IMPACT OF THE EUROPEAN ELECTIONS ON CURRENT EU PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Ms. Kerstin Duhme, Managing Director of FTI Consulting provides an interesting look at how the upcoming European Elections are going to impact the work of EU public affairs.

"The election to the European Parliament will take place from 22-25 May 2014. During the current economic crisis the European Union (EU) is going through, and with the increasing skepticism towards Europe, the elections and the changing of the European Commission at the end of 2014 are highly significant for the future of the EU.

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

The elections will have an influence on the working of the Parliament even before they take place in May 2014. Of course, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) that run for re-election will have to devote substantial time to campaigning in their constituency and will spend less in Brussels. In addition, these MEPs will aim to focus on issues that can provide them with as much visibility in their constituency as possible. Issues such as shale gas, which have a strong local resonance, will be used to gain visibility at home. MEPs that will not run again will either reduce their parliamentary activity or try to use the remaining months to profile themselves for another position in national or European politics or try to create a legacy.

On a technical level, parliamentary activities will be formally interrupted for several months and the last plenary session will take place in March 2014. This  institutional break has direct consequences for the ongoing work of the Parliament. Contrary to some national jurisdictions there is no principle of discontinuity for the European Parliament. This means that in principle a dossier the Parliament has worked on before the elections can be picked up by the next Parliament where it was left. While there are no rules on how the Parliament has to deal with this situation, it is general practice that a dossier is only continued if it has made it through first reading in plenary (i.e. by March 2014). The joint Council position that is based on the Parliamentary resolution will then be taken on by the newly elected Parliament. If the Parliament has not adopted a resolution in Plenary, the negotiations on the dossier will in most cases start anew. Therefore, the European Parliament will aim to get as many dossiers as possible through to first reading in Plenary in March 2014. This will also help MEPs that run for re-election to increase their profile if they manage to negotiate political dossiers successfully.

If the rapporteur (i.e. MEP who is leading the negotiations on the dossier) remains a member or substitute in the committee responsible for the dossier, they will continue their role as rapporteur. If the rapporteur does not remain in the committee a new rapporteur for the dossier will be appointed. The procedure is also not laid down in rules but depends on a political decision. Most of the time the dossier is newly distributed among the parties, based on a new “point table” [ The system of electing a rapporteur is based on a “point table”. Every political group in the Parliament has points according to its size. If a political group aims to obtain the rapporteurship on a dossier it has to invest points comparable to an auction. The calculation of necessary points is based on different criteria and includes the expertise of the proposed rapporteur]. It may also happen that the large parties decide to keep their dossiers without putting it up for auction again.

COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

In theory the Council can go on with its business as usual. However, as the Parliament will cease work on new legislation after the plenary session in March 2014, and will not take on new dossiers even before that, the Council will have no counterparty for its negotiations for the period April-September. This will have several practical consequences:

- In the first half of 2014, the Greek Presidency will only have 3 months’ time to negotiate dossiers with the European Parliament. They will therefore frontload a large amount of dossiers to get them finalised at the final plenary session of the current legislature in March 2014.

- The Member States will aim to benefit from the pressure MEPs are under to finalise as many dossiers as possible. That gives them a better negotiating position and might enable them to pass amendments that are not normally popular within the Parliament;

- During the months when the European Parliament is dissolved the Member States will focus on dossiers that have not been prioritised during the past years and that still require difficult negotiations between the Member States. In particular, in the area of Economic and Financial Affairs the Council has had to focus on many urgent dossiers and had to put other important issues on the backburner. These are likely to be negotiated during recess. Such issues include the Benchmark Regulation, Multilateral Interchange Fees and Payment Services Directive and the Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities.

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

The European Commission also has no clear rules on how to deal with dossiers before and after the election. It will be decided on a case-by-case basis whether a dossier will still be adopted and sent to parliament. This assessment focuses on the chances of the dossier being adopted which depends on questions such as the complexity of the dossier and the level of controversy. In practice this means that legislative dossiers will most likely not be submitted to parliament after December 2013.

Moreover, the current Commission will stop work by the end of October 2014 and the next Commission will start again in early 2015. This means business as usual with all three institutions working at the same time, will be interrupted for almost one year.

STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS

From now on it will be even more important than usual to target the right stakeholders, in particular when engaging with the European Parliament. MEPs will now focus very strongly on a small number of dossiers that matter most to them and will drive those dossiers very dynamically.

In addition, when developing arguments, the level to which an issue impacts the constituency of the respective MEP and how the issue is debated at local level should be considered."