President Juncker’s Political Guidelines Being Ignored by the Commission

President Juncker’s Political Guidelines are  being ignored before the 29 May cut off for new  legislative proposals.

Core to the President’s Political Guidelines is the idea of ‘political discontinuity’.

As the Commission wrote back in 16 December 2014:

“What is political discontinuity?

The principle of political discontinuity applies at the start of a new political mandate. The incoming authority, in this case the European Commission, reviews the proposals which have been put to the legislators by its predecessor, but not yet adopted. It then decides whether or not to pursue work in these areas. This principle is set out in Article 39 of the Framework Agreement between the European Parliament and European Commission. This Article states that “The Commission shall proceed with a review of all pending proposals at the beginning of the new Commission’s term of office, in order to politically confirm or withdraw them, taking due account of the views expressed by Parliament“. The Commission has reviewed around 450 proposals, and has taken the decision to recommend the withdrawal of a significant number of them.”

Having one Commission force their legislative agenda onto the new was in the eyes of this Commission, at least back in 2014, not right.

So, I was surprised to learn that the politically sensitive overhaul of the Control Regulation is being pushed through by DG MARE at break neck speed.

Whatever the merits of the reform, it is obvious that file will not be complete under this Parliament and Commission. I worked on both the CFP reform and Control Regulation reform. They were long drawn out political battles.

Forcing a new Parliament and Commission to deal with legacy files from pre-decessors is the very thing  this President sought to stamp out at the start of his term.

It will be interesting to see if Cabinets follow or ignore these Guidelines during the current Inter-Service Consultation.