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EP50 · Society · first published 2020-12-03

The EU's opposition | Sari Essayah | Negotiator 50

This is a summary on Neuvottelija AI. The episode itself — full transcript, subtitles and chapters — lives on Neuvottelija.com, which is its canonical home.

Christian Democrat leader and former MEP Sari Essayah answers the claim Sami Miettinen heard on a visit to the European Parliament: there is no opposition in the EU. Her answer is partly yes and more interesting than a yes — there is no government-versus-opposition structure, and what takes its place is a triangle in which the Commission and Parliament form a pair and the Council is the body that watches the money. The episode covers the Commission's monopoly on initiative, the division of labour between rapporteur and shadow rapporteur, the drift from directives to regulations, the failure of the lead-candidate system, and the passage of the recovery fund, in which treaty articles were, in her words, interpreted very creatively. She closes with a concrete reform: give the Council a right of initiative.

Sami Miettinen · Sections: AI and Society + AI and the Economy

The EU’s opposition | Sari Essayah | Negotiator 50

Summary: The episode starts from a single sentence Miettinen heard while visiting the European Parliament: there is no opposition in the EU. Essayah neither denies it nor concedes it outright — she explains what has taken the opposition’s place.

Its sharpest structural observation is the Commission’s monopoly on initiative: a legislative impulse can come only from the Commission. Everything else follows from that, including why the Council has become the de facto counterweight.

And its hardest figure is Finland’s total exposure: the recovery package’s EUR 13 billion comes on top of an existing EUR 60 billion-plus — the largest in Europe, partly because of state guarantees to a large shipbuilding industry.

A note on reading this. At the time of recording Essayah leads a EU-critical party in national opposition, and her interpretations are marked as hers. The episode is nonetheless unusually un-partisan: most of it is an explanation of institutional mechanics that can be checked regardless of what the reader thinks of the EU. It was recorded as a follow-up at the Puheenaihe studio after a longer conversation about the euro.

The claim the episode starts from

Miettinen gives the background openly: while working on his book Neuvotteluvalta he interviewed Sirpa Pietikäinen about how the Libor scandal was turned into an EU-wide regulation. On that visit he was given presentations on how the Parliament works, and he admits plainly that he had known the mechanisms poorly.

One sentence stuck: there is no opposition in the EU.

Essayah served one five-year term as an MEP and has since sat on the Finnish parliament’s Grand Committee. She calls the Brussels years an eye-opening experience.

The answer: no opposition, but something in its place

Her answer has three parts, and the order matters.

1. There is no parliamentarism in the deep sense of the word. There is no government-versus-opposition structure. On each issue a coalition has to be found that will carry it forward.

2. But the groups’ positions are well known. It is readily understood which groups hold more federalist views than others, and certain groups ally to push things through.

3. The Council is the de facto opposition. This is the central structural observation. The Commission and Parliament form a pair, and in that arrangement the Council — the member states’ representatives — is experienced as the opposition, because in her words those wretches even keep an eye on the money and are not enthusiastic about everything the Commission and Parliament would like to advance.

Why the Parliament has been called a dangerous institution

This produces the episode’s sharpest formulation, which Essayah quotes from others without disputing it:

Someone has said that the Parliament is a dangerous institution, in that there is no financial responsibility there for the legislation that the nation state and the member state then have to implement.

The mechanism is simple and therefore convincing: the Parliament legislates, the member states implement and pay. There the oddest things may be dreamed up on the assumption that member states will cope with this regulation too. Most often it is the Council that tries to be the voice of reason and ask how this is to be sold to citizens and what it means in additional costs.

The Commission’s monopoly on initiative

This is the structural fact from which the rest follows. Unlike a national parliament, where members table legislative initiatives, only the Commission can inject impulses into the legislative process. Written questions are possible, but that is a different thing.

When the right of initiative sits with one institution, a voter’s direct channel to the content of legislation is thin no matter how diligently they vote.

The differences between groups are real

Essayah does not claim it is all one undifferentiated mass. The EPP group, on her account, contains the most parties that start from the premise that fiscal policy must be responsible, that support the Stability and Growth Pact and want to restrain borrowing. On the left, the wish is to inflate the EU budget rather recklessly and to move matters from the national level to the EU level.

Miettinen contributes the episode’s tightest numerical argument, and it should be read whole, because it is at once a defence of the EU and a warning:

share of GDP
The EU budget today ~1 %
Finland’s public sector ~42 %
The EU after the recovery fund ~4 %, possibly 5 %
Finland in that case ~47 %

His conclusion: the EU is a good and cheap system at one per cent. The problem is not that the EU exists but where the number moves — at 47 per cent Finland would be the most heavily taxed country in the world.

From which follows the question at the heart of the episode: if I wanted to vote against this development, is there a mechanism? Essayah’s answer is bluntly honest: in practice only at national level, since participation in the funds is decided nationally. But she adds at once why that is not working now — Finland’s governing parties sit at EU level in precisely the groups that push federalism: the Social Democrats, Greens, Left Alliance, and the Centre Party and the Swedish People’s Party in Renew Europe, formerly ALDE, which is strongly pro-federal. In her words, the Finnish government does not in any way run a counter-cyclical policy against European federalising development.

The Centre Party’s placement in that particular group is, she notes, something that was wondered about at the time.

The national interest is not a dirty word — elsewhere

The episode’s most usable advice to voters is practical rather than ideological. Essayah warns against the protest vote: a so-called stinking protest is not worth casting in European elections, because it is a wasted vote. An MEP can achieve a great deal if they have the languages, network, can build compromises and can carry things forward as a rapporteur.

And then an observation that is checkable and that anyone following EU affairs will recognise:

Perhaps too often in Finland the talk, or at least the talk of certain MEPs, is of the common European interest. In fact MEPs from many countries look after the national interest very firmly.

The examples are concrete: on car industry questions German MEPs from right to left suddenly have very German spectacles on. In agriculture the same is true of the French, almost regardless of party. Essayah’s wish is that Finns would more boldly put on blue-and-white spectacles — and she adds immediately that this is not in conflict with the wider European interest.

Rapporteur and shadow rapporteur: the thing nobody explains

The episode’s most concrete lesson. In the Finnish committee model, experts are heard and the committee drafts its report together. The EU works differently:

The rapporteur’s power rests on the fact that they produce the Parliament’s position on the proposal. Miettinen’s dry addition: and they are no doubt lobbied thoroughly. Essayah’s answer is equally dry — very heavily indeed.

To this she attaches a trend observation dismissed in three words: the drift from directives to regulations narrows the national room to adapt rules to national needs. That is a bad direction.

The lead-candidate system and what killed it

Miettinen proposes a reform: what if people were lifted into the Commission, or even the Council, from the European Parliament, so that a voter could put someone into a decision-making chair with their own vote — rather than the composition emerging from inter-governmental horse-trading and recycled national politicians?

Essayah replies that this is exactly what was attempted with lead candidates (Spitzenkandidaten), and it took a heavy blow: the idea was that whoever won the election would become Commission president, and that is not what happened. Her verdict is blunt — after this there is no point coming to enthuse citizens about lead candidates.

And she names the problem that existed before that: how many people at national level even recognise Members of the European Parliament? They may be big names in the Parliament, but here no one in the street knows them.

Essayah’s own proposal: a right of initiative for the Council

This is the episode’s most concrete constructive opening, and it follows directly from the monopoly-on-initiative observation:

One thing worth considering would be that the Council should get a right of initiative.

With the condition that makes it a considered proposal rather than an off-the-cuff one: the right would be tied to unanimity in the Council, so that it could not be used lightly — the threshold would be crossed only when member states genuinely want to take something somewhere.

Her second proposal concerns better connection for national parliaments. Finland’s system is reasonably good, she says, but it rests on how the minister performs and succeeds in the Council. COSAC meetings exist, but something is still missing — they remain conversations in which everyone agrees this is probably how things should be done, and then it is not carried through. Miettinen’s summary: national parliaments need leverage over decisions.

The recovery fund and the domestic process

The last part of the episode is domestic, and it is its most critical.

The Grand Committee. Miettinen found it striking that in practice the chair of the Grand Committee was able to give the prime minister a negotiating mandate for very large borrowing decisions. Essayah explains the mechanics without defending them: governing parties hold the majority in every committee; in negotiating situations a working committee operates, which likewise has a government majority; and the Grand Committee must be informed — in practice by telling members it is worth keeping your phone on. But the outcome is the same: the government’s position and line is what goes forward.

The Constitutional Law Committee. Miettinen raises a structural comparison: Finland has ex ante review, whereas in Hungary — much criticised — constitutional judges can correct matters after the fact. Ex ante review means the pressure lands on one committee at a time — and his reading is that in the recovery fund’s case the treaty articles were interpreted rather creatively.

Essayah’s reply is the episode’s most quoted line:

Very creatively indeed. And in the Constitutional Law Committee, in the expert hearings, there was a fairly critical view of this whole package.

The scale of the exposure. Here the episode gives its numbers. With the recovery package Finland’s liability grows by EUR 13 billion, on top of an existing EUR 60 billion-plus. Essayah notes that Finland carries the largest exposures of any EU state in European terms, partly because it has a large shipbuilding industry that needs state guarantees. And she says out loud what usually goes unsaid: this is not merely theoretical — if something falls due, the money would actually have to be dug up from somewhere.

And what worries her most about the process. The sparring between the Grand Committee and the Constitutional Law Committee in the summer of 2020 was not, in her view, good for the process, because the Constitutional Law Committee ultimately interprets Finland’s constitution while the Grand Committee takes a political position. When those two come into conflict, one is, in her words, in a rather serious conflict indeed.

What the episode leaves you with

Three things, and they are of different kinds:

  1. A structural observation that holds up. The Commission’s monopoly on initiative plus the Council as counterweight explains more about how the EU works than talk of federalists and EU critics does. This part is checkable and does not depend on the reader’s view of the union.
  2. A concrete proposal that is unusually precise. A right of initiative for the Council tied to unanimity is a proposal that can be assessed — unlike a general demand for “more democracy”.
  3. A figure worth checking. EUR 13 billion on top of EUR 60 billion-plus is not an opinion.

What remains a matter of opinion is the reading of the governing parties’ federalism and the assessment of what the recovery fund ultimately is. Those are marked here as Essayah’s positions and should be read as such.

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