State of the Union: legislative worries

The European Commission’s English only State of the Union 2017 web page does not offer any updates this morning, but it only means that we have to look elsewhere for important developments.

Digital tax and Tallinn summit

Yesterday the Commission outlined a path towards fair taxation in the digital economy: press release IP/17/3305, questions and answers MEMO/17/3341 and vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis SPEECH/17/3402.

The exploratory communication is already available on the EU’s legal portal Eur-Lex, but at this time only in English:

A Fair and Efficient Tax System in the European Union for the Digital Single Market; Brussels, 21.9.2017 COM(2017) 547 final

The upcoming, 29 September 2017 Tallinn Digital Summit, arranged by the Estonian presidency of the Council of the European Union, offers the heads of state or government an opportunity to ponder the role of taxation as part of Europe’s digital future and the emerging digital single market.  For more detailed information, check the digital summit background paper and the state of play of the digital single market.

Naturally, it is economically important, especially for important American corporations, that the EU-US privacy shield fiction has received a clean bill of health: STATEMENT/17/3342.

Legislative worries

The next section in the State of the Union 2017 brochure (108 pages) is called the Policy Implementation Report (from page 79).

Against the backdrop of the blog post State of the Union: better regulation and enforcement and the corresponding brochure sections, the Policy Implementation Report offers a summary of the situation (page 80):  

Legislative Priorities: State of Play

On 13 December 2016, the European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission agreed on a Joint Declaration on the EU’s legislative priorities for 2017. They highlighted 58 initiatives for which a priority treatment in the legislative process was needed to help address the biggest of the European Union’s economic, environmental and societal challenges. The three institutions committed to ensure substantial progress and, where possible, delivery before the end of 2017. Of these 58 Commission proposals, 11 have already been agreed by the European Parliament and the Council and have therefore been delivered. If there is political will from the co-legislators, 19 initiatives are likely to be agreed by the end of 2017. For the remaining 28 proposals, agreement or substantial progress is unlikely to occur in 2017. For these outstanding proposals, the European Parliament and Council do not always move at the same pace, with one or the other accelerating or slowing progress. Strong political commitment from all EU Institutions will be required to complete these proposals in 2018.

The brochure then summarises progress for each of these 58 priority proposals in a convenient way; you can see the situation almost at a glance.

The presentation is technically beautiful, but the situation is worrying: 28 out of 58 legislative initiatives are stuck in the European Parliament or the EU Council, or both.

For more detailed views you can consult European Parliamentary Research Service EPRS publication The European Commission at mid-term and European Parliaments legislative train schedule (updated to the end of June).

Remaining sections

The sections of the State of the Union 2017 brochure still to cover are:

The European Solidarity Corps: One Year on

Visits to national Parliaments

Citizens’ Dialogues

Letter on the Roadmap for a More United, Stronger and a More Democratic Union  

Ralf Grahn

Lisbon Treaty & European Council: Tasks and powers

Arguably the European Council already is the politically most powerful (influential) body of the European Union. Formally the Lisbon Treaty would retain the description of the European Council’s general tasks almost as they are, but the heads of state or government have increasingly taken over the leading role from the Community institutions. The Treaty of Lisbon would see the European Council among the EU institutions in a formal sense as well (Article 13 TEU).

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General tasks

In the consolidated Treaty of Lisbon, Article 15(1) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), replaces the first paragraph of the current Article 4 TEU. In the amending treaty, the general political guidelines become the general political directions and priorities. The clarification is added that the European Council does not exercise legislative functions (but it comes awfully close) (OJEU 9.5.2008 C 115/23):


1. The European Council shall provide the Union with the necessary impetus for its development and shall define the general political directions and priorities thereof. It shall not exercise legislative functions.


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Role of European Council

Paul Craig and Gráinne de Búrca describe the role of the European Council in a few well chosen sentences (with added explanations and examples):

• The European Council is central to the very development of the Community and Union itself.
• The European Council will often confirm important changes in the institutional structure of the Community.
• The European Council can provide the focus for significant constitutional initiatives that affect the operation of the Community and Union.
• The European Council will frequently consider the state of the European economy as a whole.
• Conflict resolution is another issue addressed by the European Council.
• The European Council plays a role in the initiation or development of particular policy strategies.
• The European is also central in external relations.
• The European Council will also consider new accessions to the Community.

(Source: Paul Craig and Gráinne de Búrca: EU Law ─ Text, Cases, and Materials; pages 56 to 57; Fourth edition, Oxford University Press)


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Communication: Presidency Conclusions


The European Council communicates its political guidelines through Presidency Conclusions, issued at the end of each meeting.

The next ones are expected tomorrow, after the spring European Council.

The European Council does not have the Rules of Procedure necessary according to the Lisbon Treaty (one of the implementing tasks to prepare), but the General Secretariat of the Council has published Rules for the organisation of the European Council (January 2007):



Conclusions

12. The conclusions, which shall be as concise as possible, shall set out policy guidelines and decisions reached by the European Council, placing them briefly in their context and indicating the stages of the procedure to follow on from them.

13. An outline of the conclusions shall be distributed on the day of the European Council meeting in good time for the start of proceedings. The outline shall distinguish clearly between those parts of the text which have previously been approved and which are not in principle subject to discussion and those parts of the text which the European Council is to discuss with a view to reaching final conclusions at the meeting.


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In addition, the European Council reports to the European Parliament.


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Comments

Naturally, being central to includes the limits and limitations imposed by the European Council and by its decision making mostly based on unanimity or consensus.

The European Council is essentially free to set its own agenda, when it acts outside the specific decisions mandated by the treaties. It chooses independently how it deals with the political (non-mandatory) input from the Community (Commission) and intergovernmental (Council) feeding mechanisms. Thereby it becomes the most intergovernmental body of the European Union, sometimes concluding intergovernmental agreements outside the institutional framework, but with direct bearing on it.

On the other hand, most of the formal decisions are still taken by the ‘Community’ institutions.

Since the formal description of the general tasks of the European Council remain almost unchanged under the Treaty of Lisbon, most reports and comments on the amending treaty have concentrated on the obvious changes (President, High Representative, Presidential relations), while the incremental rise of the body have gone almost without remarks.



Ralf Grahn