(Paper on Constitutional Development of the European Communities by Edward A.C. Goodman, January 1982).
On April 18, 1952 at Paris, the heads of state and foreign ministers of Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and West Germany signed the treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (E.C.S.C.). On March 25, 1957 at Rome, they signed the treaties establishing the European Economic Community (E.E.C. or Euratom). On April 8, 1965 at Brussels, they signed a treaty merging the institutions of the three European Communities. In 1973, Denmark, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland joined the European Communities. In 1981, Greece also adhered thereby increasing the number of member states to ten. It is anticipated that another countries, namely Portugal and Spain will join in the near future, and that Turkey will do so in the distant future.
Like all modern constitutions, that of the European Communities provides for an executive, a legislative, and a judiciary. The legislative consists of the Council of Ministers made up of one minister from each member state, each of whom has the right to vote. The chairmanship rotates every six months. The Council has a permanent secretariat at Brussels, but only meets there for nine months of the year, convening at Luxembourg for the remaining three. It holds approximately twenty sessions a year, each lasting about two days. These are held in secret, and no public minutes are published.
The Council of Ministers is assisted in performing its legislative functions by the European Parliament. However, it is a parliament in name only, having very limited powers indeed. These are to oversee the budget of the European Communities, to question and if necessary censure the European Commission, and the right to be consulted on important Community matters. The Parliament convenes at Strasbourg and at Luxembourg, where its secretariat is, and holds some committee meetings at Brussels. Its members are directly elected by the citizens of the countries of the European Communities.
The Executives of the European Communities, like the legislature, consists of two institutions, namely the European Commission, Policy is decided by the European Council and the European Commission. Policy is decided by the European Council which act as the Head of Government of the Communities. It consists of the Heads of Government of each of the member states meeting tri-annually.
The European Commission is the civil service of the European Communities. It is controlled by an executive of 14 members consisting of two members from each of the larger states of the Communities and one from each of the smaller ones. However, once appointed, the members during their terms of office enjoy diplomatic immunity and are completely independent of the countries that appointed them. The European Commission has its headquarters and most of its staff at Brussels, with some offices at Luxembourg. In accordance with the decisions of the Council of Ministers it promulgates the subsidiary legislation of the Communities, just as in each member country secondary legislation is effected by regulations issued by the executive while parliament concerns itself with primary legislation.
The judiciary of the European Communities consists of the European Court of Justice. This is made up of one judge from the European Court of Justice. This is made up of one judge from each member state, and sits at Luxembourg. It adjudicates on cases arising under Community law.
The Communities are financed by customs duties and one percent of the Value Added Tax collected by its constituent states. The legislation of the Communities is restricted by the treaties establishing them to dealing with economic matters. Thus the Communities are purely fiscal institutions. However they were designed as the framework for political federation which the founders hoped would follow economic union. This could be achieved by using the existing institutions. However notifications would have to be made to them before an effective political merger could operate.
The most important change necessary relates to the legislature. The dominant part consists of the Council of Ministers. However, these ministers in their own countries are part of the executive not of the legislature. It is therefore incongruous for them to have legislative power regarding the Communities, whereas the European Parliament merely has the right to advise them in the exercise of that power. To bring the Communities into line with their constituent states, it would be necessary to transfer the legislative function to the European Parliament. The Council of Ministers should then become part of the executive of the Communities acting as the Cabinet.
Thus if the dream of the founding fathers of the Communities is to be realised and they are to become political as well as economic union, a rational framework adopting the existing institutions could be on the following lines. The executive of the European Communities would consist of the European Council, the Council of Ministers, and the European Commission. The European Council would not as head of Government of the Communities, the Council of Ministers as Cabinet and the Commission as Civil Service. The legislature would consist of the European Parliament and the judiciary would remain the European Court of Justice.
In order to make these institutions more efficient and positive, it would be necessary for each of them to have a fixed site, thus ending the present peripatetic future of the European Council, European Commission and European Parliament. It would be logical for all those bodies to be in Brussels, which is at present the main site of the institutions in the Communities. Luxembourg, one of the other two centres of the Communities, would be compensated by the fact that the European Court of Justice would remain there. This leaves the question of Strasbourg, the other existing seat of the Communities. At the moment, the European Parliament holds most of the meetings there, although its secretariat is at Luxembourg. If France continues her policy of refusing to allow Strasbourg to be deprived of its status as one of the three centres of the Communities, then the European Parliament and the secretariat should be sited there.
This would produce a scheme whereby the executive of the Communities was at Brussels, the legislature at Strasbourg, and the judiciary at Luxembourg. This would emphasise that the Communities practise the fundamental precept of democracy, namely the separation of powers. It would also preserve the ideal of the founding fathers that the institutions of the Communities should be situated in the three bilingual towns of Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg. Obviously it would be more efficient if all the institutions were in one town. However, it is not unprecedented for them to be in separate places. Some countries of the world, such as the Netherlands and South Africa have, because of rivalry between their leading cities, dispersed their administrative organs. In addition, other countries are purposely trying to decentralise. A good example is the United Kingdom. Her executive institutions are situated in many towns in addition to the national capital, eg in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Swansea, and her biggest courts of appeal are divided between London and Edinburgh. It will be acceptable for the institutions of politically united European Communities to be similarly scattered.
Thus a blueprint for a “United States of Europe” exists in the European Communities, provided that they can be adapted so that the legislative power is transferred from the Council of Ministers to the European Parliament. So far, the member countries have resisted this, because the Council of Ministers is made up of their delegates, each having the right of veto, whom they appoint and direct, whereas the European Parliament is independent of their control.
The European Parliament is thus the key to political union. Progress has started with the direct election of its members in 1979. The next task will be to find a permanent site for the parliament and thus make it a more effective and respected body. Also it will have to assimilate the additional members from Portugal and Spain when they join the Communities. These tasks should be completed by 1990. Then there will be no excuse for further delay in transferring the legislative powers of the Communities from its constituent states, exercised through the Council of Ministers, to the European Parliament. If the governments of the member countries have the courage to crown the establishment of the European Communities by doing this, the dream of a “United States of Europe” and realised by the end of this century.
By transferring the legislative function to the European Parliament, a solution will be found to the persistent refusal of member countries to give up the veto that each has in the Council of Ministers. As it would become the Cabinet of the Communities, the right of veto could be retained because the Communities would be a loose confederation and thus policies would in any event, have to be agreed to by all member states would in any event, have to be agreed to all by all member states before it was possible to put them into effect. Perhaps, as the political union became stronger, it would be possible to evolve a system whereby it would not be necessary to have the unanimous consent of the constituent states to Community policies. However, as federation can, in the circumstances prevailing at present, only be achieved by a gradual process, initially each member country will have to retain its right of veto on Community policy. This is in accordance with usage in these countries, because leading ministers do in practice have to agree unambiguously before a national policy can be adopted.