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The amount of legislation a political system produces is an important indicator of its performance. Yet as Dimiter Toshkov explains, when it comes to the adoption of new legislation, the last European Parliament and Commission were among the least productive in recent history. He argues that a less political and more pragmatic Commission may be more successful in finding the scope for new agreements.

As November is drawing to a close, the new European Commission is still waiting for the approval of the new European Parliament (EP) to start its work. This prolonged interregnum provides a good opportunity to look back and assess the record of the previous 8th EP, which held its last session in April 2019, and the outgoing Commission led by Jean-Claude Juncker, which entered office more than five years ago in November 2014.

One important indicator of the performance of any political system is its legislative output, or the amount of legislative acts it adopts over time. A focus on legislative output is especially relevant since the EU has no big army or large budget to exercise its influence, and must instead rely on the force of its laws and regulations. Hence, by looking at legislative output we can examine the health and prospects of the EU integration project more generally.

On this metric, the 8th EP and the Juncker Commission do not fare very well. In fact, the numbers show that these have been some of the least productive EPs and Commissions in recent history, ever since the introduction of co-decision in 1993 with the Treaty of Maastricht.

Declining EU legislative output

Let us first take a look at the number of directives adopted between 2004 and 2019. In the past, directives embodied most of the truly important legislative acts of the EU. Many of the EU laws that you might have heard about the Services directive, the Non-discrimination directive, the NATURA 2000 directive are, well, directives in the specific sense of a type of EU legal act. As we can clearly see from the figure below, there has been a significant drop in the number of directives adopted by the EP and/or the Council. The drop had started already in 2009, but it is especially pronounced between 2014 and 2019 during the term of the 8th EP. The total number of directives adopted by the EP and the Council during the 6th EP term is 175, which drops to 161 during the 7th EP term, and to 97 for the 8th EP term.

Part of the decline in the number of adopted directives can be explained by a switch to regulations as a favoured legal form for important new legislation. For example, the notorious General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) one of the few recent EU legal acts you might have head of is, as the name indicates, a regulation rather than a directive. This is an important shift, because directives provide the EU member states with more flexibility about how exactly to implement the EU rules.

But the shift from directives to regulations is not enough to account for the overall drop in legislative productivity. When we look at regulations (below), we also see a drop. The total number of regulations adopted by the Council and/or the EP in the period 2004-2009 is 852, which falls to 694 in the period 2014-2019 (the drop is due mostly to the decrease in the number of regulations adopted by the Council alone).

The pattern is more complex when it comes to decisions, which comprise a very diverse set of legal instruments under the same label some have general applicability and others have a specific addressee, many are limited in their duration, and a large part concern matters of rather narrow interest, such as the appointment of heads of EU agencies and the like.

The figure below shows two diverging developments: the number of Council-only decisions increases significantly (from 1,173 to 1,546 to 1,805 over the past three EP terms), but the number of decisions adopted with the involvement of the EP decreases (from 163 in the period 2009-2014 to 115 in the period 2014-2019).

All in all, the 8th EP has completed the adoption of 493 legal acts, a significant 23% decline from the 637 adopted by the 7th EP. This makes for less than two acts per plenary sitting1 and for less than one legal act per MEP over a period of five years! Of course, passing legislation is not all the EP does: it also adopts resolutions, negotiates the budget, asks written and oral questions (a total of 46,496 during its last term), and more. Still, legislatingremains the most important task of alegislature, and the last EP has not done a lot of that.

It is especially striking that in the past five years the EP has adopted only 59 new, rather than amending, directives and regulations (for 2009-2014, the number is 95). A new legal act indicates that the EU is legislating in a new area, while amending legislation only modifies rules in areas where the EU already has established its presence. In other words, the vast majority of legislative activity in the past five years has gone into maintaining and updating existing legislation rather than expanding the reach of the EU into new areas and issues.

In sum, the directive is almost disappearing from the legislative output of the EU, the numbers of regulations and EP decisions are also down, and there have been very few new, rather than amending, legal acts adopted over the past five years.

The perils of a more political Commission

The important question is, of course, why. There are multiple possible answers, and none that are fully satisfactory. First, the Juncker Commission focused its activities on ten priority areas, not all of which required legislative action. Second, the decline in legislative output can be related to the Better Regulation programme of the European Commission, which aims to reduce the regulatory burden and simplify legislation. However, the number of legislative proposals that have been scrapped as a direct result of the programme is very small, and even these might have been blocked for political reasons before being abandoned in the name of better regulation. Moreover, regulatory simplification often demands legislative action in order to amend existing acts or adopt new legislation. And some critics see the Better Regulation initiative as a justification for the EUs failure to maintain and expand its regulatory reach rather than the reason for its declining legislative productivity.

It is unlikely that falling legislative productivity is a direct result of the Eastern enlargement of the EU: the decline is more recent and there is no systematic data that member states from Eastern Europe have been the ones putting the brakes on the EU legislative process. But increasing diversity of preferences and interests in the EU between countries, but also between political parties and electorates certainly plays some role in accounting for the decline in legislative output.

The 8th EP featured more Eurosceptic, nationalist and populist parties and MEPs than before, though not in numbers that could have blocked, on their own, a large share of the EUs legislative activities. Yet, in combination with the increasing presence of Eurosceptic, nationalist and populist parties in government at the national level (and by extension in the Council of Ministers in Brussels), they do limit the range and scope of new laws that can gain approval in the complex decision-making procedures of the EU.

Yet, diversity of preferences and interests is not sufficient to explain the decline in legislative productivity, especially when we consider it next to the increasing number of legislative proposals made by the European Commission that failed to get approval.2 The combination of falling legislative output and a higher share of failed proposals hints at another reason for the decline in legislative output: the politicisation of the Commission.

During the past five years, the Juncker Commission has not shied away from political conflicts with some member states, most notably in the field of migration. The Commission deliberately pushed proposals forward in the presence of strong, vocal and committed opposition in order to make political points, by exposing certain member states, such as Hungary, for the views that they hold. No matter whether we consider this to be a good political strategy from the Commission, it is certainly not a very good way of getting things done.

In other cases, the Commission seems to have lost its ability to anticipate the reactions of the member states and the strength of their resistance. Instead of going for minimal changes to the status quo that would have been feasible and made small but tangible progress, it has overplayed its hand by pushing for more radical changes that never made it into law (at least within the limits of its term). The mobility (road transport) package that is still stuck in the EP or the failed regulation of lobbying activities at the EU institutions are two cases in point. The lack of anticipation, adjustment and lost political capital in fruitless negotiations all contribute to the rising share of failed legislative proposals. Ultimately, the declining legislative productivity of the EU can be seen as a result of the more political Commission that Jean-Claude Juncker promoted.

What does the future hold for the legislative output of the EU? The new, 9th EP will have to accommodate an even larger number of Eurosceptic members, though in absolute terms they are still not numerous enough to block the legislative process in the EP. But they, and Eurosceptic ministers sitting in the Council, do limit what it is possible to achieve and the areas where European integration can move forward. At the same time, there is urgent action needed in many policy areas from asylum and climate to transport and welfare. A less political and more pragmatic Commission might be more successful in finding the scope for new agreements. Instead of antagonising member states with bold but ultimately doomed policy initiatives, the Commission might focus on what it used to do best: finding common ground in the face of diverse interests to push European integration slowly and gradually, but forward nonetheless.

Further information and access to the data used in this article can be found here

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Note: This article gives the views of theauthor, not the position of EUROPP European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit:CC BY 4.0: European Union 2019 Source: EP

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About the author

Dimiter Toshkov Leiden UniversityDimiter Toshkov is Associate Professor at the Institute of Public Administration, Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, Leiden University, The Netherlands. He is on Twitter @DToshkov

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Is the legislative expansion of the European Union grinding to a halt? - EUROPP - European Politics and Policy

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - France and Germany put aside bilateral tensions on Tuesday to call for an overhaul of the EU, which has been buffeted over the past decade by a euro zone debt crisis, an influx of migrants and refugees, rising eurosceptic populism and Brexit.

FILE PHOTO: French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attend a news conference following a joint Franco-German cabinet meeting in Toulouse, France, October 16, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo

Some European Union leaders fear that regional and political rifts could tear apart a project they credit with keeping peace and prosperity on the continent, including in eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

Paris and Berlin, long seen as the axis of the continents post-World War Two unification process, said a Conference on the Future of Europe was necessary to make the EU more united and sovereign across a range of challenges.

These include Europes role in the world and its security, they said in a document that comes amid growing concern that Europe is ill-equipped to deal with new security and economic challenges, especially from a rising China.

Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron described the NATO transatlantic military alliance as brain dead, urging Europe to bolster its capacity to act because it cannot rely eternally on an unpredictable United States.

The two-page Franco-German paper said other areas where Europe needed to be more united included its near neighbors, digitalization, climate change, migration, the fight against inequality, the social market economy and the rule of law.

It said a reflection lasting more than two years should consider reforms that would, among other aims, promote democracy and the functioning of a bloc that will group 27 countries after Britains expected departure on Jan. 31.

Many EU citizens feel their voices are not heard in Brussels and have little trust in its institutions, sentiments that drove Britains 2016 referendum vote to leave the bloc.

The EUs two heavyweights said citizens would need to be closely involved in the reflection on Europes future through a bottom-up process of consultations.

They said recommendations agreed at a closing conference in the first half of 2022 should be presented to the European Council of member states leaders for debate and implementation.

Diplomats said the document sent a message, ahead of an EU summit on Dec. 12-13, that member states must be closely involved in reflections on Europes future amid institutional jockeying for a leading role.

A new European Commission, the EUs executive, which starts its five-year mandate on Dec. 1, has already proposed a 2020-2022 conference.

Manfred Weber, leader of the center-right European Peoples Party in the European Parliament, said in an opinion column on Tuesday that it is the role of an assembly directly elected by European citizens to fight for a more democratic Europe.

There are many in Brussels and other European capitals who prefer to make decisions through quick backroom deals, in which the direct choice of the voters becomes victim to personal power games, the German EU lawmaker wrote on Politico.

Many in the blocs assembly were furious when EU leaders, horse-trading over top posts at a July summit, brushed aside the so-called Spitzenkandidaten, the main parliamentary groups candidates for the post of European Commission president.

France and Germany have been at loggerheads over the past year as Macrons ambitious plans for reform have often run into resistance from the more cautious Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Berlin was irked last month that Macron blocked the opening of EU membership talks with North Macedonia and Albania, and Merkel described Macrons brain death comments on NATO as drastic words.

The idea behind the joint proposal on the future of Europe was to show that Franco-German cooperation was not itself brain dead, a French diplomatic source said.

Additional reporting by Michel Rose in Paris ansd Jonas Ekblom in Brussels; Editing by Giles Elgood

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France and Germany propose EU overhaul after Brexit upheaval - Reuters

In its annual investment report, the European Investment Bank said leaders had lost a decade of weak investment and policy focused on short-term crisis management. The fund warned that real Gross Domestic Product growth has slowed down over the last year in line with falling export demand and weakening manufacturing output. Trade dispute and Brexit are contributing to rising uncertainty and deteriorating expectations regarding the economic environment and investment outlook, its report adds.

The EIB has slammed the blocs investment in climate change mitigation, which is lower than that of major economies like the US and China.

Infrastructure investment is also stranded on 1.6 percent of EU GDP, the lowest in 15 years, the fund said.

Its report urges EU leaders to take advantage of historically low interest rates in order to boost public spending.

Andrew McDowell, an EIB vice-president, said: Europe cannot afford to wait out another cyclical downturn. After a lost decade of weak investment, we need to tackle the slowdown now if we are to respond to the historic challenges we are facing.

The EIB, as the EUs financial arm and climate bank, has played a crucial role in kick-starting investment in Europe after the financial crisis and we now stand ready to further support investment for a more sustainable and competitive European economy.

Debora Revoltella, director of the EIBs economic department added: We have to accelerate investment to fully exploit the benefits of the digital revolution, realise our climate goals and rebuild Europes social cohesion.

There is a long list of investments that require public intervention or a private sector that finds the right conditions to overcome uncertainty: firms digitalisation, innovation and business dynamism as well as smart delivery of infrastructure and public services, green innovation and energy efficiency, and e-government, e-learning and e-training.

In a survey of 12,500 EU businesses, the EIB found that most firms are pessimistic about the current political environment.

The number of firms planning to reduce investment has risen for the first time in for years.

Rising uncertainty due to Brexit and further escalation of international trade tensions are beginning to take their toll on investment across the European Union, the report said.

This may be further aggravated by a deteriorating economic, political and regulatory climate, as discussed in the next section.

MUST READ:How 'EVEN Bank of England predicts surge in investments after Brexit'

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EU on the brink: Brexit and trade tensions push bloc's economy towards 'downturn' - Express.co.uk

Heated negotiations are currently taking place on a technical level within the European Union regarding the fate of migrants who cross into Greece, as Athens seeks to strike a delicate balance between the two main lines of thought on the matter as expressed by Berlin and Paris.

The German perspective supports the idea of financial assistance being offered to Central Europes Visegrad countries and other states that have so far refused to take in migrants from Greece, while France seeks strict sanctions for states that do not follow Europes line.

At the same time, it is blatantly clear in Athens that Ankara is using the migration crisis as a tool to pressure Greece and to transform it into a bilateral issue of discussion.

Ankaras stance was already apparent in late October when Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar proposed to his Greek counterpart Nikos Panagiotopoulos that the migration issue be included in the discussions regarding confidence-building measures between the two countries something which Athens rejected.

Sources say that Ankara is also using the migration issue as a lever of pressure on Athens regarding the eight Turkish servicemen that were granted asylum in Greece and which Ankara wants extradited for their alleged role in the 2016 coup attempt.

Moreover, Ankara claims Greece is harboring some 8,000 people that it says belong to the organization of self-exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen who it says was behind the coup.

In addition, Turkish media reports over the last month have been presenting Greece as a country that mistreats migrants and returns them to Turkey in a violent manner.

On the other hand, Turkey is presented as a country that is hosting 4 million migrants and refugees. The explosion of flows in 2015-16 was clearly linked to the war in Syria.

However, the spike in flows over recent months, averaging 550 people per day, has been attributed to the EUs tough stance toward Turkey over its violations of Cypriot sovereignty and Europes opposition to Turkish operations in Syria.

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Migration sparks heated debate in the European Union, Vassilis Nedos | Kathimerini - http://www.ekathimerini.com

It is the title of the Conservative manifesto, plastered on mugs, T-shirts and the Tory battle bus, while Boris Johnson doesnt miss the chance to say: Get Brexit Done. Like an earlier slogan on a bus, Get Brexit Done is deeply misleading: the UKs departure from the European Union is only the start of a new phase in the Brexit odyssey.

The day after Brexit the UK will embark on arguably the biggest negotiation of the post-war era: to reconstruct 46 years of trade, security and foreign policy ties with the EU. Philip Rycroft, the former permanent secretary of the Department for Exiting the EU, told the Guardian: Obviously its going to be a huge negotiation, probably four or five times bigger than the withdrawal agreement negotiation and will absorb a huge amount of government effort.

Trade is a top priority for both sides. Rycroft, who oversaw post-Brexit planning at DexEU ahead of the original 29 March deadline, said the government had already done a huge amount of work. Some on the EU side wonder whether it will be enough. Lotta Nymann-Lindegren, a former diplomat, who followed Brexit for the Finnish government, said: The discrepancy between the two sides will be bigger in phase two because the United Kingdom has not negotiated any trade agreements in the past 40 years or so. That experience gap will be a challenge for the negotiations that will influence how fast we can go, she added.

On Brexit day, the countdown clocks will reset to a new deadline. If the UK leaves on 31 January, only 11 months remain to hammer out the basics of the future relationship. Michel Barnier, the EUs chief negotiator, told the Guardian that it would be possible to negotiate a basic free-trade deal in that time.

In private, Brussels is much more sceptical. Not in my wildest dreams would I imagine that a possibility, one senior EU diplomat said of the 11-month timetable, citing the difficulties of agreeing a zero-tariff, zero-quota trade deal if the UK seeks to diverge from EU standards on workers rights and environmental protections.

To woo Nigel Farage and Brexit party voters, the prime minister insists that he can negotiate the deal in 11 months, with no extension of the transition period. Labour wants a back-up plan and is pressing to avoid the trap door to no deal on 31 December 2020. Under the transition, the UK remains part of the EU single market and customs union, without decision-making power or representation. The government has until 1 July 2020 to agree with the EU a one-off extension of the transition period, until the end of 2021 or 2022.

If the next government seeks to extend the transition, it could soon run into trouble. Aside from a potential political backlash against vassalage and the inevitable extra payments to the EU budget that come with a longer transition, a decision on extension risks becoming hostage to a deal on fisheries.

The two sides want to agree future fishing quotas by 1 July 2020. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, once described fisheries as a lever in the future negotiations a sign of how seriously EU governments treat this small, but politically-sensitive industry. EU diplomats do not exclude that a fisheries deal may be a quid pro quo for extending the transition. Given how France acts now, its very likely that they will be a difficult partner, another senior diplomat told the Guardian.

Both sides want to prioritise security, such as a replacement for the European arrest warrant and access to crime-fighting databases that are used every day by British police. While negotiators share the same goal, the terrain is strewn with political minefields, such as Brussels insistence that database access is linked to EU rules on data protection and the oversight of the European court of justice, or Germanys constitutional ban on extraditing its nationals to non-EU countries.

Beyond trade and security, there is everything else. The political declaration agreed between Boris Johnson and the EU reveals what lies beneath the tip of the iceberg. The two sides want agreements or cooperation on aviation, carbon pricing, anti-money laundering, illegal migration, data protection, sanctions on rogue states, and much more.

The next Brexit chapter could be more testing for the EU. During phase one, the 27 had a shared interest in seeing the UK pay the Brexit bill and protect the rights of their nationals in the UK. Under phase two, their goals diverge somewhat: The interests of the EU side are more diverse, whether [they focus on] industrial produce, whether it is the labour force they provide, whether it is fisheries, suggests Nymann-Lindegren. Other Brussels sources are more optimistic about maintaining unity, suggesting that member states will be united against any attempt by the European commissions trade department to run the British talks in secret.

While British officials are racking up Eurostar miles, the main parties hope to return to the traditional domestic agenda on public services. But political time and capital will be spent on creating a new immigration system, laws on farming and fishing, competition and industry. Before the referendum, British sources predicted Brexit could dominate the annual Queens speech for several years after the vote. Under the withdrawal act bill, 46 years of EU law will be copy-pasted on to the UK statute book. It would be very odd if the conclusion of all of that is we are not going to do anything about it, Rycroft said. It rather obviates the point of coming out.

Just as the laws are repatriated, so are the controversies, especially over issues such as farm subsidies, GM crops or state aid. An extra layer of complexity will be tussles between Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast (if the Stormont assembly sits) over who gets to repatriate powers from the EU.

So far, the government has managed to negotiate 18 continuity deals covering 48 countries and 8% of UK trade, according to the BBC. But these deals simply rollover existing agreements the UK enjoys as an EU member. For Brexiters, the prize is new trade deals, although the governments own analysis shows that gains will be marginal at best. Looking at these speculative gains in the middle distance, the UKs former ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, has said: There is just an immense volume of technical work, even to aim to stand still, not roll backwards, in the next few years.

The saga of withdrawal has obscured the debate on what Brexit means. EU officials worry that there is no British consensus on the post-Brexit future: whether it is a distant Canada-style free trade deal favoured by Boris Johnson, or the closer ties sought by Labour. Without consensus at Westminster, negotiations in Brussels could soon get stuck again. The UK needs to have a majority for a vision of Brexit, the senior diplomat said. Otherwise we face the same problem. They need to know what their aim is.

Donald Trumps verbal grenade lobbed into the British campaign was a reminder that the UK has a choice: to follow European standards or embrace US regulatory norms. It is the chlorinated chicken conundrum: if the UK chooses to allow imports of US chlorine-washed chicken (and other produce) it will face much tighter controls on the food it can export to the EU, as well as price pressure on British farmers. There is no middle way between regulatory superpowers.

Those unanswered questions are why those who were involved in withdrawal hope that Brexit will be at the centre of the campaign. I dont think the public is ready for [phase two], Rycroft said. He hopes that politicians will level up with the public and give them a clear intention of what is coming down the track, because this story is by no means at an end.

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'Get Brexit Done'? The reality will be far more difficult and tortuous - The Guardian