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The European Parliament – V part
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The Parliament has a big power as far as concerns his relationship with the Commission. This power has increased in the past years and also recently we have had an emblematic case, relative to the appointment of the commissioner for justice and home affairs, when the minister Buttiglione stood in the Italian elections. In that case, the European Parliament and the commission for freedom and justice thought that the Italian commissioner was not appropriate for the needs represented by that Commission. The Parliament brought this opinion forward in the plenary meeting. The political situation that had been created led the President of the Commission Barroso to modify his Commission and to ask Italy for the appointment of a new commissioner. The person that was chosen is the foreign affairs minister Mr. Franco Frattini, which now has become commissioner for justice and home affairs of the European Union and also vice-chairman. At the same time, he has also asked for the change of portfolio for another commissioner, the commissioner Kovacs and has not given his favourable opinion for the Latvian commissioner designate: Latvia has had to change its representative. So it is clear that in this case the European Parliament has managed to clearly impose its power on the Commission. But let’s see which is the main area where the European Parliament mostly exerts its powers: it’s the budget area. The budget, as in every parliamentary assembly, is co-decided together with the Council. In fact, the European Parliament has the possibility to decide over the budget of the European Union, a budget of about 100 billion euro per year. The European Parliament has also the possibility to have the last word on certain expenses, which are the so-called optional expenses, the ones that do not directly derive from the Treaties. They are especially the agricultural expenses, where the Parliament can make only some amendments, but the Council always has the last word, while on all the other expenses the European Parliament has the power to decide and has the last word in the budget procedure and so it can impose his decisions to the Council. The budget is so important that there are some inter-institutional cooperation seats between the Parliament and the Council. This is done in order to find an agreement, to avoid a conflict that would be negative for the European Union. So there are some inter-institutional consultations where the European Commission and Parliament participate in, too. They generally tend to increase the budget quota in favour of the Union, while the Council has always a more restrictive attitude and it tries to avoid giving the European Union more available cash than the one included in the Commission’s proposal. Therefore the European Parliament, in this field, performs the functions that are typical of a national parliamentary assembly.
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