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THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND ITS INITIATIVE AND OVERSIGHT CAPACITY. THE POLITICAL AGENDA OF THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL...
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representation, which looks after the interests
of the states or regions of the federation.
Perhaps the most straightforward example is
Germany, which divides legislative responsibility
between the Bundestag, the parliament elected
directly, and the Bundesrat, the Senate, made
up of the members of the executives of the
Lander. In this latter case, the “senators”, the
regional ministers, meet ad hoc by area of inter-
est to discuss legislative initiatives already ap-
proved by the parliament that have a direct im-
pact on territorial issues, with an individual vote
weighted by the population of each Lander. In
other cases, such as Spain, the Senate, while
defined constitutionally as a territorial chamber,
in fact has no greater powers than the addi-
tional review of legislative activity, which can be
modified subsequently in the Congress, and a
lesser oversight capacity over the executive
branch.
Without wishing to conduct an in-depth
analysis and with the simple goal of analysing
the Union’s institutional design more easily, this
sketch provides a clear enough picture of the
legislative work and oversight exercised by the
Legislative branch, which is sometimes shared
between two chambers.
From this simple model, with which people
are more familiar, we will now go on to study
the way the Union works, in order to set out
clearly the role of the European Parliament and
the rest of the community institutions.
Firstly, the Union has an institution that is
similar to the office of Head of State in any na-
tional democracy and it is called the European
Council. Since the Lisbon Treaty, the European
Council has had a permanent presidency that is
currently held by Poland’s Donald Tusk. In any
case, unlike the national models, the office of
Head of State is not an individual post, but is
made up of all the Heads of State or Government
of the 28 Member States, depending on the in-
stitutional design of each nation, in the light of
executive power falling either to the Head of
State or the Prime Minister. The Union has this
collegial Head of State with a permanent presi-
dent who keeps part of the executive power for
himself. It is a democracy where the office of
Head of State has a very high degree of power,
with broad scope for action, especially as far as
political initiative is concerned.
Secondly, every democracy needs an execu-
tive power, with a Prime Minister in charge. That
institution is the European Commission, cur-
rently headed by Jean Claude Juncker and made
up of a “minister”, or commissioner, for each
Member State. As in most democracies, the
candidate for Prime Minister is nominated by
the Head of State, the European Council, to the
Parliament, the institution that has to approve
the appointment. Obviously, the Commission’s
term of office coincides with the parliamentary
term and since the elections of 2014, under a
Europeanist reading of the Lisbon Treaty, the
person nominated by the European Council has
been the candidate for the post from the party
that wins the elections.
This election process was a political success
for the Parliament, given that until then the re-
sult of the elections did not necessarily have any
bearing on the candidate nominated for Presi-
dent. Following this precedent, the European
Council has had its nominating capacity cur-
tailed, responding exclusively to the election re-
sult and thereby making the process more like
that of most national democracies.
The makeup of the rest of the Commission
falls equally to the President of the institution,
who in most countries has full authority to
name their government, and the Member
States, which put forward names to the head of
the executive arm. The requirement of having