Sir, - A recent headline in your paper "EU draft budget approved" (July 25th) has prompted me to put pen to paper about a common habit of the media, namely, to treat EU institutions as a single entity.
They are not. The EU is made up of three main institutions: the Commission, which proposes legislation and oversees its implementation; the Council, representing the Member States; and the European Parliament, representing the 370 million citizens, which actually adopts the legislation. For much of its history, power was firmly weighted in favour of Council but this imbalance has been considerably redressed in Parliament's favour over recent years. These three institutions are in constant conflict over the policies the EU should pursue - as any system with checks and balances should be.
I fully understand why the media use terms such as the EU, Europe, or Brussels - the three institutions cannot easily be compared to those in a national political system - but I believe that use of these terms leads only to confusion about how the Union actually works.
Take this piece about the 1998 budget. While it does say that a draft budget was agreed, it does not state that this merely represents the Council of Budget Ministers' "opening offer" in the annual budgetary tussle with Parliament which will culminate in December, when the 1998 budget will be signed by the President of the European Parliament. Parliament's 1998 "draft" budget will be adopted in October. How will people make sense of this if they remember a headline from July reading "EU draft budget approved"?
A second example that springs to mind is the ever more common criticism of "Europe" for proposing to abolish duty-free sales in June 1999. While it is true the Commission currently favours abolition, the actual decision to abolish duty-free sales was taken unanimously in 1991 by the (then 12) Finance Ministers (Bertie Ahern included). Parliament has been pressing for a socio-economic study on the implications of this decision since then. I, and a number of MEPs from different political groups and countries, have just set up a working group within Parliament to argue the case for the retention of duty-free sales after 1999. The situation is thus a little more complex than simply claiming that "Europe" is going to abolish dutyfree sales.
While I fully accept that the EU institutions, including the European Parliament, share the main responsibility for bringing the EU closer to the people, I believe everyday understanding could be considerably aided if media reports more clearly specified which of the three main institutions was being covered. - Yours, etc.,
From Bernie Malone, MEP
European Parliament Office, Dublin 2.