21 ways to make sure the Commission does not act on your issue.

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Inspired by a few days in a wonderful Medici building, here are some 21 ways to make sure the Commission never tables a proposal on an issue.
  1. The Commission President is not interested in the issue. If they don’t believe there is a problem, or they don’t trust the people calling for action, it is harder for action to start.
  2. The Commission President installs a Commissioner who does not want to act. A Commissioner of the calibre who won’t go native to the calls of their staff to act.
  3. A useful safety net is a Head of Cabinet who will impose tight internal controls so that the Commissioner never gets the paperwork to back any proposal. If the Commissioner can’t see it, they can’t approve it, and it won’t get anywhere.
  4. It’s useful if the Director-General is firmly on board the inaction agenda.
  5. A Secretary-General enforcing via the President’s shock troops, the Secretariat-General, enforcing the agenda of inaction is necessary. It helps if there are seasoned issue experts who can pouch on innocent and non-descript proposals to block them.
  6. Ideally, you’d have a counterweight of a Vice-President, or in the US tradition, a Tsar, whose sole remit is to make progress on that area cumbersome, painful and slow.
  7. Introducing a special adoption procedure for that area that makes progress glacially slow is a good idea. Validation of every step by the College is a good way to go.
  8. Make sure there is no hint of the need for action in the area in the President’s Political Guidelines.
  9. Make sure there is no reference to the issue in the Mission Letter.
  10. Make sure no reference to the issue ever appears in a Work Programme.
  11. No broader crisis appears that makes action on the issue acceptable to governments when action was considered inviolate.
  12. It helps to have no legal basis for legal action.
  13. The European Council issues Conclusions rejecting action.
  14. There is firm opposition to action from the key national capitals (Paris, Madrid, Berlin).
  15. The only support for action comes from the political outliner capitals (e.g. Warsaw, Budapest).
  16. The mainstream in the Council and EP oppose action in the area.
  17. You make sure the issue never comes up in the policy elite or public debate.
  18. You have a package of credible Better Regulation Shadow Impacts filed away in the filing cabinet for when the window of opportunity for action comes up. You can present the evidence that smoothers the calls for action.
  19. You have a workable solution that takes the issue off the table.
  20. The Commission has no budget to work in the area. They have no expertise/staff to work in the area.
  21. You give the Commission no reason to act.
If you want to get the Commission to act, just reverse 1-21.