EUROPEAN COMISSION POWERS

European Commission, Composition, and Power

The?Europen Union?and its institutions are still insufficiently known by European citizens. The aim of this post is to shed more light on the?European Commission, one of the most important pieces of the European Union institutional puzzle, by discussing the fundamentals that are the basis for the existence of the Commission as they are stated in the Treaty on the European Union (TEU), the way its members are chosen and its current composition as well as its real powers.

Article 13 (3) of the Treaty on European Union states that the European Union shall have seven institutions, namely the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the Court of Auditors. Out of these institutions, the European Commission is among the most prominent ones, especially in the eyes of the press and of the European population. Numerous headlines are made every year portraying the Commission as this all-powerful entity that wants to impose its will on the Member States?while also claiming that the European Commissioners are acting only after thinking of their home Member State’s best interest.

Article 17(5) of the TEU states that as of 1 November 2014, the Commission shall consist of a number of members corresponding to two-thirds of the number of Member States, unless the?European Council?decides to alter this number. As can be seen from the current composition of the Commission, the rule that there should be only 18 Commissioners is not applied. The current composition consists of 27 members, each Member State nominating one person as Commissioner.?This is due to the promise made in 2008 by the EU leaders to the Irish electorate when the Treaty of Lisbon needed to be voted in favour of in a referendum before ratification. Irish voters were fearful that their State’s voice and power within the institution would be diminished and that Ireland would lose its influence regarding EU decisions.?For this reason, the leaders of the EU promised that the European Council would decide to retain one Commissioner per Member State even after November 2014.?Therefore, the exceptional circumstance mentioned in Article 17(5) TEU is currently in application.

According to Article 17(5) TEU, two very important members of the Commission are the President of the Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Article 17(7) TEU states that a candidate for the function of President shall be nominated by the European Council after taking into account the elections for the European Parliament and after consultations. The candidate is then voted on by the European Parliament and must obtain a majority of the votes of the European Parliamentarians to be elected President. Otherwise, a new candidate is nominated by the European Council within one month that must go through the same procedure.

During the past two European Parliament elections, the concept of ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ (lead candidate in German) was developed and used. The Spitzenkandidaten procedure was introduced in 2014 with the aim of increasing the political competition and impact of the outcome of the elections. This process implies that every political group participating in the European Parliament election names one person as their lead candidate and the lead person of the group that won most seats in the elections would be named President of the Commission.

?This process was successful in 2014, when Jean-Claude Juncker, the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg, was elected President of the Commission and he was considered the ‘first democratically elected Commission President’.?Juncker was the main candidate of the centre-right EPP (European People’s Party?(Christian Democrats)), the group that obtained the most seats in the European Parliament following the elections.?Although he faced fierce opposition especially from the United Kingdom in the European Council, Jean-Claude Juncker won the support of the European Parliament, was named President of the Commission and the Spitzenkandidaten process was respected.

The same cannot be said in the context of the European Parliament elections of 2019. The elections resulted in the EPP winning the most seats in the European Parliament and their leader, Manfred Weber, was thought to be the main candidate for the position of President of the Commission.?Nevertheless, his appointment never took place and?Ursula von der Leyen, former German Defence Minister and EPP party member, is currently the President of the Commission.?With Weber not managing to obtain the support of the leaders of the Member States?and the criticism towards the Spitzenkandidaten system that came from political leaders, the European Council decided to abandon the procedure and nominated a person they considered most fit for the role. Most of the criticism directed at the Spitzenkandidaten procedure resumed to the fact that the TEU only requires that the European Council takes into account the result of the European Parliament elections and that the voters in the Member States are mostly unaware of the pan-European political alliances between the parties from the Member States and their leaders and therefore, they continue to vote solely thinking of the national parties.

Article 17(6) TEU assigns to the President of the Commission the following powers: to lay down guidelines within which the Commission is to work, to decide on the internal organization of the Commission, ensuring that it acts consistently and efficiently and as a collegiate body and appoints Vice-Presidents (with the exception of the High Representative) from among the members of the Commission. In addition, the President can ask a member of the Commission to resign with only the High Representative having to go through a special procedure to resign. An important element to mention is that the President of the Commission does not have veto powers over Commission proposals or over anything else, meaning that he does not have a final say regarding proposals.?

The second important member of the European Commission is the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. According to Article 18(1) TEU, the European Council with the agreement of the President of the Commission appoints the High Representative. Section 4 of the same Article states that the High Representative shall be one of the Vice-Presidents of the Commission. The role of High Representative is currently held by?Josep Borrell, a Spanish politician, member of the PES, the?Party of European Socialists. Within the Commission, he shall ensure the consistency of the Union’s external action and he is responsible for the responsibilities of the Commission in external relations and for coordinating other aspects of the Union’s external actions.

The other Commissioners shall be proposed by the Council, by common-accord with the President of the Commission. Article 17(3) TEU states that the members of the Commission shall be chosen on the ground of their general competence and European commitment from persons whose independence is beyond doubt. Members of the Commission shall neither seek nor take instructions from any Government or other institution, body, office or entity. The composition of the Commission as a whole is, in the end, voted upon by the European Parliament. The term of office of the Commission shall be five years. Due to Article 17(7) TEU that mentions that the Commission is voted upon as a whole, the European Parliament cannot vote against the participation of an individual Commissioner. Therefore, when the European Parliament is dissatisfied by one of the Commissioners, it threatens to vote against the Commission as a whole and the targeted individuals withdraw from the Commission.?

The tasks and powers of the Commission are mostly set out in Article 17(1) TEU. The Commission must promote the general interest of the EU and take appropriate initiatives to that end, ensure the application of the Treaties and the measures giving effect to them, oversee the application of EU law, execute the budget and manage programmes, exercise coordinating, executive and management functions, ensure the Union’s external representation, except as regards EU foreign policy and initiate the Union’s annual and multi-annual programs. Nevertheless, maybe the most important power of the Commission is given by Article 17(2) TEU: EU legislative acts can only be adopted on the basis of a Commission proposal, except where the Treaties provide otherwise. Therefore, any regulation, directive, and decisions must be initiated by the Commission. Where the Treaties provide so, other acts can also be adopted on the basis of a Commission proposal.

To conclude, the Commission can be considered the brain of the European Union as this is the institution that oversees the European Union functioning as a whole and that has the power to think of new ways to improve the coverage of various areas by EU secondary law in order to improve the life of the all EU citizens, of course to the extent that the Treaties allow it to do so. There is a lot of misinformation and prejudice regarding the Commission spread by the press, social media, and politicians that could be solved by a reading of the Treaties. For example, in the TEU it is stated clearly that the members of the Commission should be independent and should not take instructions from the various Governments. Therefore, the desire of numerous national politicians that the Commissioners think of their home Member State first is in contravention of fundamental EU legislation.