Dealing with the Parliament

If you believe the conventional wisdom in transatlantic policy circles, a Kerry administration won’t make much difference to EU-US relations. Kerry would differ from Bush more on style than on substance: Europe and the US would still be divided on the important security and economic issues. Whether this argument is true or not (personally, I’m dubious), the transatlantic relationship is likely to enter a period of turmoil regardless of who occupies the White House. The reason: the increasing interest and involvement of the European Parliament in international affairs.

Parliamentary decision-making has traditionally made for awkward international politics. Elected parliamentarians are more likely than diplomats or governmental officials to take strong policy stands that keep voters at home happy, but that make it more difficult to reach agreement on issues of international contention. The US has by no means been immune to this in the past; one can point to items of legislation beloved of Congress but deplored by the administration such as the Helms-Burton Act, which have greatly complicated international politics. Traditionally, however, the EU has been semi-insulated from these pressures – high politics has been the preserve of national governments, while trade negotiations and the like have been carried out by the Commission, which has been partially insulated from political pressures.

Now, however, the new European Parliament is looking around for ways to ingratiate itself with the voters back home (the Parliament is notoriously lacking in popular legitimacy). It’s a safe bet that one of the ways it will do this is by whipping up opposition to deals between the EU and US on security issues, and on politically sensitive economic/trade issues such as genetically modified organisms. This is a relatively cheap and easy way for it to get political kudos, especially given America’s unpopularity with European voters.

The Parliament has some foreign policy powers and is going to be trying to carve out more by pushing its competences as far as they will go. Officially, it has a right to give or withhold its assent to international treaties – it’s starting to try and expand that right into a veto over everyday relations and quasi-agreements between the EU and US in security and economic policy. If the draft constitution somehow passes referendums in Britain and elsewhere, expect the Parliament to try to make the new Foreign Minister more accountable to it, as it has rather successfully done with the Commission’s President. If not, expect the Parliament to use the powers that it has to agitate on issues of concern, just as it’s currently doing in the “Passenger Name Record controversy”:http://www.eupolitix.com/EN/News/200406/8f1cbb0f-bc0c-4583-b514-4b029ed1f942.htm, where it’s taking the Commission and Council to court for exceeding their competences, and (in its view) selling European citizens’ privacy down the river.

Either way, it’s safe to predict that EU-US politics will become a lot more contentious, as the Parliament takes a much more active role on internationally controversial issues. In general, I reckon that this has to be a good thing: more democracy is better than less, even if it has awkward or even bad consequences in individual cases. Still I’m glad that I’m not one of the American or European diplomats who’s going to have to come to terms with the Parliament’s newfound assertiveness over the next few years. It’s going to make for some sticky international politics.