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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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with the Council and the European Council.
Next, we will detail the increase in influence of
the Union’s unofficial institutions, such as the
Eurogroup, as well as the European Parliament’s
relegation in the new measures to control Mem-
ber States’ budgetary policy. In a certain way,
the importance gained by the Parliament with
the Lisbon Treaty was reduced by the growing
use of the intergovernmental method in the de-
cisions of the last term, although there are oth-
er important examples of its decisive participa-
tion, especially in the area of Banking Union.
We will go on to consider the Parliament’s real
difficulties in exercising control over the Euro-
group or the Union’s new budgetary policy, be-
fore concluding with a brief reflection on the
path to take in the immediate future.
The political-institutional framework
of the European Union
Much has been written about the democratic
shortcomings of the European Union’s institu-
tional edifice. The proliferation of new confed-
eral institutions to manage the economic crisis,
such as the European Stability Mechanism
(ESM), the growing influence of the Eurogroup,
an unofficial body, and even the confusion be-
tween the names of the Council and the Euro-
pean Council all complicate the visualisation of
the Union’s institutional design and the role of
the Parliament.
In order to facilitate our understanding of the
Union’s political framework it might be a good
idea to perform a simple exercise of comparative
analysis of European democracy with the way it
works in the countries around us. This compari-
son will provide nothing new to readers well-
versed in European matters, but it is a simple way
for us to familiarise ourselves with Europe again.
Every country has a Head of State in its insti-
tutional structure, a responsibility that some-
times falls to the leader of the executive branch,
as in the United States. However, in other coun-
tries this authority plays a lesser political role. In
the European parliamentary monarchies, the
Head of State is the King or Queen of the na-
tion, as in the United Kingdom or Spain, and
their power is limited to very narrow fields of
action. Also, in some republics, the Head of
State has minor prerogatives, as in Germany,
Italy or Portugal, but in others such as France
their powers are very broad. In every case, irre-
spective of their power, all the countries have a
Head of State.
On the other hand, every democratic consti-
tution defines an executive power embodied by
the government and its Prime Minister or Presi-
dent. Again, their power varies, particularly in
relation to the responsibility of the Head of
State. In those countries where the Head of
State plays a minor role, the executive task falls
more strongly to the government, as in parlia-
mentary monarchies. On other occasions, the
Head of State performs a more solid job of ex-
ecutive leadership, as in France, where the
Prime Minister obviously has a less important
role. Still, it is easy to picture that division of
power between the Head of State and the gov-
ernment, along with its Prime Minister, where
real responsibility falls more or less strongly to
one or the other.
Meanwhile, there are also some not minor
differences among the legislative branches of the
different countries of the Union. Most of the na-
tions have two chambers that share legislative
responsibility and oversight of the executive
power. In some federal countries, there is a distri-
bution of powers between a parliament directly
elected by the people, as an expression of na-
tional sovereignty, and a senate under territorial