More backing for Junckers' State of the European Union #SOTEU

After response and feedback to Commission president Junckers' State of the European Union (SOTEU) 2015 address, we turn to an assessment from civil society, another from research and education, as well as the political will of the European Parliament.

Go to the European Commission's SOTEU page for the full version in English or French, or material available in other languages. Check Twitter #SOTEU for old and possible new sources of interest.

Apiceuropa

Finally the Europe of good will we have been waiting for a while, Franco Chittolina concluded in a comment on Apiceuropa: Juncker e l'Europa della buona volontà. The Commission president spoke frankly, repeatedly declaring: ”There is not enough Europe in this Union. And there is not enough Union in this Union.”

The clear and courageous message from the political Commission was directed particularly at the scattered member states with little sense of union and few references to the European founding values and to its tradition of solidarity and reception.

Just a few days after Junckers' speech in Strasbourg, the meeting of the EU home affairs ministers 14 September revealed the deep split among the member states, but also with regard to the Commission and the European Parliament.

Faced with such incompetence from the states, Adriana Longoni fixed her hope on growing numbers of welcoming citizens: La grande faglia dell'Europa.

Maastricht blog

This year's State of the Union was entitled: Time for Honesty, Unity and Solidarity. And the key concepts were: more Europe in the Union, and more Union in Europe.

Aalt Willem Heringa, in the Maastricht blog article The First State of the Union of Juncker, found it appealing that Juncker discussed the major issues, what the EU must stand for and must try to achieve, and not the nitty gritty details, but the broader perspectives.

More problematic is how to get 28 member states to work in the common interest, as well as how to involve EU citizens and national parliaments.

European Parliament

The interior ministers appeared pretty empty-handed and behind the curve, when they emerged from their meeting 14 September 2015. Consequently a new Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council has been called for 22 September to deal with a more equitable settlement of 120,000 refugees. And in anticipation of JHA failure, the members of the European Council (EUCO) have been convened to an informal meeting the next day.

Admittedly, it is easier to opine than to decide, but one week from Junckers' State of the Union address the European Parliament urged the Commission to show strong leadership (press release 16 September 2015).

The encouraging resolution – adopted by 408 votes to 182, with 23 abstentions – is the contribution of the European Parliament to the Commission's Work Programme (CWP) for 2016, to be adopted on the 27 October and to be presented and discussed in the Parliament on 29 October 2015.

The European Parliament resolution of 16 September 2015 on the Commission Work Programme 2016 (provisional version P8_TA-PROV(2015)0323) started by urging the European Commission to use its right of initiative to its full extent in order to give the Union clear leadership, and in particular to deliver the completion of the single market together with the strategic roadmap for economic union, political union and external action.

Next, the Parliament welcomed the focus of the Commission on its ten priorities and emphasised the need to promote the Community interest and keeping the EU united and cohesive.

Besides as an endorsement for the Commission, including its proposals regarding refugees and migration, the resolution can be read as a detailed compilation of almost all the noble (and often contradictory) aspirations at the European level.

Ralf Grahn 

Feedback for Junckers' State of the European Union #SOTEU

Yesterday we looked at response to Junckers' address from three European think tanks. Today we study some more feedback generated by the #SOTEU speech at the European Parliament.

JEF

The editors in chief of the webzines of the Young European Federalists (JEF) - Christopher Powers, Hervé Moritz and Marcel Wollscheid - gave president Junckers' State of the European Union address 9 September 2015 positive feedback for honesty and proposals to manage the refugee crisis, while they noted the failures of the member states of the EU (the comments in English, French or German).

New Europe

According to Alexandros Koronakis, of New Europe, Juncker brought sorely missed new elements into his address:

“We need more Europe in our Union, We need more Union in our Union,” Juncker said, early in his speech. The President brought to the European Parliament hemicycle in Strasbourg one thing that was missing even more: More vision, in our union.

Hope and moral legitimacy were the messages Basil A. Coronakis highlighted:

Inspiring, down to earth, human and European, the State of the Union address of President Jean Claude Juncker has opened to worried citizens a slot of hope. Hope that politics, after so many years of absence, will return to Europe and moral order will be eventually restored. The European Union needs that, it needs moral legitimacy.

APCO

Tiernan Kenny, for the APCO consultancy, noted five takeaways from Junckers' #SOTEU address: 1. relocation of refugees and paths to legal migration; 2. the inadequate and conflicting responses of the member states to the refugee crisis; 3. defence of the Schengen border and action to deal with the root causes of people fleeing conflicts, as well as the need for the euro area to speak with one voice in international financial institutions; 4. praise for solidarity shown on the ground by EU citizens; and 5. the need for any new Greek government to stick to its commitments in the eurozone, plus the will of the European Commission to deregulate and to look for a solution to the concerns of the UK government.

Con acento hispano

Jesús González Mateos posted a ringing endorsement of Junckers' address on his Con acento hispano blog, highlighting action to alleviate the hardship encountered by refugees, as well as investment for full employment and means to curb social dumping. We need more Union and more Europe. We must show the world our capacity for unity, honesty and solidarity.

Ralf Grahn

Response to Junckers' State of the European Union #SOTEU

First, we take a look at the case of the European Commission, as presented in the available materials. Second, we explore the response to the State of the European Union (SOTEU) address from three European think tanks.

State of the European Union debate

The case of president Jean-Claude Juncker and the European Commission is set out in the ”full picture” booklet, now available in English and French:

State of the Union 2015 – by Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission 9 September 2015 [9MB]

État de l'Union 2015 – Discours de Jean-Claude Juncker, président de la Commission européenne devant le Parlement européen le 9 septembre 2015

The broadly favourable response from the political groups and some individual MEPs is included in the multilingual verbatim record of the plenary debate.

Salvador Llaudes

In the post Juncker, el #SOTEU yun año de mandato, on the Blog Elcano, Salvador Llaudes described the commencement of the political and dynamic European Commission under the Spitzenkandidat Jean-Claude Juncker, including his initiatives to solve the Greek crisis and the first and the second refugee crisis. Public opinion is showing some signs of recognition of Junckers' rejection of past 'path dependency' and 'business as usual'.

The EU member states are still divided in this respect, which means that Juncker has to keep working to arrive at a necessary consensus.

Valentin Kreilinger

Valentin Kreilinger, of the Jacques Delors Institut Berlin, began his blog post #SOTEU:Der Kommissionspräsident alsFeuerwhrmann und Architekt by recalling the purpose of the State of the (European) Union address (here the English version, in Annex IV of the inter-institutional agreement):

5. Each year in the first part-session of September, a State of the Union debate will be held in which the President of the Commission shall deliver an address, taking stock of the current year and looking ahead to priorities for the following years. To that end, the President of the Commission will in parallel set out in writing to Parliament the main elements guiding the preparation of the Commission Work Programme for the following year.

The refugee crisis dominated Junckers' address, but he acts as a ”fireman” and an ”architect” to strengthen the ”Community method” regarding the other priorities as well. His architectural aspirations can be seen clearly in the deepening of the economic and monetary union (EMU), building on the five presidents' report.

Right after the SOTEU debate Frans Timmermans and Dimitris Avramopoulos presented the package of proposals to manage the refugee crisis, including resettlement of 120,000 asylum seekers and a permanent relocation system.

Josef Janning

In a Note from Berlin, Josef Janning of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) saw Junckers' address as a missed opportunity, because it failed to confront the slow poison of intergovernmentalism killing the European Union: More Union for the EU.

European media watch political actors struggling with major challenges to the union such as the sovereign debt crisis, the war in Ukraine, and the refugee crisis (each of them clear cases for a common response), and conclude that Europe is failing.

The EU’s underperformance stems from three trends, which seem to reinforce each other: a hybrid deepening, a utilitarian widening, and a fragmentation of the political centre (with description and reasoning about each trend in the blog post).

The refugee crisis is a case in point of the diverging union and the lack of consensus among member states.

Comment

The intergovernmental drift of the European Union towards a confederation of short-sighted and disparate member states is evident, with consequent lack of effective solutions.

For a final verdict the jury can only follow the proceedings until the five years of the European Commission are up. In the interim both Llaudes and Kreilinger attest to Junckers' leadership role.

Janning called Junckers' address a missed opportunity, but analysed the institutional failings of the European Union, viz. the lack of EU powers and the paucity of political will among the member states to act decisively on the ”big issues”.

My question is: What more could the Commission president have done, given the constraints? What can Juncker do in the future?

Like Chernyshevsky and Lenin we can ask, although this time with regard to the European Union: What Is to Be Done?

Ralf Grahn

European Commission's State of the (European) Union #SOTEU full picture booklet

The European Commission's State of the (European) Union web page in English contains a link to a publication described as the ”complete picture”, with a page element hinting at future translations of this extended version of the 9 September 2015 address to the European Parliament.

The full picture booklet (64 pages in all; 9MB) offers president Jean-Claude Junckers' written (authorised) #SOTEU speech text, the Commission's letter of intent to the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, the progress report on the Commission's ten priorities and a transcript of the speech delivered, plus closing remarks (at the end of the plenary debate).

Our general interest

According to Article 17(1) TEU the Commission shall promote the general interest of the Union and take appropriate initiatives to that end.

As I see it, the general interest of the EU is the (enlightened) interest of the citizens of the European Union. In practice, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the EU are translated into the political vision and will of the European Commission, leading to legislative proposals and other initiatives.

In the State of the Union publication we are offered a view of how president Juncker and his Commission - #teamJunckerEU - intend to promote our interests in 2016.

Ralf Grahn

Wanted: Secretary General

One of the recommendations of the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, in his report on the relations between the Council of Europe and the European Union, was to raise the visibility of the Council of Europe by electing a new type of Secretaries General in the future:

“The Council of Europe should move, in electing its Secretaries General, towards choosing leading political figures, whose past work for democratic security has already given them a high and positive profile among their peers and the people of Europe. Ideally, and following the EU’s example, it should envisage electing someone who has already served as a head of state or government.”

The 11 May 2007 Communiqué of the Committee of Ministers responded positively to this proposal in general terms: it was decided to revise the procedure concerning the appointment of the Secretary General in order to enhance the visibility of the work conducted by the Council of Europe and its relations with the European Union.

The high-level group entrusted with examining the follow-up of the Juncker report noted that the next election takes place in 2009 and it proposed that the Committee of Ministers agrees, concerning the procedure for election of the Secretary General, that it will henceforth present to the Parliamentary Assembly candidates who enjoy a high level of recognition, are well-known among their peers and the people of Europe, and have previously served as Heads of State or Government, or held senior ministerial office or similar status relevant to the post, and asks the governments of the member states to present candidates who match this profile.

The pan-European Council of Europe, with 47 member states and 800 million Europeans as beneficiaries, is an inter-governmental organisation, which makes its progress cumbersome even in its areas of excellence: human rights, the rule of law and democracy.

The European Union (including the European Community) has taken peaceful integration to new levels, including attributed legislative and executive powers in a number of fields.

A new type of Secretary General may enhance the visibility of the important work done by the Council of Europe, instil it with some new dynamism and place the relations with the EU on a more equal footing.

The search is on.

Ralf Grahn

Council of Europe and European Union III

The Council of Europe Summit in Warsaw (2005) gave the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Mr. Claude Juncker, the task to prepare a report on the relations between the Council of Europe and the European Union. The report, which Juncker prepared in his personal capacity and presented on 11 April 2006, is called: Council of Europe – European Union: “A sole ambition for the European continent”.

Juncker’s recommendations were:

Open the door to EU accession to the European Convention on Human Rights.
Recognition of EU bodies of the Council of Europe as the Europe-wide reference source for human rights.
The EU and the CoE should refer to the CoE Commissioner for Human Rights in all human rights problems not covered by the existing monitoring and supervisory machinery, and the Commissioner’s Office should be given the resources needed.
The EU Fundamental Rights Agency should deal with respect for fundamental rights solely in connection with the implementation of Community law.
The EU and the CoE should together devise machinery to promote and strengthen democracy, making full use of the existing CoE expert bodies.
The EU and the CoE should place a pan-European legal and judicial area (minimum-standards area) at the service of a Europe without dividing lines.
Co-operation under the EU’s European Neighbourhood Policy should focus on the member states of the CoE and Belarus.
The organisations should develop co-operation in the fields of youth, education, culture and inter-cultural dialogue.
The organisations should stimulate an intra-European inter-cultural dialogue.
The EU and the CoE should make their institutional relations more substantial.
Closer inter-parliamentary ties should be forged.
Future Secretaries General should be chosen among leading European political figures.
Increased involvement of Foreign Ministers is highly desirable.
Introduction of medium-term budget planning ensuring needed resources for the CoE.
EU membership of the CoE by 2010.

Since then, the organisations have underlined their resolve to complete the draft Memorandum of Understanding and their desire to report on action concerning the proposals put forward in the Juncker report at the Ministerial meeting of the CoE in May 2007.

They have agreed that the European Agency for Fundamental Rights shall not encroach on the CoE’s position as the chief source and interpreter of European human rights standards, and they have agreed to negotiate a co-operation agreement with regard to the Agency.

Both organisations find it essential to preserve the effectiveness of the unique system of protection of human rights offered by the European Convention on Human Rights.

In a weeks time we are going to see what the Foreign Ministers of the Council of Europe are able to conclude.

Ralf Grahn