The greatest achievement of this Commission is Better Regulation. 1st Vice-President Frans Timmermans forced through Better Regulation on a reluctant Commission. He has thrown back the curtains and let the sunshine shine in.
Today, the EU has one of the most open and accessible systems of decision making in the world.
Through Better Regulation, he has installed basic quality standards on most proposals going out the door, greater public feedback, and more information about secondary legislation.
This is a far cry from the Brussels I knew. 12 year ago Commission officials were genuinely shocked that if you asked them about the contents of a leaked piece of secondary legislation. Today, that same piece of legislation would be subject to a road map, impact assessment and public consultation.
Open law making is a good thing
I believe open law making a good thing. I am in a minority. Many government and Commission officials don’t like the interference. It reduces their flexibility to do what they want. Too many lobbyists seem to like the old ways.
In 1997 I spent a year being followed around by Channel 4 TV crew. It was for an accurate fly on the wall documentary about the adoption of clean air legislation. What it taught me is that there is little to fear from open law making.
Today, many officials try and stall Better Regulation – some Directorate Generals have amnesia when the word is mentioned – and too many lobbyists like keeping things in the dark.
10 things that can be done today
Today, Mr Timmermans could hard wire his reforms beyond this Commission. I realise there will some IT issues along the way. These changes would engineer trust in EU with the European people.
- The College of Commissioners should publish on the day how Commissioners vote. It would take the guess work out. The FT and Politico report it so it is not secret. This would just let you find out who backed Commissioner Barnier when he voted against cuts in subsidies for bio-fuel under the Barroso Commission.
- The European Parliament could make all their votes public on the day. This is easy to do. They just need to do an electronic roll call vote. They need to do this for votes in Committee and in Plenary. The current system is there because a few MEPs don’t want their constituents knowing how they voted. I am sorry, in a democracy the only secret voting allowed is at the ballot box.
- For the Council, the Council Secretariat already know how countries voted. It is circulated in their minutes. Why the votes can’t be published on the day is a mystery
- Most EU laws are passed by Committees. Why not open up the meetings for video and dial in to secondary committee meetings. I am not sure how many people will dial in. Having sat through many of them, all people are likely to hear is their letters to their government read out as if they were the spontaneous ideas from their government. Some people will plead that industry or NGOs will unduly influence them. The truth is that if you want to lobby any vote it is not hard to do. This would give a level playing field and reduce the costs of lobbying and campaigning.
- When it comes to secondary legislation, Civil Servants are sitting as lawmakers and not in a private capacity. The minutes of meetings should name who they are.The Commission have the attendance list. They just to load up the scan.
- If you like late night TV, we could easily screen trilogue and conciliation meetings (if they ever return). Watching sleep deprived adults haggling at 1 am is at a best weird viewing. I think there will be a market. C-Span who some weirder policy wonk fetish viewing.
- All draft delegated and implemented acts should be made public when they are prepared. The European Parliament and Council get them. The public should.
- The Commission can put a lighter version of their system that tracks the development of every proposal online for the public. This will make it harder for certain Departments to slip through important proposals unnoticed. Yes, they some still try! If they did, the public would know each and every step of the proposal, from inception, validation, Road Maps, arrival to the RSB, to Inter-Service etc. The only people who’d oppose this are lobbyists and officials looking to push important proposals through under the smoke screen of implementing acts.
- The College of Commissioners minutes read as if were written by an old politburo hand. Too often, they read as if they have been pre-written 6 months in advance of the meeting. Perhaps it is because they have been?
- Enforce Better Regulation. Today, it seems as if Better Regulation is not enforced rigorously enough. This can be solved. Each Directorate General should publish a monthly list of initiatives and initiatives in the pipeline. Each D-G should be shadowed by 1 official in the Sec-Gen. If the Better Regulation Guidance has been ignored, the proposal should re-start. If the outcome has been pre-cooked by Commissioners beforehand, the proposal should go back to the start.
If the issue is of political importance, and the Better Regulation system needs to be bypassed, that’s okay. It should be acknowledged as such. Politicians get to make political decisions.
All done today
I can’t see any legal legal or practical impediment why most of this can’t be done today. Any MEP or Member State who believes in glasnost could do it tomorrow.
If the Commission went and made things more public, people won’t be able to claim that they were ignored or the process bypassed. Most of the time, you’ll see that this was not the case. But, sometimes, and in important cases, you’ll have a system in place and enforced that stops bad laws being made.