Schäuble backs calls for EU budget commissioner

German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has backed calls for an EU commissioner with powers to veto national budgets and for a “double-democratic” structure to address deficits in European accountability.

In an essay entitled "The New European Earnestness", published in yesterday's Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, Mr Schäuble writes that euro crisis reforms have strengthened the EU economically. The Ukraine stand-off is proving a catalyst for greater EU foreign policy co-operation, he writes, while Russia holds a weaker economic and political hand.

Ahead of the looming European elections, however, it is Dr Schäuble’s proposals for the next EU term that attract the most attention.

Though he supports a successor to the Lisbon Treaty and greater use of Europe’s so-called community method, the Christian Democrat politician says the EU’s immediate future will involve further inter-governmental deals and incremental changes via limited treaty change. That does not mean, he argues, that big changes are not possible.

“I can imagine someone like a European budgetary commissioner who can send back national budgets that don’t meet commonly agreed rules,” he writes. “[National] budgetary rights would not be violated because just how the [EU] rules are met – through lower spending or higher earnings – remains in national competence. Demanding that we stick to agreed rules doesn’t impair national sovereignty, otherwise we’d never be allowed agree such rules.”

The incoming European parliament and commission must renew reforms on a legislative, executive and judiciary that are “clearly legitimised” by European citizens, writes Dr Schäuble.

Equally weighted votes

Key building blocks for this, he says, would be a unified European election law with a parliament elected through equally weighted votes.

The future of Europe lies in a compromise between rival models, he writes. The long-proposed "political union" is "a very vague term", while the "United States of Europe" leads to misunderstandings given the example of the US.

Dr Schäuble suggests Europe should be a “multilayered democracy: not a federal state . . . and yet more than a union of states with loose, weakly legitimised binding elements”.

“Europe would be a complementary, interlocked system of democracies of various ranges and competences,” he writes, a construct he dubs a “national European double-democracy”.

Being dual citizens of both national and European democracies would encourage greater legitimacy and identification with EU structures, he says, particularly when Brussels institutions emerge as the only route to contributing European solutions to the challenges of globalisation.

Dr Schäuble’s essay marks a shift from proposals he made in a paper two decades ago, calling for a federal EU structure and two-speed integration on monetary, fiscal, budgetary and economic policy.

The Ukraine stand-off, he suggests, has forced Europe into a “new earnestness”, speaking with one voice on foreign policy and security.