WHITHER EUROPE: The EU treaty may be dead but that doesn't mean EU reform is impossible, writes Jens-Peter Bonde
I welcome The Irish Times's debate on the future of Europe and would like to know the views of readers on seven concrete proposals for a better European Union. These proposals have been broadly agreed by the SOS Democracy Inter-group in the European Parliament.
1. Let us elect our own commissioner
Today the European Commission is composed of one commissioner from each member state. I worked in the European convention, together with all the Irish representatives, to keep this principle. I collected 123 signatures from 220 possible ones. Of 25 EU governments, 19 supported it. Yet the chairman of the convention, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, decided that the "consensus" of the convention was that there should be fewer commissioners than member states.
The commission has immense powers. Commissioners are the only people in Europe with the right to propose EU laws. No one whom we, the people of Europe, actually elect can propose an EU law.
Let the people of each state elect their own commissioner and make him or her accountable to one's national parliament. The Irish commissioner could be elected by Irish voters and visit the Dáil, say, every Friday, to discuss with TDs and senators how to vote on commission proposals and administer that commissioner's European portfolio vis-à-vis the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.
That would mean that commission decisions would be discussed in Ireland before they are made in Brussels. Irish citizens would have the chance of having a say. And if they are not satisfied with their commissioner, the Dáil would have the possibility of calling for the election of a new commissioner.
2. Make transparency the central rule
In the European convention 200 members signed a proposal to reverse the burden of proof in transparency matters so that all EU documents would be automatically published, unless a specific decision was made to keep them confidential. No other single proposal got such support. Every elected member of the convention supported it. Of 28 governments (also Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania) the representatives of 23 supported it. Still Giscard did not include this most widely popular proposal as part of his "consensus".
The proposal is simple. All EU meetings should be open and all documents should be available unless they are kept confidential on the basis of sound argument and a qualified majority vote.
Today, new EU laws are prepared in secret working groups in the commission. They are listed on my website: www.bonde.com but the names of their members are secret.
Some 85 per cent of EU laws are agreed in effect in the 300 secret working groups under the council. Even as an elected member of the European Parliament I have no right of access to these to follow the greater part of the real legislative process.
The EU Ombudsman, the Court of Auditors and the European Parliament's Budget Control Committee do not have access to all the legislative documents that lead to European taxpayers' money being spent.
We cannot control the EU executive in Brussels as national parliaments can control their governments. We urgently need to make the process of EU legislation more transparent. This could be agreed by the council by simple majority through amending its working rules. The Irish Government should consider an initiative advocating such a transparency reform.
3. Simplify the voting rules for EU law-making
Today Ireland has seven votes on the council. There are 321 votes altogether and a qualified majority is defined as 232 votes. This is a very complicated system which few can remember.
The proposed constitution would make it go from worse to impossible by adding a second vote based on size of national populations. Today, Ireland has 2.18 per cent of the votes on the council. Voting by population size would limit Ireland's influence to 0.88 per cent.
I would substitute a simpler system whereby three-quarters of the member states representing at least half the EU's population should decide things in areas where there is no demand for unanimity.
4. A "nearness-to-citizens" principle, with bottom-up control
Today the EU is governed by some 20,000 laws, amounting to over 100,000 pages of legal text. We should slim down the EU, decentralise substantial powers from Brussels to the national parliaments and let supranational EU law focus on those cross-border issues that we cannot deal with effectively in our own parliaments. Then we would have nothing to lose but everything to gain, since each country might gain a co-influence where otherwise it had no influence.
Every EU law should include an expiry date whereby it would automatically lapse unless it is formally renewed. The national parliaments could decide on the annual catalogue of supranational laws and then invite the commission to propose new laws instead of leaving it to Brussels to decide what Brussels should decide.
5. Flexible co-operation, not steamrolling
Today most EU harmonisation entails "total harmonisation" whereby all laws are made identical in all member states. Why not allow more freedom to the member states?
Most harmonisation of environment, social security, workers' health and consumer standards should be decided as minimum rules allowing the national parliaments to give their voters a higher level of protection.
Many EU standards could be made voluntary instead of compulsory. Thus an Irish grocer could make the common EU standard on size of strawberries a compulsory rule in his trade with a Belgian company. Most Irish farmers could then produce and sell their strawberries without breaching EU legislation they never read about - or need.
6. Enhanced co-operation and variable geometry
I would like an EU in which all European nations can participate. This is not possible with identical rules for all. We need greater flexibility also to allow poor regions and nations to co-operate on a fair basis with rich ones.
There should be methods of enhanced co-operation for those states that want that, and "variable geometry" to allow states that do not want it to do their own thing, for example, to stay genuinely neutral.
7. A co-operation agreement, not a dead constitution
The proposed EU constitution was killed by French voters and buried by Dutch ones. Citizens do not need two constitutions.
National constitutions must be respected by the EU. Instead of a supranational new EU state constitution we should have a simple co-operation agreement, around 50 articles, some 10 pages long.
This is possible. I have done the exercise. The SOS Democracy Inter-group in the European Parliament proposes a working group with an identical number of members in favour and against the proposed constitution to agree a joint document for new common playing rules for a new EU.
We could debate that for a year and then elect a convention to draft a new proposal instead of the Nice treaty and the dead constitution.
At the end of the day the peoples of the EU could then decide on our common future in referendums perhaps held on the same two days in every EU country.
If the guidelines for EU reform are transparency, real closeness to citizens and democracy, most Europeans would happily vote "Yes, please" to that.
• Jens-Peter Bonde has represented Denmark in the European Parliament since 1979. He is president of the Group for Independence and Democracy and the SOS Democracy Inter-group in the European Parliament.
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