WHO’S WATCHING BRUSSELS?

LISE WITTEMAN

WHO’S
WATCHING
BRUSSELS?

Why the EU Deserves
Better Watchdogs

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Author: Lise Witteman © 2024
Editors: Leonie Kijewski, Karin Spaink
Translator: Mike Pearse
Cover: JanJaap Rypkema
E-book: Elgraphic

ISBN 9789083398648
NUR 320

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PROLOGUE

THE (UNELECTED) CHIEF BUREAUCRAT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

On the thirteenth floor, high up in the colossal building of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen takes a seat behind her desk in her new office. The Berlaymont building is just a stone’s throw from the municipality of Ixelles, where von der Leyen was born sixty-one years earlier, the daughter of a European official.

Today, the German politician — 1.61 metres tall with short blonde hair, bright eyes and a well-rehearsed politician’s smile — looms above the rest of the European district in Brussels, with all its lobby offices, embassies and, a few blocks away, the European Parliament.

Things are going well.

She’s managed to duck the procurement scandal that seemed to herald her downfall when she was Germany’s defence minister. She’s also defied the critics who tried to hold her accountable: the Federal Court of Auditors, which published a damning report in the summer of 2018 on the private awards that her ministry granted to large consultancy firms; the journalists of the prominent German weekly Der Spiegel who obtained that report and were the first to publish on the alleged abuses;¹ and finally the German lawmakers who decided at the end of that year to launch a parliamentary inquiry into her role in the affair.²

Then, to everyone’s surprise, von der Leyen was catapulted into Brussels. It was the summer of 2019, and results from the European elections had just come in. The Parliament was keen to appoint the winner, Manfred Weber, as the new president of the Commission. Weber, the frontrunner candidate — or Spitzenkandidat in Brussels speak — for the Christian Democratic Party, had counted on widespread support amongst the Parliament. But several government leaders, most notably French President Emmanuel Macron, blocked that attempt. They argued that Weber simply wasn’t up to the task. What followed was a kind of impenetrable poker game between member states, in which Weber’s fellow German von der Leyen unexpectedly emerged as a candidate.

All von der Leyen had to do now was convince members of the Parliament that she deserved their trust, even though she hadn’t been on any of their electoral lists.

During her candidacy hearing in the Parliament, von der Leyen pulled out all the stops. She made big promises for a greener, more social, more democratic and more transparent Europe — she knew those were the kind of promises that critics in Parliament would want to hear from her. Von der Leyen presented herself to Europe as confident, relaxed and decisive, sailing past obstacles and answering questions without hesitation or mistakes. She ended up securing a majority of the vote (although not a large one: 383 votes in favour versus 327 against).

This is how, within the time span of a few weeks, the German minister was suddenly promoted to one of the most powerful women in the world — to ‘chief bureaucrat.’³ The watchdogs in Germany that were trying to hold her to account for the procurement scandal were left scratching their heads. And ordinary Europeans? They had no idea how their vote had led to this.

The fact that an unelected politician like von der Leyen could become chief of the EU executive goes to the heart of the problem of the European Union as a centre of political power.

As Europeans, we’re taking part in a great post-war experiment in government administration. For member states, the EU is the most important layer of government: most national policies are now the results of decisions taken in Brussels.⁴ This is based on a three-tier system: European governments set out the broad outlines of the EU’s policy. Their national ministers, within the Council of the EU, work in consultation with the European Commission — the bloc’s executive, responsible for developing and implementing all policy — and the Parliament — the body representing EU citizens — which puts its own stamp on EU policy.

But as the appointment of von der Leyen shows, there’s a strong push and pull over who should, and who shouldn’t, get the last word. With a growing number of national laws being decided directly in Brussels since the EU was founded a few decades ago, the sheer opacity of European decision-making affects how legitimate they are. How democratic can a centre of power be when almost no one understands what is going on or how decisions are made, let alone how you as a citizen can influence them? Even plans introduced with the best of intentions quickly start to smell undemocratic.

This became even more problematic during von der Leyen’s presidency, when one crisis followed another and quick action had to be taken. During the COVID-19 pandemic and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, von der Leyen seized the opportunity and emerged as a decisive leader. At the same time, she fell back on old habits: withholding information crucial to scrutinising her decisions, showing little regard for democratic processes and making herself inaccessible to the press. That makes her difficult to hold to account.

Still, these aren’t reasons to write off the European Union. As autocratic leaders emerge across Europe, undermining the position of journalists, parliamentarians and judges everywhere, all sorts of Brussels watchdogs are watching von der Leyen and her colleagues and calling them to account when they cross the line. These include EU lawmakers, Brussels journalists, social organisations and official bodies such as the European Ombudsman and the European Court of Auditors that have been set up specifically for this purpose. Their presence is crucial if Europeans are to trust the difficult-to-understand Brussels bureaucracy.

This book dissects the most prominent European watchdogs to find out if they’re up to the job. Together, they form the story of the development of the EU as a young democracy. They show the struggles that take place and the dangers that threaten it. At the same time, they show how hard people are fighting to make things better. Also — or especially — during von der Leyen’s first term as president of the European Commission.

CHAPTER 1

JUST BLAME BRUSSELS

In the 27 EU countries, national lawmakers are officially supposed to monitor deals that their respective governments make in Brussels. But national parliaments don’t always pay close attention. When a new European fund, worth billions of euros, was set up during the pandemic, national lawmakers didn’t put their foot down and allowed their governments to take crucial decisions without them. This made the European Union a popular target for Eurosceptics, providing them with the opportunity to put the blame on Brussels (yet again).

‘It’s a day of pride for our country.’

MARIO DRAGHI, PRIME MINISTER OF ITALY, JUNE 2021

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi beams as he accepts a large blue and yellow folder from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who is also smiling broadly. Just a moment ago they entered the room, greeting each other with a fist-bump, masks on. It’s June 2021 and the COVID-19 crisis is still rampant. The outbreak of the pandemic has ripped deep financial wounds, especially in Eastern and Southern Europe.

The folder is supposed to offer relief and contains the ‘Brussels-approved’ plan to boost the Italian economy with billions of euros in borrowed European money.

A year earlier, in the spring of 2020, Italy became the first European country to be hit by the virus, which spread with frightening speed. Lockdowns plunged the national economy into its deepest recession since World War II, and desperate Italians — and other member states — turned to the European Union. They wanted funds to plug the holes in their budgets that economic stagnation paired with soaring unemployment benefits had caused. Together with other European policymakers, Draghi, who had just stepped down as head of the European Central Bank and was not yet prime minister, called for a major intervention to prevent a new financial crisis.

‘The speed of the deterioration of private balance sheets — prompted by an economic shutdown that is both inevitable and desirable — must be met by equal speed in deploying government balance sheets, mobilising banks and, as Europeans, supporting each other in the pursuit of what is evidently a common cause,’ he wrote in March 2020 in an opinion piece in the Financial Times.²

At first, von der Leyen showed her more frugal side, dismissing the Italian call to collectively borrow money in the spirit of financial solidarity as ‘a slogan’ — much to the anger of Italy’s prime minister at the time, Giuseppe Conte.³ ‘Europe needs to show whether it can live up to this call of history,’ he admonished,⁴ continuing in a thinly veiled criticism of von der Leyen: ‘I will not go down in history as the one who didn’t take responsibility to do what needs to be done for European citizens.’

To everyone’s surprise, that same day, the Commission changed tack. ‘At this juncture, the President is not excluding any options within the limits of the treaty,’ von der Leyen’s press service said in a statement on her behalf, published just a few hours after the press conference that von der Leyen and Conte held.⁵ A ‘stimulus package’ would be set up ‘that will ensure that cohesion within the Union is maintained through solidarity and responsibility.’

But negotiations had yet to begin and the stakes were high: with entire economies depending on them, emotions ran high when EU countries wrangled over the help packages. In the north, led by the Netherlands, politicians sneered at what they saw as a lack of crisis preparedness in Southern Europe. The southern countries, meanwhile, accused their ‘frugal’ northern neighbours of a lack of empathy for the escalating health crisis and short-sightedness — they felt that the entire eurozone would suffer an immense economic crisis if not enough support was given.

Game on. Things came to a head when European leaders travelled to Brussels in July 2020 for what would turn out to be one of the longest meetings in EU history, lasting four days and nights in a row. The streets around the Council of the EU were hermetically sealed off, and Europe waited tensely for the outcome.

In the end, the premiers crunched out a deal. For the first time in the history of the European Union, a multibillion-dollar fund was set up using money borrowed from the financial markets, with the 27 EU countries acting as a joint guarantor to keep interest rates down: they agreed on a deal billing a whopping €750 billion. The money would be distributed among all member states, some in the form of a grant, some as a loan, and all according to a formula that reflected a country’s national need for financial aid.

It still took almost a year of technical processing and bureaucracy before any of the member states could even get a cent from that package. But by Brussels standards, that’s emergency speed. And financially crippled Italy could count on the biggest bag of money.

All of this is illustrated by that symbolic moment in June 2021 when von der Leyen and Draghi, now prime minister, greet each other. Draghi is visibly pleased to receive his recovery plans — and so is the Commission president. ‘We are putting our Union’s strength at the service of Italy’s recovery,’ von der Leyen’s social media team tweets following the press photo with the new Italian prime minister.⁶ ‘Green light to Italy’s €191.5 billion recovery plan!’

It wouldn’t be the only photo opportunity of the month. Von der Leyen ditched her penny-pinching ways and toured Europe like a sort of Santa Claus, promising the handout of billions of euros that the Commission had agreed with the relevant governments: €16.6 billion for Portugal, €69.5 billion for Spain, €30.5 billion for Greece. In return, heads of state and government leaders showered her with praise, hailing the achievements of the European Union.

And just like that, Brussels went from bureaucratic bogeyman to hero.

The member states were not the only ones who grasped the opportunity. The Commission seized on the crisis as a way to break with the past and start hammering out a different future. One of Brussels’ biggest irritations was with countries that dragged their feet on keeping promises, such as to implement expensive greening plans or complicated digitalisation projects. But now, with a new bag of money in hand, EU policymakers had the ultimate carrot to dangle before national government leaders. Pet projects that the Commission had wanted to push forward but that had been gathering dust in the Berlaymont building for years — like reforming the welfare state and tackling corruption — could now be grabbed off the shelf and given a new life.