The European Council, the Presidency and the Commission

Leadership in the European Union

The Dutch and French referenda must however be seen in part at least as a protest against this system.

Representing as its members do both the peoples and states of the European Union, the European Council’s legitimacy is not in question. To be as effective in the future as it has been in the past, it must however become more accountable to those in a position to scrutinise and if necessary discipline its members. This means in the first instance national parliaments and citizens rather than the European Parliament. The constitutional treaty, which must now be presumed dead, had remarkably little of use to say on these matters, largely because MEPs and national parliamentarians in the Convention, either would not or did not acknowledge the European Council’s status as ‘the highest authority in the Union’. One of the positive features of the present crisis is therefore that it offers a fresh opportunity to find pragmatic, but at the same time radical solutions to fundamental problems which EU orthodoxy has obscured for far too long.

• ISBN: 9077110097
• Publisher: EuroComment Diffusion
• Author: Peter Ludlow
• Language: English
• Type: Paperback

Price: 9.39 €

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