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THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND ITS INITIATIVE AND OVERSIGHT CAPACITY. THE POLITICAL AGENDA OF THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL...
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the European Council does not answer formally
to the Parliament, but individually to the differ-
ent national parliaments. However, since the
election of a permanent European Council pres-
idency, the Parliament does have oversight over
this figure. So the Members of the European
Parliament have the capacity to put written
questions to the President of the European
Council in the areas of his personal political ac-
tivity, though not, as we said, over the collegial
decisions taken by the European Council as a
whole. This difference in the activities capable
of being overseen has caused a severe problem
of legal insecurity and probably only time and
the use of this prerogative will gradually define
that parliamentary oversight capacity.
Secondly, the Parliament’s control over the
Commission is considerably more robust than in
many of the Member States. On the one hand,
the process of forming the College of Commis-
sioners gives the Parliament a capacity to veto
candidates that is unheard of in many countries,
in which the makeup of the government is the
personal prerogative of the President or Prime
Minister. On the other, the strict division be-
tween Legislative and Executive Power in the
institutional design of the Union, without the
required forming of a parliamentary majority to
sustain the government’s action, affords the
Parliament independence from the Executive,
both in the processing of legislative initiatives
and in its oversight capacity.
Also, oversight of the Executive’s action
takes place through plenary debates and in the
different parliamentary committees, as well as
through written questions and the official chan-
nels of lobbying on the Commission as a whole.
In any event, the functional independence of
the Commission and of the Parliament has
shaped an institutional design with an infinitely
higher capacity for accountability and oversight
than in Spain, where the government always
has a more or less stable majority, allowing it to
run the legislative process, and it is subject to
much milder oversight than in the European
model, at least from the deputies from that ma-
jority.
Thirdly, the Parliament has a stable relation-
ship with the Council, as a territorial legislative
chamber. This relationship is established within
the framework of the joint legislative work
through the
trialogues
, but obviously there is no
accountability mechanism between the two
chambers. The members of the Council answer
to their national parliaments and the work of
the European Parliament answers directly to
citizens. In the cases that follow the consulta-
tion procedure, the Council is under no obliga-
tion whatsoever to notify the Parliament wheth-
er it is taking into consideration or not the
recommendations issued by the Parliament.
That gap should be filled with a stricter follow-
up procedure for the Parliament’s positions and,
where appropriate, with an amendment of the
Treaties that at least requires the Council to is-
sue a response, while we broaden the scope of
the ordinary legislative procedure.
Meanwhile, the Union’s independent institu-
tions, from the ECB, taking in the Single Super-
visory Mechanism and the Single Resolution
Mechanism, to supervisory bodies such as the
ESMA, answer directly to the European Parlia-
ment. The ECB appears periodically in the Parlia-
ment, while annual reports on the Bank’s action
are written and it is subject to additional control
through written questions. Other supervisory
bodies limit their accountability to appearances
in the Parliament, with greater or lesser control
by virtue of the nature of the institution. This
oversight by the Parliament is similar that exer-
cised by other legislative chambers in any na-
tional democracy. However, once again the