Rush to meet post elections
The European Parliament (EP) and European Council are in an unseemly rush to see who can meet first after the EP election results are announced on Sunday 25 May. Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council, kicked off the race by announcing he would bring together national leaders on the evening of Tuesday 27 May to take stock of the results. The Parliament read this as a pre-emptive strike to take the initiative away from them on the nomination process for the next Commission President and duly announced an informal meeting of their own party leaders the same morning. This institutional tug of war bodes ill for co-operation between the two institutions, despite Van Rompuy’s best efforts to avoid the “game of rivalries”. What is clear from both sides is an understanding that no candidate will be considered unless they can show they can gain a winning majority in both institutions. To download your very own interactive guide to Member State candidates for MEP and Commission President, please visit VoteEurope.
Four day sessions to remain in Strasbourg
Hardly a Strasbourg session goes by without some new tactic from one side or the other of the great debate on where the European Parliament should sit. The latest ploy from Ashley Fox, the British Tory MEP who leads the single seat campaign, was to suggest reducing the Strasbourg week from four to three days. Fridays had already been dropped long ago. EP President Martin Schulz ruled these amendments inadmissible but Fox demanded a legal opinion. The ruling could only have been dreamt up by lawyers – yes the amendments were inadmissible but only because they had no written justification. If only he had written “I’m fed up going to Strasbourg every month” he might have had them adopted.
New sub-committee to deal with Eurozone issues
The European Parliament is talking about creating a new sub-committee dealing with Eurozone issues in order to lighten the burden on the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) and allow more time for scrutiny of decisions taken in the Eurozone. Legislative decision making will remain with ECON but this has done nothing to lessen the hostility to the proposal from British Conservative MEPs who fear that decisions affecting the city of London will be taken out of their hands. However it seems as if membership of the sub-committee will not be restricted to MEPs from countries using the Euro and this proposal still falls far short of the ideas floated recently by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble for a full parliament of the Eurozone.
Three binding climate targets
The European Commission was attacked this week for its short sightedness and lack of ambition in setting climate and energy targets for 2030. In contrast to the 40% emissions target and 27% EU-wide renewables target adopted by the Commission on 22 January, the Parliament has opted for another three binding targets in 2030 – 40% emissions reduction, 40% energy efficiency and 30% renewables. The plenary debate however illustrated quite how divided MEPs are on this topic and it will be interesting to see how the new Parliament deals with this when legislative proposals arrive early in their new term.
Grégoire Poisson
Managing Partner of Interel European Affairs and Group Sector Head for Energy and Natural Resources