The European Commission yesterday presented radical proposals for change in its powers to the Convention on the Future of Europe. They include incorporating foreign policy and defence within its remit, strengthening its monitoring role over economic and budgetary policies and creating a "single institutional architecture" in the EU's decision-making system to make it more effective and understandable.
Explaining the proposals to the European Parliament, the Commission president, Mr Romano Prodi, called this a "grand political project" for a Europe-wide transnational democracy in a union of peoples and states. He strenuously denied suggestions that it amounts to plans for a superstate. He will have his work cut out to convince his critics. The Eurosceptics will have their views confirmed, while those from the larger states, who oppose the Commission's ambitions to strengthen its powers, say they are unrealistic given the political temper of the times.
Mr Prodi is not the greatest communicator, nor the most adept at lobbying for his political point of view. Nonetheless the proposals he presented yesterday have been agreed by the 20 Commissioners after much discussion and are not his alone. They are intended to convince the Convention on the Future of Europe that this is the best way to develop the EU's institutions and policies. The Commission will have to fight hard for these ideas, in competition with many other interest groups, representatives and states, as the convention meets over the next year.
Traditionally Ireland has regarded the Commission as the guardian of the European treaties and the protector of small states within the EU system. That positive attitude has changed in the last couple of years. Irish public policy makers have been too slow to adjust their relationship with the Commission, which has changed because of this State's rapid catching up with average EU incomes. The Commission remains an essential balancing factor for smaller states. If the larger ones succeed in diminishing its powers they will register relative gains, possibly endangering the integrity of the system as a whole. That is why these proposals merit the closest attention, especially as the incoming Government prepares to revisit the Nice Treaty in another referendum. That debate cannot be separated from the wider one about the future of Europe.