"This time it's different", read the slogan launched earlier this year by the European Parliament to encourage millions of Europeans - worn out by six years of economic crisis and disappointed by a Europe that has proved too fragile and disunited to deal effectively with a shock so large – to go to the polls at the end of May to choose the parties and people to whom to entrust the arduous (and desperate?) task of restarting the economy and at least halting the unstoppable progressive fall in employment.
“This time is different” could also be – why not? – the summary of the work program of the new European Commission which takes office tomorrow, November 2009, at the Berlaymont Palace in Brussels, with the former Luxembourg premier Jean-Claude Juncker at the helm. In other words, the candidate from the political formation, the European People's Party (centre-right), which had obtained the highest number of votes in the May elections and which, as a result of the new rules introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon (December XNUMX), was subjected to scrutiny of the Parliament of Strasbourg which at the end of July elected him, with a good if not overwhelming majority, to the presidency of the Commission.
That this time it could be really different, in the sense that the Commission manages to transform itself into a real government of the European Union, is certainly in the auspices of Juncker, a long-time politician, a skilled mediator capable, however, of coming up with a firm determination that can surprise and sometimes even displace its interlocutor. But how likely are Juncker's expectations to materialize in a historic moment in which, to cite a fact that European rulers are forced to deal with, more or less a third of MEPs are busy trying to “demolishing” Europe? And what are the Commission's prospects then?
The German socialist Martin Schulz, combative president of the European Parliament - re-elected deputy after losing the challenge against Juncker for the leadership of the Commission as the Socialists & Democrats in the May elections failed to overcome the Popular - said at a press conference in Strasbourg , immediately after the election of the new Commission, that "we are witnessing the beginning of a new phase, of a process with a constitutional dimension that modifies the structure of the institutional context". And he assured his "full support" to the Juncker Commission.
Does this mean that the path of the Brussels Executive will be free of obstacles? In all likelihood such a hypothesis should be excluded. First of all in the light of the historic moment that the world, and more particularly Europe, is going through. Just think of the outbreaks of war that have ignited at the gates of the European Union: in Ukraine, in Syria, in Libya, and further south in some states in central Africa. Then there are the problems relating to energy supply and environmental protection. And, in our house (read: in Italy, even if not only), immigration, especially youth unemployment, the engine of economic growth that won't restart, the taps of credit to companies essentially closed.
And the questions concerning the balance between the European institutions always remain open. With the weight of the Parliament which, on the basis of the rules introduced by the Lisbon Treaty, tends to strengthen every day while the Council (direct expression of the EU member states) resists fiercely. An always open conflict that inevitably finds, and presumably will continue to find, echoes within the Commission. Whose members sometimes find themselves in the difficulty of having to choose between their own convictions, the orientations of the party to which they belong and the solicitations coming from the state that designated them.
A separate chapter, then, is that relating to the budget for 2015, a highly topical issue which is currently being examined by the conciliation committee, convened after the Strasbourg Assembly rejected the drastic cuts proposed by the Council, calling them "arbitrary", which concern, among other things, innovation, research, large infrastructures, small businesses, energy. And now, if an agreement is reached in the conciliation committee, the budget will go to the vote in Strasbourg in the plenary session at the end of November. Otherwise the ball will return to the Commission, which will have to present a new proposal.
These are the knots that the Commission is now called upon to untie. A Commission whose structure and work organization have been radically changed by Jean-Claude Juncker. Who designed a complex system of checks and balances between commissioners, vice presidents, first vice president and president, who in the parliamentary committee for economic and monetary affairs did not understand "who does what" and posed the question to Schulz. Who wrote a not so tender letter to Juncker to ask him what are the competences and above all the responsibilities of four commissioners (Dombrovis, Hill, Moscovici and Katainen) and who is assigned the external representation of the Commission.
Letter to which the president of the Commission replied with a polite letter with an imperturbable tone, however at least twice as long, in which he essentially confirms everything. And that is, ultimately, that the last word belongs only to him; with the exception, however, of only Frans Timmermans, the first vice-president, a socialist, in fact the alter ego of the popular Juncker. An organizational chart which in the buildings of the European institutions, in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg, has made many of the highest-level officials turn up their mouths, dazed in a real whirlwind that will need time to run out. And to really understand if, at least as far as the Commission is concerned, "this time is different".
