but underlines their influence.
In this context, the balance of power within the parliament itself is all the more important. So where does it lie? A report on voting trends since the first plenary session of the current parliament a year ago from a non-partisan agency VoteWatch is instructive. It notes that Fine Gael’s centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) group is a little bigger in relative terms than in the previous parliament, but finds it is “on the winning side less often than before”.
VoteWatch says the EPP has been replaced as “winner” in voting situations by the liberal ALDE group, of which Fianna Fáil is a member. ALDE is also deemed “kingmaker” when the parliament splits along left-right lines.
“ALDE’s record is particularly high on budget (99 per cent), civil liberties (94 per cent) and internal market (94 per cent).”
This may well be for the good from Dublin’s perspective, but the policy areas where ALDE has the lowest winning record are also important for Ireland: fisheries (72 per cent); and agriculture (77 per cent).
Only time will tell whether this will make any significant difference to Ireland’s efforts to protect its share of EU agricultural funding.
More generally – little more than seven months post-Lisbon – it’s still far too early to gauge where the tectonic plates will settle. But moving they are.
The greater the parliament’s say over policy, the less likely the commission is to see its legislative proposals survive intact when they go through an enactment process with EU governments and MEPs. It’s a subtle change, but significant.