User talk:TWilde

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Hi Tom,

Regarding your comments on the UKIP talk page, I hope you'll excuse me if I reply to some of your more detailed remarks here? Some of what you say is dead right, but I'd quibble with other parts.

It's true that the Commission has sole power to draft legislative proposals. This is called the 'power of initiation'. It can do this either on its own initiative (based on provisions in the treaties), or when instructed to do so by either Parliament or Council. This is just like the civil service in many countries; the UK is interesting because it allows ministers and even backbenchers to draft legislation occasionally too, though the majority of UK legislation is drafted by civil servants, of course.

But when it comes to deciding what laws go on the EU statute books (or acquis communautaire), the Commission has no powers at all. It can only make proposals which the two legislative bodies, Parliament and Council, can then do with absolutely as they see fit.

You write that Parliament and Council have power to amend the Commission's proposals "in some policy areas, within tightly-defined limits". On the contrary, both Parliament and Council go through every proposal line-by-line, both in specialised committees like US Congress, and in plenary like the Commons, making whatever amendments they see fit, accepting some suggestions and rejecting others. It's also crucially important that Parliament and Council each have a final yes/no say over legislation. There are no tightly-defined limits and the Commission has no influence at all in the legislative procedure.

You also write, "I'm told that the European Parliament has even rejected the Commission's legislation outright on a handful of occasions!". On the contrary, it happened more than a handful of times just last year. (An interesting comparison springs to mind, actually: how many times last year did the Commons reject a government proposal?) And there are many more occasions where Commission proposals are amended substantially so as to alter or completely reverse the original intention of the Commission proposal - if you add in these examples, I'd hazard a guess that a majority of Commission proposals are treated in this way. This is not a rare or theoretical power.

The most recent instance I can think of was earlier this year, when Parliament voted to throw out Commission proposals about the transport of animals, though there may be more recent examples still which I don't know about.

I admit the system is far from perfect. Personally, for instance, I agree with UKIP that allowing the Commission sole power of initiation is far too limiting - even though, in practice, the Commission seems to be learning not to make proposals for which there is no political will in the legislature, since they just get kicked out. There are other quirks and holdovers from the days when Council was sole legislature and the Commission was its right arm. But, despite these remaining problems, the image of the Commission as handing down laws willy-nilly, and Parliament as a toothless talking shop, is about 20 years out of date. Even the most strongly eurosceptic MEPs - those who have been there longer than a few months, anyway - admit that, and that includes the UKIP leadership.

There is some very detailed information - quite dense and technical, but also quite clear - about the powers of the various bodies here: [1]

Sorry to waffle on. I hope it's interesting, but if not, please feel free to ignore me! And thanks again for your contributions to the UK Independence Party page - I hope you'll stay around and keep a watch for some of the more obviously silly changes, both pro- and anti-, that tend to spring up there from time to time. Toby W 20:26, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi Toby, Does this work? I'm still trying to get the hang of my Talk Page. Until you said so on the UKIP Talk Page, I didn't even know this existed. So thanks for that... Twilde 09:53, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it works! The talk page is just somewhere you can post whatever you like without it becoming part of the encyclopedia proper. And it didn't exist until I posted the message to you, at which point it was created! I should have one too at User talk:Randywombat, though I hardly ever use it. Toby W

Anyway, thanks for the info above. It all looks very interesting, and I shall also enjoy visiting the EP links. I've wrestled with the EP website before without much joy - maybe I'll have a better experience this time.

I last discussed EP lawmaking procedures online a couple of years ago, with an apparently knowledgeable pro-EU academic. She assured me that the EP had thrown out Commission proposals about five times in total (hence my claim that it was a handful of times.) She did also make the same point as you that sometimes the EP can totally change the whole direction of legislation in the course of amending it.

I agree that the House of Commons rarely throws out UK Govt legislation completely. However, that's an interesting comparision for you to make there, as the UK Govt is elected, and the European Commission ain't.

I was interested to learn that in many countries only the civil service can initiate legislation. If the Commission had sole right to initiate legislation in this sense then I can't imagine anybody objecting much. I think the objections come because the Commissioners have the right to dream up legislation themselves from scratch ("in accordance with Treaties") rather than just drafting legislation at the request of their political masters. Take that right away from them and a whole lot of democrats in Europe would sleep a bit easier.

I tend to have short, intense busy patches and then get out of the habit of visiting Wikipedia, but whenever I remember, I will indeed be happy to keep an occasional eye on the UKIP page and help you to weed out any obviously feeble contributions from either side.

One suggestion I was tempted to make would be deletion of the link to the Britain in Europe report on UKIP, as it seems to consist largely of ad hominems plus the products of a couple of BNP smear campaigns . However, a quick scoot around the links on your home page makes me wonder if possibly you wrote that report yourself, so maybe I'd better not suggest that after all....  :-)

Yours in friendly oppostion, Tom Twilde 14:42, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree the EP website is a nightmare, though not as bad as Europa] - they seem to have a philosophy of posting absolutely every piece of information everyone could ever want, then making the search engine so feeble that it's nearly impossible to find anything. It's frustrating. But the website of the Parliament office in the UK - which is the link I provided - is a bit better.

Yes, the Commission's sole power of initiation is weird. As you say, if it was just a drafting service for politicians (like many civil services), there would be few objections. The fact that the Commission has no actual lawmaking powers is the supposed safeguard, but there have been complaints in the past that it's used rather, er, tenuous interpretations of treaty clauses in order to bring forward overbearing legislation. I can't deny that!

One last point - my comparison between UK governments and the Commission might be more apposite than it first appears. You say that the UK government is elected - but look more carefully. The government - i.e. the set of ministers who run the executive - is elected not by the people, but by members of the House of Commons, and it remains in office only as long as it enjoys the UK Parliament's confidence. Government ministers don't even have to be MPs, and frequently aren't; several of our current ministers are members of the Lords.

Compare that to the EU. The Commission - the set of politicians who run the executive - are elected by Members of the European Parliament and remain in office only as long as they enjoy Parliament's confidence. The analogy there is exact. There are two points of disanalogy: (1) Commissioner candidates are presented by heads of government, for which there's no national equivalent; and (2) the European Parliament carries out detailed committee cross-examinations of Commission candidates before it evaluates them, which the Commons doesn't do.

Oh yes, and the approval of a UK government is pretty much a formality guaranteed by the Commons's parliamentary majority. Whereas the approval of a new Commission is very far from a formality, as we've seen this week…!

Anyway, I'm sure we can agree to disagree over the points that remain between us! I do admit to finding it frustrating when someone who shares my enthusiasm for liberal democracy sees the EU as an obstacle to that, rather than an opportunity for achieving it more widely; but I'm sure you feel much the same in the opposite direction, so I won't press the point! :o) Toby W 15:39, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

PS. The Britain in Europe document was written by Richard Corbett MEP, and for what it's worth, I didn't add it to Wikipedia, someone else did. I don't think it would be appropriate to remove the link, but better perhaps to instead add some pro-UKIP links from the other side? Toby W