Prague, Sept 14 (CTK) – European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s new scenario of boosting EU institutions is close to a power coup plan, with its proposal not only to form new bodies and harmonise the members’ policies, but also create two powerful EU posts, Michal Mocek wrote in Czech daily Pravo on Thursday.
Up to now, the EU has operated as a group of states whose representatives have at least assisted in or directly controlled all EU decisions. They have done so “through” the very visible European Council and its summits or the councils of ministers that have the final say on all EU decisions, Mocek writes.
He mentions a large network of EU committees and subcommittees filled with officials and experts from individual EU countries, who can markedly intervene in the European Commission’s (EC) activities as the EU’s executive power.
Like all institutions, the EU institutions, too, have always tried to slip out of the national states’ control, most often by appropriating new and new powers and applying them to show their own positive role or importance at least, Mocek writes.
The scenario that Juncker presented in the EP on Wednesday goes far beyond this trend, however. It is close to a plan of a power coup in the EU, he writes.
The plan includes the creation of new bodies and the harmonising of member states’ position on important issues such as welfare policy, but it is the proposed introduction of two new EU posts that may have a far stronger impact, Mocek writes.
He mentions Juncker’s proposal to introduce the post of a “super-president” to wield the powers of both the European Council and the European Commission heads.
The other post Juncker proposed to establish would be brand new, though linked with the EU’s current service in support of its structural reform. Juncker wants the EU to have its own minister of economy and finances, Mocek writes.
In national states, the largest portion of power has always been held by the governing executive heads, either kings, presidents or prime ministers, along with the heads of the ministries of foreign affairs, defence and interior, Mocek continues.
In his respect, the EU differs from national states, as power in it is linked to the internal market and the control of it. As a result, the new finance eurominister would be an extraordinarily powerful figure that has not appeared in the EU’s political game ever before, Mocek writes.
The eurominister would clearly overweigh his national counterparts. His weight would remain low only in relation to the member countries’ chancellors, prime ministers and presidents, who could always reject his proposals. As an argument, they could cite the mandate they received from their country’s inhabitants, unlike the eurominister, Mocek writes.
Juncker tried to remove this barrier. He wants the EU to have a superpresident who would head both the executive power, the European Commission, and the supreme power, the European Council, which decides on new steps in the EU at simultaneously serves as the last instance to settle deadlock disputes, Mocek writes.
If the superpresident had a position of an official elected in EU polls, which Juncker suggested, no one would be able to oppose him. Compared with him, presidents, prime ministers and chancellors would turn into the spokespersons for partial and limited interests, who would be backing, step by step, before the interests of the EU embodied by the eurominister and the superpresident, Mocek writes.
An observer can only ask whether Juncker is an insane man who has failed to learn lessons, including from Brexit, or whether he will enter history as a visionary outlining the path forward for the confused and uncertain EU, Mocek adds in conclusion.
