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:
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
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
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