Many people in the Brussels bubble will spend this weekend cashing in their winnings and honouring their debts; having been a fixation (and source of much betting activity), the new European Commission has finally been approved.
For those who have been calling for a European Commission that functions more effectively and is more selective in what it does, there is much room for optimism. The tiered Vice-President system could break down silos between directorates and focus attention on achieving larger policy objectives. Commissioners have the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality hardwired into their mandates and the Vice Presidents will scrutinise every new legislative proposal before it can be placed on the Commission’s agenda.
It will be some time before we know if the Vice President structure eases the policymaking process or becomes a source of tension, with Commissioners jockeying for the spotlight on the same initiatives.
From the UK’s perspective, there is much to applaud. The new Commission’s mandate and its focus on promoting the better regulation agenda, increasing the role of national Parliaments and orientating the EU’s policy objectives towards growth, coincides with what the UK believes the EU should do in the next term.
The biggest concession made to the UK is giving the new directorate for Financial Stability, Financial Services and the Capital Markets Union to Lord Jonathan Hill. For those who believe that this will signal an era of EU legislation written in a UK mould (or an end to EU legislation altogether!), they are likely to be disappointed. The financial services section of DG MARKT remains largely intact (minus the unit dealing with bankers’ bonuses) and will be led by the previous Commissioner’s Head of Cabinet, so there is unlikely to be a damascene conversion to a new deregulatory agenda overnight. In practice, there is likely to be a high degree of continuity with a substantial volume of technical work inherited from the previous mandate.
Not that the UK would be advocating a light touch approach. The UK has the strictest regime on financial services among all EU Member States and is often a keen supporter of action at EU level – a point that Ministers often forget to mention at home. The current pressure among Member States to water down the Commission’s structural reform of European banks threatens to leave the UK as the only Member State with formal ring-fencing in place.
Where the presence of a UK Commissioner will be more visible is on the development of the new Capital Markets Union, a substantial new policy initiative that, when announced by Jean-Claude Juncker in July, revived UK fears of the EU centralising oversight at the expense of the City.
Placing the UK at the centre of this project could provide the opportunity to present the mutual benefits of EU membership– with European markets benefitting from better access to the EU’s largest capital market and more opportunities in the EU being opened up to investors in London.