MarketEye: Elections for New European Parliament: Impact on Environmental Policy Making

08.12.2009 // Posted by: Kris Pollet // Posted in: Articles, Supply Chain

Elections for New European Parliament: Impact on Environmental Policy Making

At the beginning of June 2009, citizens of the EU’s 27 Member States voted in elections for a new European Parliament. Although the turnout was fairly low (less than 50%), the results were remarkable.

On the one hand, the Green party made significant progress. In particular in Germany, the EU’s largest Member State, and in France, more Greens were elected than in the previous Parliament. One of the co-leaders of the group is Mr Daniel Cohn-Bendit. He was one of the leaders of the infamous leftist 1968 student protests that rocked the French Republic and large parts of Europe.

However, it remains doubtful whether they will be able to use their stronger party to gain more influence on policy making. The main reason for this is the dismal result of their natural allies, the progressive Socialists (Socialists & Democrats – S&D). In many Member States, socialists lost heavily: the UK, France, Germany, Belgium. Usually, but not always, they lost to right of centre parties that make up the European People’s Party (EPP). As a result, the EPP is again the single biggest group in the Parliament.

This group could have become even more powerful if the UK Conservatives would not have decided to leave the EPP and establish a new faction. This new group, European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), is made up of parliamentarians who are skeptical of further European integration. They are in favour of returning some policies that are now set at the European level to the national fold.

In addition, in quite a few countries, such as the Netherlands, Hungary, and the UK, more voters than ever before were persuaded to support fringe right wing groups. Some of these are openly anti-Islamic, some deny that the Holocaust ever took place, and most are clearly racist. But due to the Parliament’s rules, and because of their often divisive internal struggles, they were not able to form a proper parliamentary group. This means that they are not eligible for formal positions such as chairmanships of committees, and will receive hardly any funding. In policy making, they will be marginalised and isolated and will not have any influence whatsoever.

Confusion among the right is further illustrated by the formation of another new political group called Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD). It is primarily made up by politicians from two parties: the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the Italian Lega Nord. In the UK, UKIP is now almost as big as the governing socialist, or Labour, party. It advocates leaving the EU altogether. And the Italian Lega Nord is in favour of splitting the Italian state into a northern state and a southern state. They say that the poorer south is corrupt and mafia infested. But both the ECR and the EFD are smaller than the Greens.

Two other political groups will play a role in the overall political balance of the new EP. The most left of centre group is the Group of the United European Left (GUE). This group is made up of for instance former communists from states in Eastern Europe that were dominated by Moscow until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

But the group that will no doubt have a significant role in determining the Parliaments’ majority opinion is the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE – usually referred to as the Liberals). Although they lost some seats, they remain necessary if the right of centre parties want to gain an absolute majority. Unfortunately, the left of centre parties can no longer reach such a majority together with the Liberals. The policy of the Liberals is somewhat different from what the word ‘liberal’ usually means in the US. Although they are market oriented, they retain a significant socially and environmentally responsible angle. In the previous Parliament, they were needed if both the left and the right wanted to take up a position against the other. More often than not, they voted with the socialists.

Impact

What does this mean for environmental policy making?

First of all, it must be pointed out that the European Parliament can only amend legislation. They cannot come up with legislative proposals themselves. This role goes exclusively to the European Commission. This institution should not be seen as a European government, but more as the European administration, bureaucracy, or even think tank. Its role is supposed to be fairly neutral, and not prone to too much overt political pressure.

And the Parliament cannot amend proposals on its own. It has to reach an agreement together with another institution, namely the Council. The Council is the emanation of the Member States and their national governments. They meet along policy lines: for instance the Environment Ministers meet as the Environment Council, the Agriculture Ministers meet as the Agriculture Council, etc.

Nevertheless, the Parliament’s overall political role cannot be underestimated. Very often, when the Commission is preparing a proposal, they will make informal enquiries with leading parliamentarians. If it becomes clear that finding a majority in Parliament will be impossible, the Commission will go back to its drawing board and make a draft more acceptable.

Secondly, there is no European government. This means that there is no fixed coalition between political groups. Leadership of the Council shifts every six months between Member States. And the President of the Commission, although often a former high profile politician, is expected to act as an honest broker, and should not have fixed allegiances.

For the Parliament, a consequence of this is that majorities that approve proposals shift all the time. Issues are assessed on their merits, and it is not always possible to determine in advance how a political group will vote.

Most importantly, however, it must be highlighted that the Parliament’s dominant and biggest group, the right of centre EPP, took part in the approval of all the EU’s flagship environmental policies: electronic waste (WEEE/RoHS), chemicals (REACH), Emissions Trading (EU ETS), etc. One should not expect that because this group is situated on the right of the political centre, it will be anti-environmentalist. Quite on the contrary. Leading MEPs (Member of the European Parliament) from the EPP in the previous Parliament played a leading role in shaping the above mentioned policies.

So where do they make the difference? One good example of how they act differently from left of centre groups are the recently approved mandatory emissions limits for passenger cars. Germany is a big car producing nation: Volkswagen, Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, … to name but a few. Germans love their cars, and maybe as a result of that, they don’t have speed limits on their national highways. And as it happens, German MEPs are the single biggest national group within the biggest party, the EPP. This makes them very influential. However, in the end, and after years of wrangling and desperate protests by car makers, they eventually ended up approving mandatory emission limits that will cost car makers billions of euros.

Their influence was in tweaking and eliminating the most stringent or harmful elements of the proposal. Mandatory limits would only be introduced more gradually. Calculation methods would be more flexible. Fines for non-compliance were rejected or severely cut down. And they had managed to hold out on mandatory limits for many years. Although the Parliament is in principle opposed to voluntary agreements, because its own formal role is then eliminated, it had tolerated a voluntary commitment by car makers to reduce emissions. However, it was only after it became obvious after several years that car makers did not meet the targets they had committed to, that opposition in principle against mandatory limits evaporated.

Finally, the political groups, the EPP included, don’t apply a system of stringent party discipline. This means that they can’t always bring all the MEPs in their group within one line. When the Parliament was last year asked to approve proposals to extend and reform the Emissions Trading Scheme, an influential group within the EPP rebelled against the majority position of the group. They sided with the left of centre and managed to win several votes.

Prospects

One of the first dossiers in which the new Parliament’s approach to environmental policy making will become obvious is the set of proposals to amend the electronic waste directives WEEE & RoHS. The leading MEP who will steer the WEEE draft through the parliamentary process is a German EPP member, Mr Florenz. The MEP who will steer the RoHS proposal on further restrictions on hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment through the Parliament is a British member of the Greens, Mrs Evans.

It will be interesting to see how they will approach this. Because the left cannot muster an absolute majority, they will try to avoid reaching the stage where such a majority is needed. Decision making is done under a process that can go to three readings. If overall agreement with the other co-legislator, the Council of Ministers, is reached in one reading, only a simple majority of votes cast will have been needed in the Parliament. This clearly favours the left. If the right cannot find a common position with its fringe eurosceptic groups (ECR and EFD), the left may be able to find a sufficient majority to push through stronger and stricter positions. This may result in immediately banning more hazardous chemicals under the RoHS law.

However, if an overall agreement cannot be reached at first reading, the right gains the advantage. Within the Parliament, an absolute majority is needed for votes in second reading. And the left of centre parties cannot reach that number on their own. But the right of centre groups can. The only downside is that if the EP adopts a specific position in first reading, such as banning more substances, it cannot really re-open the vote on this in second reading.

As a whole, it is to be expected that the dominant right of centre EPP will manage to push through a few more business friendly and less environmentally stringent measures. But a reversal of the EU’s flagship policies is clearly not in the pipeline.

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