Institut d’Etudes Politiques

Aix – en – Provence

Master 2 Politiques Comparées

Course point of the student:

KOUNTOURIS Nikolas.

Subject:

The role of Compromise in the European Union.

I. Introduction.

European construction is a multicultural construction which is undoubtedly original. Europe elaborates its institutional forms by a continuous seeking compromise between the member states and its own institutions. In this general context, the European Commission plays an important role in the elaboration of all the policies which concern the creation of a European space of security, liberty and justice. So, Brussels is a real laboratory for European public policies which have a direct impact on the life of European citizens.

The harmonization of the different policies is a permanent process where the different partners are supposed to create the compromises necessary for the integration of the European Union. So, the European Commission is a multinational bureaucracy which distinguishes itself from national bureaucracies by creating its own political identity. The analysis, will first be concentrated in the procedure of the creation of this identity and secondly on the way that this identity influences the totality of European construction.

II. Analysis

a. A political identity of compromise.

How can we think in a European way, as long as the national point of view is always present ? Every nationality has the aspiration to introduce its own methods of work. The Commission as an institution cannot be explained as a simple addition of the different national actors. The political process of European integration is creating important cultural effects. European agents are gradually losing their national identity in favour of the construction of a European professional identity. From this point of view Europe is creating itself by the reference to a general multinational, multilingual and multicultural interest.

The European construction is not only a political process, but also a tradition of cooperation. National interests are transformed into a single European interest, unique and universal. In that way the European Commission is elaborating public policy on a European level.

This diversity between the national and the European level in the action of the European Commission produces a negative impression of the role of European institutions. The national actors or the national governments constantly accuse the European Commission of not taking into consideration the national interests in the European Union. Thus, there are many who are convinced that there is a lack of democracy in European procedures.

The European Union and especially its institutional organs, such as the European Commission, are the political objects of a compromise. If we want to understand their role we should consider their history. There were always different points of view concerning the future of the European Union and its political role on the international stage.

The steps that have been taken in order to define the nature of European integration are the compromises between national actors. So we can understand that Europe is an absolutely democratic, but unfinished political creation. The creation of a political Europe is a target which concerns the continuity of the reproduction of a culture of compromise in the European Union and its institutions.

b. The spill – over effects of a political culture of compromise.

Conceived like a machine to harmonize, the Commission is developing working methods which can only be understood in this perspective. The Commission is not a government and the president does not have the capacity of arbitration. Which does not mean an incapacity to take decisions, but the need for a process in continuity with various levels of compromise between European civil servants but also between the representatives of the Member States and the their interests. The process leads to the preparation of directives and regulations which will be subjected to the Parliament and the Council. This elaboration of European regulations, illustrates the importance of compromise in the culture of the Community and in this context the European Commission refers to a political culture of compromise. More deeply, what is concerned in this process is a compromise between national requirements and Community interest. The practice can be described as the sum of actions which contribute to the seeking for compromise. It is the double constraint of the division of sovereignty and the displacement of scale, which determines a style of work in negotiation.

The culture of compromise is a political culture: it reflects the real power ratios between national interests. The originality of the European Commission lies in its capacity to integrate national diversity by reproducing and spreading a political culture of compromise. So we can understand that the European Commission in not only “a machine to harmonise” but also a machine to export this harmonization to the national actors. The role of the European Commission is double. On the one hand, it has to create a culture of compromise and on the other to export it. The spill – over effect which is produced by this double action, is the reason for the dynamic nature of European integration.

In a pluralist model, the aggregation of the interests can occur inside different institutions. The question is which structures can play the main role in the aggregation of the interests articulated in essential political choices. The European Commission is charged with this function of mediation between general interests, while national groups each express their own particular interest. The presence and the progressive constitution of a European space of public policies, synonymous with this displacement from a national level to a European level is a political innovation without precedent in the history of Europe and undoubtedly the European Commission plays the main role in this procedure.

III. Conclusions

The European construction is understandable, only if we take into consideration the role of compromise in the common procedures. The European political process has cultural effects. Europeans agents gradually lose their national identity by the construction of a professional identity which is included into a collective project. We have to observe that the European culture of compromise is not the original culture of Europe. It is a political and administrative culture among others. It has an exemplary value, because it is at one and the same time the product of a multicultural European administration and a machine for the transformation of the national into the supranational.

As a general conclusion we may observe that the European Union is a unique phenomenon in human history, which can not be understood through a conventional analysis in terms of national context. The culture of compromise is an important variable which we have to take into consideration if we want to explain the political procedures of European integration. The transition from the conventional national forms towards a supranational structure in the European space is a political evolution of Europe, even if this transition is yet unfinished.